Is self-destructive behaviour a natural response to the need for a cull of humans?

[discokermit]

maybe some people confuse overcrowding with overpopulation. far less people lived in britain hundreds of years ago but if you lived in the st giles rookery i expect your material conditions could affect you mentally in many ways and cause behaviour destructive to the self and others.

 

[discokermit]

No.
The basic biological imperative of any animal is to survive.

and thats why a rabbit will eat its own young in a rabbit hutch?

 

[discokermit]

Behavioral sink - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[tim]

and thats why a rabbit will eat its own young in a rabbit hutch?

We are not rabbits and we don't live in hutches. We are rather more adept at adapting the environment to our advantage than bunnies are. That's why we put them in hutches and do cruel experiments, which have no relevance to the way we behave, on them.

 

[8ball]

Yes, but with what consequences for biodiversity, climate change and other environmental impacts? I'm not arguing for any kind of cull of my fellow humans (with a few exceptions messrs Cummings and Johnson ) but it's not being pessimistic to see that population size has an impact which is difficult to circumvent. If our global population were now 500 million, for example, climate change would not be such a problem and would be easier to deal with. If it were 20 billion the difficulty would be insuperable without some catastrophe.

Not going to argue with your selective culling preferences in this case. Yes, there would be a considerable environmental impact to feeding people to get us past this bottleneck, but there are a lot of ideas out there. I see the issue as more social and political.

 

[discokermit]

We are not rabbits and we don't live in hutches. We are rather more adept at adapting the environment to our advantage than bunnies are. That's why we put them in hutches and do cruel experiments, which have no relevance to the way we behave, on them.

yes, we all choose suitable abodes in places we want to live. everyone in every overcrowded slum in the world is there by choice, will adapt well and live mentally and physically healthy lives and thrive.

 

[NoXion]

and thats why a rabbit will eat its own young in a rabbit hutch?

Yes. For rabbits, offspring are much more replaceable than they are for humans, who put extraordinary amounts of time and energy into raising their offspring, far more than rabbits do. An adult rabbit can always have another litter of kits. But if the mother rabbit dies in a stressful situation, then it's much more likely that the litter will just end up dying of malnutrition and/or get eaten by predators. It might not seem that way to us humans, since we are perhaps one of most heavily K-strategy oriented species on the planet, but maternal cannibalism under stress evolved as a survival mechanism, the success of which is evidenced by the abundance of rabbits in the world.

 

[tim]

yes, we all choose suitable abodes in places we want to live. everyone in every overcrowded slum in the world is there by choice, will adapt well and live mentally and physically healthy lives and thrive.

Poor and oppressed people struggle to make their lives better. However shit their environment they seek to make it as habitable as possible and try to make the lives of their children better than theirs.; and they go out and fight for better conditions and a better life.

What they don't do is repine and wait for their passively for their demise.

 

[discokermit]

Poor and oppressed people struggle to make their lives better. However shit their environment they seek to make it as habitable as possible and try to make the lives of their children better than theirs.; and they go out and fight for better conditions and a better life.

What they don't do is repine and wait for their passively for their demise.

proof?
nobody jumped off ships or ran into the sea to escape slavery. nobody smothered their own children to save them from the savagery of other humans. people have never used infanticide as a birth control method. just doesnt happen. people adapt. make the best of it.
thats why it is impossible to overcrowd prisons. they love it, eventually. same goes for ghettos, people adapt and are stronger for it. all of them. all the time. fucking heaving great lol.

 

[weltweit]

When I have flown into Heathrow or Gatwick in the daytime and had a view out of a window, the thought that strikes me is just how many humans there are down there, every tiny plot of land is fenced or hedged off, there is no open and common land, everything however small is owned and defended by someone or other. In short there are way way too many people in the SE!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

When I have flown into Heathrow or Gatwick in the daytime and had a view out of a window, the thought that strikes me is just how many humans there are down there, every tiny plot of land is fenced or hedged off, there is no open and common land, everything however small is owned and defended by someone or other. In short there are way way too many people in the SE!

How many people should there be?

Which ones should leave, and where should they go?

 

[weltweit]

Which ones should leave, and where should they go?

The cities will continue to get bigger, the pressure on the land greater. Might there be an optimum population?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The cities will continue to get bigger, the pressure on the land greater. Might there be an optimum population?

If you want optimal sustainability for large numbers of people, most of those people need to live in cities. If you want to live in an eco-home, you can do a lot worse than a flat in a large block in a city.

 

[weltweit]

If you want optimal sustainability for large numbers of people, most of those people need to live in cities. If you want to live in an eco-home, you can do a lot worse than a flat in a large block in a city.

I would rather live in the country, it is where I grew up.

In areas with unproductive land the draw of the cities has left many settlements derelict and abandoned. I wouldn't mind a nice house in the country in one of those areas. Not so common in the UK but plentiful and cheap in France and Spain.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I would rather live in the country, it is where I grew up.

In areas with unproductive land the draw of the cities has left many settlements derelict and abandoned. I wouldn't mind a nice house in the country in one of those areas. Not so common in the UK but plentiful and cheap in France and Spain.

Ok. I'm not telling you not to. But that makes your footprint on the world bigger than it would be if you lived in a city.

 

[weltweit]

Ok. I'm not telling you not to. But that makes your footprint on the world bigger than it would be if you lived in a city.

Possibly, but it would be making use of a derelict property which should count for something.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Possibly, but it would be making use of a derelict property which should count for something.

Presumably you'll want to have running water, electricity, gas, post delivered, internet, phone coverage, to be able to get to other places by a form of motorised transport along well-maintainted roads. All of these things are more efficiently provided in cities.

Running off to the countryside to live an idyllic, eco-friendly lifestyle is mostly a myth.

Like I say, I'm not telling you what to do or how to live, but you were the one musing that there may be too many people, not me.

 

[tim]

When I have flown into Heathrow or Gatwick in the daytime and had a view out of a window, the thought that strikes me is just how many humans there are down there, every tiny plot of land is fenced or hedged off, there is no open and common land, everything however small is owned and defended by someone or other. In short there are way way too many people in the SE!

Well bugger off and live somewhere else, then. I'm quite happy here and so are millions of others.

As to the fencing and hedges that's hardly new, most of that land has been farmed, obviously less efficiently than it is today, for millennia, even though the population density would have been far lower. We have extensive records going back at least as far as the Doomsday book of 1086 reflecting how important our ancestors took ownership and control of the land. There was more "common land "before the enclosures, but that was still farmed by the communities to which it belonged. It, however, might from a distance appealed to your atavistic fantasies.

It is also worth remembering that many of the places thought of as being natural wildernesses are just as much the product of human action often by landowners and higher authorities deliberately depopulating areas. Examples of this include the wide-scale Highland Clearances in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Scotland, or the eviction of local communities to create the game parks of Africa.

I can't think that there are many places in the world, even the most sparsely populated, where potentially productive land is not divided in some way

The History of Common Land and Village Greens | Commons and Greens

 

[weltweit]

Presumably you'll want to have running water, electricity, gas, post delivered, internet, phone coverage, to be able to get to other places by a form of motorised transport along well-maintainted roads. All of these things are more efficiently provided in cities.

I would be ok in an existing village where services shouldn't be an issue. I live in a village at the moment.

Running off to the countryside to live an idyllic, eco-friendly lifestyle is mostly a myth.

Like I say, I'm not telling you what to do or how to live, but you were the one musing that there may be too many people, not me.

I do think there is probably an optimum population. In the UK we don't have many wild places anymore, the land has been agriculturalised. Consequently we don't have enough forests to cope with our own CO2 output, that might point to an optimum.

I saw a couple of photos recently of a farm someone had taken on, the first photo was from 2001 when they first moved in, dry treeless land. They began planting trees and the second picture was 2020 after all that time planting trees. It was transformed, they are now in a forest and apparently wild animals had also returned.

All that is a bit hippy, but we are quick to condemn the cutting down of the Amazon, rightly, what about planting some new forests here also, to prove that we walk the walk.

 

[quimcunx]

If someone believes that overpopulation is an issue, how does it affect their thinking? They might react by reducing their own emissions. Are there additional effects on their psyche? Do they question their own self-worth more? Or brood about the meaning of life? Or just fume about Jacob Rees-Mogg?

I think technicians and scientific types do less brooding and don't suffer from much self-doubt. The models tell them that the human population will peak at 10 billion and level off. As infant mortality declines, so does the instinct to have a large family. So all we need to do is organise ourselves to feed 10 billion. Which is definitely doable. So let's get on and make it happen. But if you're not one of the people engaged in making it happen, I think you tend to brood more. Poets vs physicists.

Then you add in the 2020 effect, one depressing disaster after another, more and more hardship, everything going backwards. The hardship will breed desperation. Dangerous. The doomsday clock was moved forward in January. Given all the crap since then, how much will it move next January?

Doesn't all this make you feel hopeless and worthless?

But the people having the most children are not the people using the most resources. Our destructive behaviour in the global north is destroying habitats in the global south where the climate crisis will be felt sooner and more keenly than here. All those fast fashion factories and palm oil monocultures rare metal mines are to serve us but are destructive to others. So if we head down that slippery slope mentioned above its Europeans and north americans we need to cull, the populations we cant sustain.

 

[tim]

I would be ok in an existing village where services shouldn't be an issue. I live in a village at the moment.




I do think there is probably an optimum population. In the UK we don't have many wild places anymore, the land has been agriculturalised. Consequently we don't have enough forests to cope with our own CO2 output, that might point to an optimum.

I saw a couple of photos recently of a farm someone had taken on, the first photo was from 2001 when they first moved in, dry treeless land. They began planting trees and the second picture was 2020 after all that time planting trees. It was transformed, they are now in a forest and apparently wild animals had also returned.

All that is a bit hippy, but we are quick to condemn the cutting down of the Amazon, rightly, what about planting some new forests here also, to prove that we walk the walk.

about 13% of Britain is wooded, compared with 5% a century ago. As I intimated before "wild places" are invariably as artificial as non-wild places created to satisfy the romantic fantasies of the rich and are often as ruthlessly monetised as any other bit of land.

Here are some statistics of British agriculture and land use between 1875 and the present, which show that we actively farm marginally less land than we did a few decades ago

file:///home/chronos/u-d3ccce62b6cf3abccd9154bd3ff7d8e7d48b50d3/MyFiles/Downloads/SN03339.pdf

 

[weltweit]

about 13% of Britain is wooded, compared with 5% a century ago. As I intimated before "wild places" are invariably as artificial as non-wild places created to satisfy the romantic fantasies of the rich and are often as ruthlessly monetised as any other bit of land.

What would be your ideal global human population, 10 billion, 50, 100 billion? Surely there must be some natural limit of some kind? We know existing populations running current technologies are causing global warming. It isn't definite we can rectify this at current population levels.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

What would be your ideal global human population, 10 billion, 50, 100 billion? Surely there must be some natural limit of some kind? We know existing populations running current technologies are causing global warming. It isn't definite we can rectify this at current population levels.

Projections vary, depending on their assumptions. This one projects a peak of just under 10 billion, from 7.8 billion now. Generally, projections have come down over the last few years. Much will depend on how birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa go, which in turn depends on how the region develops. This article makes the same mistake that many articles on this issue make, though. It fails to acknowledge that sub-Saharan Africa is not the region placing the planet under critical strain. I'm also sceptical about how much, for instance, Nigeria will rise. Birth rates in urban areas can fall off a cliff from one generation to another, so Nigeria's peak could well be a lot less than that.

Either way, that's where we're at. Your ideal population is really neither here nor there.

 

[tim]

What would be your ideal global human population, 10 billion, 50, 100 billion? Surely there must be some natural limit of some kind? We know existing populations running current technologies are causing global warming. It isn't definite we can rectify this at current population levels.

World population growth is slowing and seems likely to level out and world population predicted to peak this century, so I see no need to speculate into the tens of billions. As to technology, it is a solution as much as a problem. We are clearly rapidly moving away from the use of fossil fuels towards renewables. Carbon capture technologies need to be further developed to deal with ongoing CO2 emissions and more investnent needs to go into Direct Air Capture.

 

[ManchesterBeth]

not just a global north vs south divide though is it? has a lot to do with the hinterlands of modern industrial production.

Abolish the antagonism between town and countryside.

 

[ManchesterBeth]

it is easy to age with liberalism where only the metropolitan high output cores matter to the functioning of the economy and the criticisms that follow from it.

Sort it out lads.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

The phrase “the need for a cull of humans” terrifies me.

 

[Doodler]

When I have flown into Heathrow or Gatwick in the daytime and had a view out of a window, the thought that strikes me is just how many humans there are down there, every tiny plot of land is fenced or hedged off, there is no open and common land, everything however small is owned and defended by someone or other. In short there are way way too many people in the SE!

SE England certainly strikes me as pretty crowded and busy compared to the rest of the country. There's no respite from traffic noise, light pollution at night is pervasive and so on.

'Overcrowded' is partly a matter of opinion. It's not the same as being able to define the safe maximum load of a crane, beyond which it will fail catastrophically. There don't seem to be coherent or realistic arguments for reducing SE England's population by getting people to move elsewhere but neither are there persuasive ones for increasing it significantly. Better to stabilise and improve what's there imo - plenty of issues regarding transport, waste disposal, habitat protection, water use etc to be getting on with.

 

[Hearse Pileup]

I think most importantly we need to solve the problem of monoculture and infertility in our soils. Unfortunately this is kind of counter to the demands of capital because capitalism requires predictable output, and biodiversity has an element of chaos to it by design. Overpopulated or not we'll need to fix this if we want to make it past the next 60 years with soil that we can grow food in. Other questions about waste management etc. also feed into this too. If growing food was more distributed and composting was more common there could be a distinct decrease in landfill.

Cities are kind of unhealthy by design - I say this as someone who was born and raised in SE London. The size of the city used to be limited by the distance you could walk livestock in from the country side. The commodification of city lifestyle creates a disconnect in the supply chain; you're given the impression of this cornucopia of products to choose from without a thought of where it came from.

There was a good Kurzgesagt video about how 'overpopulation' is a result of increase of quality of life, but which tapers off after a short while. In short; if your infant mortality rate is high you have more kids. If the mortality rate drops, you end up with a period of increase, followed bu a decrease in the birth rate as the need for families to have more children drops.

 

[Doodler]

In consumption terms humans need to mimic insular dwarfism, the evolutionary process among large mammals which find themselves stranded in small environments, typically islands.

(Cretan mammoths are extinct so you can't have one for Xmas.)