No subject

  Alan,

Herders can overpopulate and start eating their herds faster than
they reproduce.  They can overgraze.  In the process, no doubt, their
population growth would slow down because reproducing would become
progressively more difficult.  The analogy to yeast or bacteria in a
dish looks like it holds very well.  Just because humans use more
complex tools and behaviors to get food doesn't make any difference
to what is basically being done- a limited food supply is being eaten
and population growing as if that food supply were unlimited.

   People are clearly smarter than yeast in a number of ways, but on
this critical issue they seem to use about as many neurons as yeast
do.  They deny the problem in various ways, and ignore it, and in so
doing they don't use any of their intellectual potential for dealing
with the problem.

    If an organism is blind and wanders around tripping over things,
and a human being closes its eyes and does the same, the only
difference is that the human has potential to open its eyes.  If it
absolutely, positively, refuses to open its eyes, I cannot see any
difference between the two.  Humans are absolutely, positively, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, refusing to open their eyes to problems of
population growth, problems of using finite resources as if they were
infinite.   "God will provide". "Science will find a way". End of
discussion.  Functionally, such people *are no smarter than
yeast*.  They put faith in completely unproven concepts and stop
thinking about the problem, go on the autopilot mental programming of
eating and reproducing as much as possible, using their thinking
ability as totally subordinate to satisfying these desires, and when
you stop thinking and act like that, you are doing no better than a
yeast cell that can't think and just eats and reproduces as much as possible.

    Of course, some tiny part of the population has seen and worried
about these problems practically from the beginning.  As things get
worse, more people will see and become concerned.  But most of the
population continues in denial, and even for those who have opened
their eyes,  their vision is still clouded, for many of them the
solutions they see are still tainted by unrealistic understanding of
how things work.  They get unrealistic expectations of various
alternative energy sources, for example, or have partial
understandings of the problems around agriculture, they see what they
want to see,  and get back to the business of eating and reproducing
based on how hard it is at the moment, same as before.

   Of course, as I often say here, markets are the perfect "measure
of the moment", with virtually no regard for the future, and so this
economic system perfectly fits this human propensity for denial of
unsustainability, or denial that it matters because they are going to
be raptured or something.  If you think people are smart and can
learn to behave differently with regard to this issue of reproducing
and consuming at sustainable rates, the best proof you could offer me
would be that you were teaching people at an exponential rate to stop
accepting monetary measure, and to instead look at things with regard
to food -shelter EROEI and sustainability of that EROEI.    I haven't
convinced a single person to do this, that I know of.    Even on a
list with people far more aware and concerned about these
issues  than the general population, I can't even get discussion of
this concept.  I find it laughable that the general population is
going to be taught to behave in a sustainable way, when even the most
aware, simply refuse objective discussion of certain
things.

 Generally people have behaved like yeast, continue to
behave like yeast, and to me show not the slightest sign of not
continuing to behave like yeast.  I have hopes that a tiny, tiny
fraction of the population might stop behaving like yeast, and that
is all.  Your hopes that many will learn to behave differently, looks
to me to have as much evidence to support it as there is evidence
that believers in the Santa Claus Jesus will be raptured.

Arthur




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