From: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Jay:
>>Unfortunately, there are no other alternatives. Once we overshot carrying
>>capacity we were left with only two choices:
>>
>>#1. Be managed like farm animals.
>>
>>#2. Dieoff like wild animals.
>
>I do not like either/or answers, I much prefer to seek the possibilities of
>and/and answers. Given, for the sake of argument, that we have overshot
>carrying capacity, the third answer might be self management. In other
>words, when a truth becomes self obvious - which the carrying capacity
>metaphor is not to the majority of the worlds population, then change
>becomes possible - voluntary change.
"Carrying capacity" is not a metaphor any more than "people are animals" is
a methpor. Both of these have explicit meanings and can be measured by
scientists anywhere in the world.
Of course you don't like "either/or" answers. 99.9999999% of the people
don't like "either/or" answers because humans evolved into metaphysicians --
not scientists.
The global economy will simply clank along devouring our collective
life-support system until it finally self-destructs. At that point,
humanity will either reorganize politically and economically into some sort
of sustainable system (perhaps like Hubbert's proposal
http://dieoff.com/page149.htm) or descend into "chaos and cannibalism"
reminiscent of the Easter Island experience
http://dieoff.com/page145.htm ]. As Buckminster Fuller said, it will be
our "final exam".
"We humans no longer rely on the muscle of fight, the speed of flight, or
the protective mask of shape and coloring for survival. We have come to
depend on intelligence for life. This is a fateful gamble. It has put at
stake our collective survival, and that of the whole biosphere.
"About five million years ago, the evolutionary line that led to modern
humans diverged from African apes, the common ancestors of humans,
chimpanzees, and gorillas. Apes are knuckle-walking quadrupeds; Homo is an
erect biped. Apes have large jaws and they have small brains (in the range
of 300-600 cubic centimeters). Homo has a small jaw, and a fourfold brain
size in the range of 1400-1600 cc. Most apes are adapted to life in the
trees; Homo is suited to life on the ground. It is this adaptability to
terrestrial life that proved to be the decisive factor in the evolution of
intelligence. Why some bands of pre-hominids left the trees is still
somewhat mysterious (some anthropologists maintain that they were pushed
from the forest into the savannah by physically more developed arboreal
primates), but once they left the trees their destiny was sealed: they were
condemned to a form of intelligence -- or to extinction. The question we now
face is whether the kind of intelligence that evolved is sufficient for
survival into the twenty-first century. Humanity, as Buckminster Fuller
said, is facing its final exam. It is an exam of intelligence: the
collective IQ test of the species." -- Ervin Laszlo
Only the scientists can save us now. But I believe our future is written
in our past -- written in our genes. I expect "chaos and cannibalism".
How could it be otherwise?
Jay -- www.dieoff.com
