"Man seeks knowledge like the lemming seeks the ocean, instinct provoking self-destruction."
Does over-population invoke in man a greater level of instinctive self-destructive tendencies?
Yes, I realize that lemmings don't commit suicide en masse. The population fluctuation of lemmings is actually equally interesting as the fact that lemmings will accidentally run off cliffs or inadvertantly swim to their deaths during their migratory cycles in the middle of a population explosion. But it's this "suicide" that piques my interest on this Earth day.
This seems to me to be nature's way of culling the herd sans predators. As their population spikes they consume more of their resources, they crowd out habitable areas and the more innate the instinct for the animals to migrate into new areas. When new habitable areas with food sources are no more and the mass of their population is teeming, starving and frantic, some push onwards off cliffs or into bodies of water to their deaths.
Is certain behavior density dependent? It seems to me common sense that the more dense the population, no matter what the creature, that extremes of instinctive behavior will become more common. Especially as the increasing density of the population stresses and depletes the resources for said creature. These extremes will result in a culling of the herd in most cases.
With humans and our current population explosion, technology could be said to broken through our natural barriers to extreme density of population. Disease, starvation, and natural disasters no longer affect the human population with as much of a culling effect as they have centuries before. Our only natural predator is ourselves. It seems to be it could be said that the earth's ecological salvation may depend on human's ability to cull our own herd - ourselves.
Humankind's ability to adapt makes the un-checked population explosion of our species a most resilient plague upon our host-planet. Have our wars served to aid the planet by eradicating large swaths of humans periodically? Are human (and all other populations for that matter) destined to follow elliot wave-like patterns of growth and decline?
And If this is indeed the pattern that provides for an orderly balance of ecology- What happens when humans crash gluttonously through the pattern, crowding out all other life with just more and more of US? Is it pure selfishness to desire to end plague, death, and war? By saving more and more of ourselves are we dooming ourselves and the entire ecosystem in the end?
Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day, stated:
"Forging and maintaining a sustainable society is the critical challenge for this and all generations to come. In responding to that challenge, population will be the critical factor in determining whether or not we succeed in forging such a society."
And Garrett Hardin, in 196,8 had this to say in Tragedy of the Commons:
"The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.
The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity" -- and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons."
UPDATE: Cheyenne has a related Earth Day post- Check out the Plant-viewpoint vid too.
UPDATE 2: Dcap does the Math
Related subjects:
Ecology
Sustainable Population
Population and Environment
Tragedy of the Commons
Patterns within waves
Does over-population invoke in man a greater level of instinctive self-destructive tendencies?
Yes, I realize that lemmings don't commit suicide en masse. The population fluctuation of lemmings is actually equally interesting as the fact that lemmings will accidentally run off cliffs or inadvertantly swim to their deaths during their migratory cycles in the middle of a population explosion. But it's this "suicide" that piques my interest on this Earth day.
This seems to me to be nature's way of culling the herd sans predators. As their population spikes they consume more of their resources, they crowd out habitable areas and the more innate the instinct for the animals to migrate into new areas. When new habitable areas with food sources are no more and the mass of their population is teeming, starving and frantic, some push onwards off cliffs or into bodies of water to their deaths.
Is certain behavior density dependent? It seems to me common sense that the more dense the population, no matter what the creature, that extremes of instinctive behavior will become more common. Especially as the increasing density of the population stresses and depletes the resources for said creature. These extremes will result in a culling of the herd in most cases.
With humans and our current population explosion, technology could be said to broken through our natural barriers to extreme density of population. Disease, starvation, and natural disasters no longer affect the human population with as much of a culling effect as they have centuries before. Our only natural predator is ourselves. It seems to be it could be said that the earth's ecological salvation may depend on human's ability to cull our own herd - ourselves.
Humankind's ability to adapt makes the un-checked population explosion of our species a most resilient plague upon our host-planet. Have our wars served to aid the planet by eradicating large swaths of humans periodically? Are human (and all other populations for that matter) destined to follow elliot wave-like patterns of growth and decline?
And If this is indeed the pattern that provides for an orderly balance of ecology- What happens when humans crash gluttonously through the pattern, crowding out all other life with just more and more of US? Is it pure selfishness to desire to end plague, death, and war? By saving more and more of ourselves are we dooming ourselves and the entire ecosystem in the end?
Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day, stated:
"Forging and maintaining a sustainable society is the critical challenge for this and all generations to come. In responding to that challenge, population will be the critical factor in determining whether or not we succeed in forging such a society."
And Garrett Hardin, in 196,8 had this to say in Tragedy of the Commons:
"The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.
The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity" -- and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons."
UPDATE: Cheyenne has a related Earth Day post- Check out the Plant-viewpoint vid too.
UPDATE 2: Dcap does the Math
Related subjects:
Ecology
Sustainable Population
Population and Environment
Tragedy of the Commons
Patterns within waves
