In any case, there has been a good deal written about Palestinian populations vs Israeli. Population size in areas has been a means of strenthening ones presence in an area. Population has been a factor in domination of lands and resources for milleniums.

But again, the role of population globally is an environmental issue. It should not be, in my opinion, dismissed as an elitist means of control if we are to deal with the problem as a problem.

The reasons why collapse happens is because of the ways a group or society perceives the problem vis a vis their political view, their economic view, etc. While these may serve a parochial, short-term purpose, it has been known to collapse and end the entire civilization because the reaction impeded survival.

As you know, speculation/prediction/prophecy is based on factors such as history, media influence, personal experience, belief systems among others. Regardless, that which we focus on is also that which receives our energy. Provided a prediction correlates with gloom and doom, I believe it’s advantageous for one to maintain reservation. If, however, we desire to experience the inherently positive reality of an intelligent being’s unlimited potential, maybe someday or even sooner than we think, that may be worth adhering to.

Mankind has appeared to be governed by psychotic behavior for at least the past 12 millennia, especially recently as industrial petro man which I believe you already have countless examples of in your knowledgeable head. But there are exceptions, and exceptions can progress into standards by which to exist. Eating herbs, not using deodorant, washing your clothes in a bucket after wearing them for a month, are all exceptional examples and personally evolutionary from an environmental/philosophical perspective, not de-evolutionary as our society has intentionally created us.

While we can’t choose or change the societal setting into which we are born, as far as we know, my gut tells me that as we (Little Brother according to the Kogi — Elder Brothers of Santa Marta Sierra Nevada) continue our ascent on this exponential slope of life, we will soon be reaching a breaking point that may provide humanity (whatever’s left of it) with the opportunity to relearn the art of living a sustainable and peaceful existence that most would call Utopian. Call it what one wants, but the truth remains that life is a complete mystery and none of us can say what will come tomorrow…perhaps the chance to get things right by implementing what we’ve learned.

Who knows? I may have completely missed the mark by saying that.

Best to you.

and having done that (hopefully all of us) we decide what is desirable
and what isn’t.
what is desirable to me? belief in a god but not speaking for it/him/her is obvioulsy OK.
the fact that we swim in one genetic pool and thus have no say what one gets when one is born, shld finally and for all time be recognized.
or to say, I yam what i yam. nature made me and i’m not gonna argue with it.
that we live/swim in many pools, that’s the pits. this causes an endless number of injustices.
so, for me, i fervently hope global warming destroys humanity.
and barring any absoluteness, including innocence, we all bear responsibility [tho in various degrees] for institunalization of such enormous psychosis.

there may be only one way out: get rid of the pshicotic behavior. but are we incurable? well, i make no prediction. thnx
thnx

the issue at hand of collapse and/or disappearance of peoples is most relevant to the dilemmas which we as a species are facing today. Aside from that though is the topic of language disappearance, and with that its cultural facets and identities — a diminishing of our species’ cultural diversity, dwindling in accordance with the rate of crumbling environmental diversity…falling more or less hand in hand.

With the loss of languages; e.g. Inuit, other American tribes, African tribes, etcetera, we as a species are losing our own sense of collective history, and the qualities that make our species unique.

In short, it’s not only the destruction of the environment or cultural groups, but also of the languages that allow one to identify a particular group. Either way, diversity on all levels is suffering at the hands of what could be considered to be inconsequential perspectives and attitudes so ever-present in our sick and dysfunctional capitalist system that sets out to put the desires of you and me over our neighbors.

Best to you both.

Still it is an understandable reaction by Palestinians.

While I agree with your assessment and the need to control birth rates, I am not perplexed. Why? Because all issues once politicized taken on a life of their own. There is an issue of power – who controls who gets born? Will there be a racist attempt to reduce the population of one tribe over another.

Take our recent history with Palestians. One of the few areas Palestinians can control – one that provides a semblance of power – is their population vis a vis that of the Israeli/Jewish population. The Palestinians seem to be taking some advantage of that – their birth rates continue to significantly rise.

It does not off-set the military and economic might of Israel, but does provide some leverage in sheer numbers. So, population control of Palestinians would (and I would agree) be seen as a racist move if say Western states made some kind of over-reaching demand – land for population or some such bargain.

But, in terms of life and the forces of nature, which are outside the human game of politics, you are right (from my perspective) that we need to look at the problem as a problem and not as one which will start with the poor and be classed based. All things can be turned against the “weak”, but that doesn’t mean we should not face the problem head on…again it’s about choices. If our concerns keep us from making the “right” choices than we will suffer the consequences. I think we should be mindful of the moral and humanistic aspects of any solution in order to temper it with the right approach to the problem.

bozh,

Just one example: In 1829, with the passing away of Shanawdithit, the Beothuk of “Newfoundland” became extinct as a people.

Let me be clear, I am making the case for the important role population growth plays in collapse. HOWEVER, I am not suggesting that it alone creates collapse. A society or civilization could (and do) collapse with relatively stable populations (i.e., no discernable growth). But what is important and cannot be denied is that a collapse can only happen when there is a population of some sort. What allows that population to continue on, avoid collapse, are a number of factors to be sure.

Human choices are key. If a locality depends on a trading partner and the trading partner becomes a threat or collapses then that can have a ripple affect on the survival of the locality’s survival. The locality has choices even then. When the last tree during the process of deforrestation is cut down, how come that choice was made (and the many before it)?

We need to look at the overall issue of population as we do any other threat to the continuation of a civilization. Today, with globalization the situation is larger than ever before in human history. The connections are enormous, with one region effecting regions thousands of miles away.

but, respectfully max, there were causes for them. and one of the causes may or may not have been the numbers of a disappeared folk.
but extremely iniquitous structures of society and which almost always cause warfare; which, to me, is a cause for a folk to go dwn to bite the dust.

and no folk may have utterly disappeared but is still with us today as slavs of bulgaria and moravia [today's hungary] prove.
descendants of assyrians are still in ME. samaritans are still around. canaanitic folks likewise.
copts of egypt are with us as well. and may be cyrcasians, akkadians, wends and sorbs (in germany).
gauls/celts, picts, tuscans, latins also either absorbed people or been absorbed like Bulgars (an asiatic people), moravians by hungarians or magyars, etc.

envy, lust, hatred, fears, stupidity, false knowledge, shamanism, cults may be also causes for one might to rise and another to fall.
in some instances, historian say, people were invited by an empire to settle in its land.

desire to migrate may be another cause for melting pots. in the balkans we’ve had tatars, avars, gauls, thracians, et al. all of them left for greener pastures.
but gauls are still in scotland, portugal, spain, france but mixed up vith visigoths, vandals, franks, burgoundians, et al.
thnx

First, the environment knows what level of human population can be sustained. We have thousands of cases of collapsed societies whereby population, after careful study, was a major contributor (it is integral and not exclusive). It’s true of all living things, not just humans. Detailed comparative and in depth society studies have given us this knowledge.

We know there are limits to growth. We know that what enables the growth is energy, and in human terms the single most potent contributor to growth is fossil. It ampliphies human existence. If, as more and more evidence is providing, the energy that allowed us to reach this huge increase in a relatively short period of time, greatly diminishes, peaks, than it is natural to conclude that a population number somewhere in the vacinity of where it was prior to the energy source that got us here is where we probably need to be (just under 2 billion, it’s not exact, but a reaonable approximation).

We have choices. As we make them, each determines an outcome. It is not some kind of pure voodoo.

once we obtain a more or much more egalitarian society, people wld think, Who needs children when better people than my children wld look after me in my old age!

we do not know apriori that we need to reduce world pop by any number or even stop its increase. we do not know how many people and animals Earth can sustain.

in a worldwide socialist-egalitarian society, people might choose to have no children or just one or two. thnx

something that I discovered about Henry George, thanks to your recommendation, while reading Progress and Poverty was his apparent simplistic insight and dissection of an otherwise complex social phenomena. Regardless of what other readers on DV perceive of his writings, I found it to be a brilliant reaction to reality.

One of the things he stated which makes the most sense, “If the forces opposed to truth were weak, why would error so long prevail?” He managed to shed light on what is otherwise an obvious fact.

Monopolistic land ownership, along with Friedman’s free-market economic theory riding on the back of the elite created and elite benefited Bretton Woods System, are some of the most exemplary examples of long prevailing error contributing greatly to the societal problems being faced today.

Thanks, and best to you.

That corruption of classical economics began in the late 19 to early 20th centuries and continued at ever excellerator rates during Reagan to the present. This hijack is called neo-classical economics which serves neoliberal trade agreements and the kind of monopolistic faux free trade Hudson discuss in the article.

Hudson and his discussion of monopolies being owned by the public is pure Henry George. The idea is not simply that land is a common which should not be privatized but that in a classical sense any business or industry which can monopolize human needs should be publicly owned.

George, to some folks chagrin, is neither a dogmatic capitalist or socialist, he is both without trying to be either. Hudson’s writings have a similar mission.