Meteor Blades just made a comment in reply to one of my genocidal maniac comments about the real problem in the world being too many people.
He said he agreed that a billion people would make for a much better world, but that he was trying to avoid the premature death of the billions that are already born.
That's an interesting concept. Suppose we really could lower the birth rate to below replacement? What effects would it have on world economies, balance of political power, pollution, global warming? What vast changes would there be in religion, politics, psychology, family structure?
OR
We could just keep breeding and breeding and you know, deep in your mind, where it's kept in a little compartment like Pandora's box, that politics would continue to be the status tool of small minded men, and kids would continue to be born into a world that has no room for them, and the children of the rich would continue to be schizophrenic and unsocializable.
I've expanded my ambit, you see. I'm not going to talk about religious wars, and who they would kill. That would be genocidal, and I've changed my ways.
I'm going to talk, I guess, about the ecological overview that sees the human species as just another information-gathering replicator gone bad, cancerously destroying its host planet, madly oscillating between overpopulation and almost-extinction, because we evolved a brain made up of conflicting modules that can't, apparently, be made to work together, can't stop being tribal. Maybe going tribal is the new going postal. Yeah, that's it.
Yes, I believe the human race won't die out. I think it will crash, and badly, and Meteor Blades will be unhappy about it. So will my human family, but apparently there is nothing to be done about it.
So drive your car, eat your food, watch TV, enjoy what little time you have left. That's the realistic view. Life is short. Eat dessert first. There are no lifeboats to leave Planet Earth, and the fires can't be put out. Find a cool corner to sing in.
See ya.