We Overpopulated The Planet Because We Could

By Lionel Anet

10 May, 2016
Countercurrents.org

Life’s purpose is to multiply and increase its scope wherever it can. The population of individual species are maintained and controlled by a combination of mainly cooperative and competitive interactions. Competition is wasteful and destructive; therefore, it’s avoided and is an indirect motivation for the multitude of species and the wide range that life covers. It’s what has enable life to be always in a process of changing to a balanced state for an average best condition for itself. Life therefore ventures in all direction to find a foothold.

The appearance of an upright postured ape with hands that could then carry and do things necessitated and supported an expanding brain that could usefully use hands that gradually moved its thump to oppose its fingers. Brain size always follows the ability to manipulate otherwise it’s a waste of energy. That chance coincidence of an animal that had hands like apes and gradually stood upright to walk took a few million years to evolve into modern people. It gave us an unchallengeable advantage over other life, a feat never attained before. Nevertheless, hunter-gatherers in the main manage to control their reproduction to be in balance with their local resources.

So we kept on populating by spreading all over the planet, which coincided with global warming, that ended the ice age, however, people weren’t responsible for that warming. The change in the climate raised the oceans by a global sea level of more than 120 metres, drowning land, as the vast ice sheets of the last Ice Age melted back. This melt-back lasted from about 19,000 to about 6,000 years ago, meaning that the average rate of sea-level rise was roughly 1 metre per century. It’s hard to imagine the turmoil that loss of land created, it left very few options but to grow one’s food if they were on fertile land that had enough rain or other water source.

Agriculture led to private property and the domination of nature

Agriculture introduced the separation of people from other life, which gave us this exceptionalism ideology to justify the exploitation of other life forms and ourselves. But its private property that agriculture gave us that changed the way we think and interact within ourselves, other life, and the physical world. For the first time in human history food, artefact, and people could be stolen as they are now private property and depending on the resources of the area those stolen people became the slave of agricultural societies. It produced statuses, hierarchy, and organised thievery of land, produce, and people that we maintained to this day in a variety of forms.

The competition for property, which includes land, people, and anything, that’s regarded of value, is a strong motivator for an insatiable need for even more stuff and people. That growth in produce and people needed specialisation that’s slaves to do the hack work, tradesman, oversees, and so on the ladder of domination. Life in cities is the outcome, which we call civilisation.

The glory of civilisation

Civilisation’s purpose and therefore its makeup are to facilitate the fewest number of individuals to control the largest number of people to extract the maximum wealth from the riches resource on the vastest area of land. How that’s accomplished depend on the location, the level of technology achieved, and the history of that society, its ecology, and the climate that it functions in. The result since the use of fossil fuels is reaching catastrophic proportions.

There’s more than enough evidence of the impossible life our young ones will face due to the unwillingness, mainly from journalist, the highly educated, the economist, and warriors to face up to the falsehoods that established civilisation. Also the pretence that democratic governments represent its people when the information they get is to maintain a system that uses people to take far more from nature than it gives to nature until its completely drained. Worst still, it’s an economy that not only must grow its population and commerce infinitely, but it’s our master. The economy demands more people and trade.

The available information on the state of our planet is overwhelmingly depressing. Yet we don’t show the concern for today’s young’s future when they will be living on a much degraded planet because of our need to satisfy the system of economics and population growth. Billionaires and their lackeys have deceived themselves in thinking that they would be immune, as it would only be that multitude of losers that would perish. Even the most concerned atmospheric scientist can only think within the civilised capitalist system, it’s our culture we know no other, but it’s our culture of more, that is destroying our planet- the life of present children’s future.

How we overcame famines by sacrificing future life

England spearheaded the energy from fossil fuel, which led to overpopulate Europe that produced the mass migration. The steam engine, particularly James Watt’s engine took England off its complete dependence on solar energy from plants and those plants to feed animals including less fortunate people, also wind, and water power as they have a large component of solar energy. A little later with George Stevenson’s locomotive, which made travel a possibility for every one and it brought goods where it was needed. This should have equalised life and increased economic security, but under that civilised economic system it expanded the disparity in wealth and health. But worst still instead of giving a better and easier life the extra energy was used to increase the population and help the powerful to conquer the world.

The use of coal to heat water to produce a variation in the pressure of the steam to that of the atmosphere to do work was the major instigator in establishing the basic of science, which’s thermodynamics. The adherence to it, when convenient within a capitalist economy, has produced our modern world of science, which enabled that economy to grossly overpopulate nations.

We mustn’t take more from nature than it can sustain, but within that limit we can have a very large population with a small foot print from individuals or fewer people with a larger footprint. There is a limit to how large societies’ footprint can be and a limit to the fewest people we can have for a sustainable life. The obvious safest size population to have on the planet would be the one to ensure the best life our children can have in a sustainable manner. It could be a population of less than two billion people, which would give us all a very comfortable sustainable and safe life. That, sustainable way of life, can’t be attained in our civilised capitalist world no matter how much we revere civilisation, it on the other hand, is bringing life to the brink of our extinction. A system that’s geared to grow can’t reduce our population, or our consumption and we are wasting valuable time expecting any progress in that line. We don’t have any other choice but to abandon that socioeconomic system if our children are to survive.

To survive, we must unlock our social genetic makeup

To reduce to that sort of population and with a comparative tiny economy, we would need a very different socioeconomic way of life to be able to cope with such drastic measures and give us all a better life. The social life that our hunter-gatherers forebear had is a good model of socialness of the highest order, but only seen last century in a few harsh areas where competition was unknown. They lived in very social groups of cooperative people of a population that their environment could easily sustain safely. The security attained in those societies, especially for children, is impossible for civilised people to imagine. Children like adults would belong to the group, who are all responsible for each other, when able. That meant a child would have multiple mothers and siblings of older and younger age helping each other. Our biggest obstacle to that life is our mind set, not the numbers of people or our technical reliance.

We need a way of life that can give a satisfying live to everyone at the same time as we have a reduction in population and consumption per capita. Doing that would make life easier, as there would be more houses without building more, we would have more choice of where to live and grow our food in the best areas.

The joy of children is not diminished by sharing them, but any stress of nurturing children is reduced by sharing that responsibility. Also, all children would grow up in fair societies because they would all have the same multiple mothers and fathers and would experience the same age position as they grew up. Loneliness for young and old could then be a thing of the past. But this set up can’t function well in an alien milieu of capitalism; nevertheless, it’s our original way of life that our hunter-gatherers live for million years. Our gens are still oriented for social living it’s our way of life the contradiction is adopting private property as our master.

Economic competitiveness of wealth is very different to competitive tennis, as winning a game doesn’t place that player in a stronger position for the next game. Competition for wealth is extremely unfair and dishonest as winning the first round increases the winner’s position for the second go. It’s more like martial arts where a severe blow to one participant makes the contest unequal; it’s like the competitive economy. The game is to annihilate opponents. Striving for equal opportunity in a competitive based economy is divisive, unfair and dishonest. As chance and location can give an advantage that can easily grow and those who have gained that advantage can’t see the need to share fairly. So they will not relinquish their privilege to attain fairness in society. On the other hand, by increasing the awareness of societies wealthiest to the disaster they are also facing, and that, their only saving strategy is to unite people in a drastic reduction in output, consumption, and babies, which will enable everyone to survive. To strive for fairness because it’s the right way to live is utopian, but we must have fairness to survive, and that can unify us all, as survival is the primary instinct for all life. Starting that journey will also give us more than survival; it will start us on the way to have an assured and satisfying life.

With a reduction in the need for private property, we would also see a lessening importance of inheritances, a major unfairness of civilisation. Without the need to compete for position and stuff we can have an increasing cooperative society that involve participation instead of compulsion in a world where life is safe and secure - to venture- able to take challenges.

This piece follows my previous one “Value Our Children, Instead Of Money” .htm as it deals with our genetic makeup of a highly social and adaptable people. So that the less important money-private property is the less dishonesty we will have because we will be able to see that there’s little advantage being dishonest, even for sociopathy.

Lionel Anet is a member of Sydney U3A University of the Third Age, of 20 years standing and now a life member