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> post-modernist, nihilistic garbage This argument predates postmodernism by two centuries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap https://en.m.wikip

by dictum 7y ago

> post-modernist, nihilistic garbage This argument predates postmodernism by two centuries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap If anything, postmodernism wouldn't acknowledge a way to classify people into "worth-living" and "not-worth-living"; if not by ethics or humanism, because it would find most or all criteria in the filters to be bullshit.

bin0 7y ago
Malthusianism more or less espouses an equilibrium - short on food, people die, more food available, people have more kids, cycle repeats. Not that all the humans need to die. There's also a great deal of difference between "I believe there may be a lack of food" (but not passing a value judgement on the situation) and "I believe people need to die" (claiming the "greater good").
- EGreg 7y ago
  I don’t think the parent you responded to meant by depopulation the TOTAL extinction of humans. It’s likely they meant, say, massive increases in family planning and women’s education leading to people having fewer kids later. Child mortality has been greatly reduced, someone should tell many African men! Religion plays a big role in this as well, around the world. We have learned how to live on a credit card at the expense of our children. We imagine we have “escaped the Malthusian trap”, but the bill comes due! More people means more factory farms, overfishing, desertification, deforestation, plastic pollution, garbage and releasing greenhouse gases. The accumulation of garbage and the depletion of resources can throw delicate ecosystems out of whack (bleached corals, for instance, or collapse of bee colonies). Ar best, we are reducing biodiversity greatly and turning the earth into a monoculture of fatory farms for feeding a growing population of humans. At worst, that’s one unsustainable step away from collapse.

by dictum 7y ago

bin0 7y ago

Malthusianism more or less espouses an equilibrium - short on food, people die, more food available, people have more kids, cycle repeats. Not that all the humans need to die. There's also a great deal of difference between "I believe there may be a lack of food" (but not passing a value judgement on the situation) and "I believe people need to die" (claiming the "greater good").

EGreg 7y ago
I don’t think the parent you responded to meant by depopulation the TOTAL extinction of humans. It’s likely they meant, say, massive increases in family planning and women’s education leading to people having fewer kids later. Child mortality has been greatly reduced, someone should tell many African men! Religion plays a big role in this as well, around the world. We have learned how to live on a credit card at the expense of our children. We imagine we have “escaped the Malthusian trap”, but the bill comes due! More people means more factory farms, overfishing, desertification, deforestation, plastic pollution, garbage and releasing greenhouse gases. The accumulation of garbage and the depletion of resources can throw delicate ecosystems out of whack (bleached corals, for instance, or collapse of bee colonies). Ar best, we are reducing biodiversity greatly and turning the earth into a monoculture of fatory farms for feeding a growing population of humans. At worst, that’s one unsustainable step away from collapse.