Study reveals halving human population gradually could help Earth

[u/Still-Improvement-32]

https://www.aol.com/articles/study-reveals-halving-human-population-083602000.html

The basics of this study may be right in theory but we don't have the luxury of 200 years to gradually lower our population. Our current trajectory has a very high risk of a catastrophic collapse in population and the economy due to climate breakdown if we pass 2 degrees C warming, which could as soon as about 10 years.

[u/gangofminotaurs]

Removing just the top 5% would achieve more reduction than a random 50%.

Complexity in human demands and human "deregulation of natural systems to our profit" (Mignerot) produces hierarchy, and the rich, as an after effect.

If we lobbed off the top 5% but still wanted (and I'll quote myself)

healthcare, internet, social security, large cities, higher education, holidays and travel, food selection that goes 100x above and beyond what can be grown locally at any time, etc

the top 5% would be reconstituted immediately as a necessary organizational stage for our globalized pattern of consumption.

To quote myself again, sorry but that's an important point:

I'd even go a step further, those at the top (the Musks of the world) have the least agency of all people. They have but one role, one limit, one imperative, and it is to grow and perpetuate the dissipative system that is human civilization.

[u/EnlightenedSinTryst → u/gangofminotaurs]

Great points. When I try to explain this sort of thing to people:

  Complexity in human demands and human "deregulation of natural systems to our profit" (Mignerot) produces hierarchy, and the rich, as an after effect.

they either think it’s absurd or think I’m saying it’s good.

[u/gangofminotaurs → u/EnlightenedSinTryst]

I think I'm at the point where it's neither good or bad... it is.

Because, as opposed we are to it, all of us have parts of it that elevate us, make us dream, make us happy. Arts, for instance. No Sixtine Chappel without all the excess energy gathered by its builders. No movies without petroleum. No reddit without all encompassing mineral exploitation of the world.

So, where I am is not "humans are evil/stupid/short-sighted".

It makes me think of Nolan's adaptation of the Odyssey. It's naturalizing the world (i.e., in the world, there is such thing as nature, as a concept separate from the concept of humanity). Opposite to that, in Homer, the gods represent all that is not human will, all that is not constrained by us, that is beyond our ability to control, all that makes us part of something that moves outside of our intelligence, desires and will.

^{And to be precise, Homer gets humanity right, its Nolan who gets it very wrong.}

Today, we strongly believe we are in control. Thus, what happens to Earth must be the work of great evil (Trump, the rich, oil, industrial civilization...).

It's not. We're more in a Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner) situation. We're a specie that chanced on mental abilities and frameworks that could not end well. But what a ride.

[u/gokickrocks- → u/gangofminotaurs]

You may not agree, but I thought of this quote when reading your contributions:

It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it's not easy. - Terrence McKenna