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Precivilisational lifestyles can only carry a small fraction of our current population. To a significant degree we're locked into this, and have been for thousa
by RGamma 2mo ago
Precivilisational lifestyles can only carry a small fraction of our current population. To a significant degree we're locked into this, and have been for thousands of years.
- inigyou 2mo agoOnly hundreds. Two centuries ago, the total human population was about 5% of today's population.
- RGamma 2mo agoYou'd still get regional overpopulation issues. E.g. the Justinian plague in 541 AD. That's still far away from mobile hunter gatherer tribes with densities of a few dozen people per 1-100 km^2. Homo sapiens is 300,000 years old, Homo erectus 2 million years. Modern civilization might not last on the order of 10,000 years, industrial civilization maybe not even 500 - or perhaps "forever", if we make it to controllable runaway technological improvement?
- rayiner 2mo agoWe have more forests today in Europe than we did 400 years ago.
- vouaobrasil 2mo agoHence the desire to tear it down.
- RGamma 2mo agoThe longings for simpler days are definitely still with us. They explain a lot of social dysfunction. E.g. see Terence McKenna.