Why humanity is fucked

[P3nT4gR4m]

Someone finally managed to sum up how I feel about our great race of retarded apes human civilisation, a lot more eloquently than I ever could. Admittedly pointing and laughing my ass off probably doesn't count as a serious attempt to state my position but, fuck it, that's my position anyway.

We're Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we're not doing that.

If we fail in this great experiment, this experiment of apes becoming intelligent enough to take charge of their own destiny, nature will shrug and say it was fun for a while to let the apes run the laboratory, but in the end it was a bad idea

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_myth_of_human_progress_20130113//

[AFK]

As far as I'm concerned, as a species, that destiny is signed, sealed, and delivered.  Our proliferation is solely linked to our birth rate.  Within our life spans, it can be easy to be deluded into thinking we are progressing as a species, simply because we've managed to tack on a few years to our life span.  But then, you have to consider that those bonus years tend to be rife with cancers and other ailments.


We've always been a "here and now" species, like every other warm and cold blooded beast that has lived on this rock,  We think we transcend because our tools are made of plastic and metal instead of rock and wood. 


Yes, in the end Earth will consume us without batting an eye when it is time, and we don't have the wherewithal to avert that fate.

[Sano]

It would be easier to list the reasons why we wouldn't be fucked because the list is empty.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It would be easier to list the reasons why we wouldn't be fucked because the list is empty.

Balls.  Utter rubbish.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

There are those who theorize that rejecting "civilization" is actually the most civilized thing human beings can do for their long-term survival as a species.

There are certain benefits of civilization that I would be reluctant to leave behind, like vaccines and hospitals, but then again, I am also aware that for the most part they are designed to treat symptoms of civilization, like epidemics and cancer.

[P3nT4gR4m]

There are those who theorize that rejecting "civilization" is actually the most civilized thing human beings can do for their long-term survival as a species.

There are certain benefits of civilization that I would be reluctant to leave behind, like vaccines and hospitals, but then again, I am also aware that for the most part they are designed to treat symptoms of civilization, like epidemics and cancer.

I'm with ya 100% It's totally catch-22. Vaccines and hospitals save our lives. At the same time they are destroying our immune systems. I love the trappings of civilisation as much as the next guy but part of those trappings are a petrochemical addiction that's destroying the planet we live in, almost as fast as it's poisoning us directly and rendering us incapable of actually living as a basic animal, due to the fact that hardly any of us are possessed of rudimentary survival skills.

This last is ultra-ironic considering that fact that it looks a pretty surefire bet that our economic capitalist democratic pie in the sky utopia is going to come crashing down around us pretty soon and a return to hunter-gatherer lifestyle the only viable alternative after the interim cannibal apocalypse runs its course.

It's kinda depressing, if only because, to me, the solution is as simple as it is impossible for billions who seem to be something other than me. Maybe that's an illusion. Maybe most of humanity is like me and it's a minority who are perpetuating the self destructive insanity but I find that hard to believe.

I refuse to get depressed about it. Part of dealing with clinical depression is to not get upset over things you can't change and I'm fucked if I can think of a way to deliver a simple message to a race of creatures who can't seem to work that simple message out for themselves. So depression is out and laughing at them wiping themselves out as a species is in, along with trying to avoid that same fate for myself as long as I can.

I don't reject civilisation but I'm trying my best not to become too attached.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

There are those who theorize that rejecting "civilization" is actually the most civilized thing human beings can do for their long-term survival as a species.

There are certain benefits of civilization that I would be reluctant to leave behind, like vaccines and hospitals, but then again, I am also aware that for the most part they are designed to treat symptoms of civilization, like epidemics and cancer.

Primitive societies select for intelligence, urban societies select for disease resistance.

Thing is, we're a tool-using species.  Technology got us into this mess, it will have to get us out...And it has, to some degree.  Compare air pollution today, for example, with pre-Nixon era levels.  Or, hell, with the days of coal burning.  Hunter's Point in New York was so poisonous at the turn of the last century that people would get off the train there and just drop dead.

Pollution control technology works, it just has to be enforced. 

On the other hand, going back to the woods is impossible on account of two things:

1.  The woods aren't there, and

2.  There's WAY too many people for that.  Primitive fuel, for example, is far more polluting and in short supply (in Central Africa, there's a constant haze from wood burning, and all their topsoil is going away).  We'd ba back to the Bhode argument, where 11/12 people have to die, so that the other 1/12 can live in primitive conditions for which they are not trained.

Civilization isn't a bad thing.  It's what we DO, and if you tore it all down, people would immediately start rebuilding it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm with ya 100% It's totally catch-22. Vaccines and hospitals save our lives. At the same time they are destroying our immune systems.

My immune system is totally compromised when it comes to small pox.  Good thing there isn't any smallpox.



TGRR,
Shots wore off long, long ago.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

"Rejecting civilization" would have to be a slow, centuries-long proposition, not something we could do overnight. In my ideal fantasy world that doesn't exist, we would gradually restructure society to function economically with a declining population, and we would settle out at maybe a billion people, living low-impact lives that are a combination of pastoral and technological. High standard of living for everyone.

Probably not going to happen. Probably, what's going to happen is environmental catastrophe, mass die-offs, massive loss of technology and knowledge, and eventually, rebuilding. Maybe they'll get it right next time.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm with ya 100% It's totally catch-22. Vaccines and hospitals save our lives. At the same time they are destroying our immune systems.

My immune system is totally compromised when it comes to small pox.  Good thing there isn't any smallpox.



TGRR,
Shots wore off long, long ago.

They're not destroying our immune systems, they're breeding grounds for super-strong bacteria, just as high-density, high-population centers are breeding grounds for epidemics.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

"Rejecting civilization" would have to be a slow, centuries-long proposition, not something we could do overnight. In my ideal fantasy world that doesn't exist, we would gradually restructure society to function economically with a declining population, and we would settle out at maybe a billion people, living low-impact lives that are a combination of pastoral and technological. High standard of living for everyone.

Probably not going to happen. Probably, what's going to happen is environmental catastrophe, mass die-offs, massive loss of technology and knowledge, and eventually, rebuilding. Maybe they'll get it right next time.

The way I understand it, the sustainable carrying capacity of our planet is 2 billion humans.

We'll get there one way or another.  "Another" is pretty grim, though.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm with ya 100% It's totally catch-22. Vaccines and hospitals save our lives. At the same time they are destroying our immune systems.

My immune system is totally compromised when it comes to small pox.  Good thing there isn't any smallpox.



TGRR,
Shots wore off long, long ago.

They're not destroying our immune systems, they're breeding grounds for super-strong bacteria, just as high-density, high-population centers are breeding grounds for epidemics.

I thought vaccines were for viruses. 

The problem with bacteria is over use and improper use of antibiotics (not taking the whole run, etc).  Also, those stupid anti-microbe hand soaps that "kill 99% of germs"...Meaning you get the buff fucking 1% that slap your face and call you Susan.  Regular soap washes the microbes off, it doesn't create superbugs.

[Cain]

For everyone to live as a middle class American (when such things existed) the carrying capacity is about 2 billion, yes.

If everyone only consumed enough to live on, the carrying capacity would be 40 billion.  Alternatively, if everyone lived as hunter-gatherers, the carrying capacity would be about 100 million.

There's a lot of flexibility, depending on the lifestyle one is willing to lead.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

For everyone to live as a middle class American (when such things existed) the carrying capacity is about 2 billion, yes.

If everyone only consumed enough to live on, the carrying capacity would be 40 billion.  Alternatively, if everyone lived as hunter-gatherers, the carrying capacity would be about 100 million.

There's a lot of flexibility, depending on the lifestyle one is willing to lead.

40 Bn sustainably?

Even if you COULD do it, I can't imagine the misery.  A behavioral sink the size of a planet.  Ugh.

2 billion is plenty, if you can get there with population control instead of population "reduction".

[P3nT4gR4m]

For everyone to live as a middle class American (when such things existed) the carrying capacity is about 2 billion, yes.

If everyone only consumed enough to live on, the carrying capacity would be 40 billion.  Alternatively, if everyone lived as hunter-gatherers, the carrying capacity would be about 100 million.

There's a lot of flexibility, depending on the lifestyle one is willing to lead.

40 Bn sustainably?

Even if you COULD do it, I can't imagine the misery.  A behavioral sink the size of a planet.  Ugh.

2 billion is plenty, if you can get there with population control instead of population "reduction".

Anyone taking bets?