Earth is so much stronger than humans that when earth has had enough of us it will simply shrug us off.
The Earth (or the sun) will correct this soon enough. We will have the bottleneck we need within the next 50-100 years most likely. Maybe a coronal mass ejection that kills power on earth for the foreseeable future... Perhaps a large asteroid... Maybe Yellowstone will awaken.
The Earth will cleanse itself and clean up after us. Guaranteed!
Evil is just a word that we use to describe certain things/acts. It isn't that it "exists." But, I agree there are things that fit the definition of what we call "evil."
The universe does not care if there is an earth, or if there is any life on it, or too much life on it. The earth itself does not even care.
But, because we have evolved with awareness and the ability to understand suffering and the consequences of our actions to living, sentient beings, and to the planet that enables life to exist, we should care.
To not care, or to abuse others and the planet for one's personal enrichment, to me, does fit the definition of what we call "evil."
As for overpopulation. I think it is inevitable that there will be some sort of "natural correction." The question is whether or not we as a species will survive it.
Exactly. Yours is the second reply that really impressed me tonight. It is, indeed, evil what we're doing. Chief Seattle's prediction is coming true and we're the lucky folks who happen to be witnessing it.
As an "atheist" I have no problem with the word "evil" as an adjective, only as a noun. And I think over-population is driving the human species to extinction, by way of self destruction...time will tell.
It annoys me when people use "gift" as a verb, "read" as a noun, etc.
I think it may be the way evolution triggers a need for correction. To date, open space to migrate into has saved us from the repercussions of over-population but we've run out of room. Now we have to face it or die and religion is the counter-force. I'm betting on evolution.
@rainmanjr I have a feeling you're right...by the end of this pandemic there is going to be more room for sure....
@HankSherman The pandemic isn't going to open the kind of room that will give us reprieve. Climate change is the big killer.
@rainmanjr as I said "self destruction"
I view planet Earth as a living organism and humans are a threat to it, so the earth creates diseases and viruses to thin the herd.
Also humans view human life as superior to all other living things on the planet, but to mother nature, human life is equal to that of a dead bug on a cars windshield.
All living organisms have an instinctive sense of self preservation and reproduction that supersedes most other concerns. Humans are no different.
We have the capacity to realize that we are shooting ourselves in the foot, but the problem is that capacity doesn't always result in actuality. Without agreement from most humans on earth, the population will never be reduced to a sustainable level.
Those who refuse to limit or refrain from reproduction because of overpopulation are the ones who are producing more of the next generation and teaching them the same things. The effort to reduce population could very likely disappear for no other reason than because those who believe in it aren't reproducing.
The only real answer seems to be practices that are repulsive, such as mass murder and severe reproductive restrictions. But then again, those who would engage in those practices aren't the people you would want surviving to the next generation.
I personally don't see a realistic answer to the problem. While we have enough intelligence to understand what we are doing, I don't believe we have the ability to stop it.
The truly terrible thing, at least from a human poit of view is, that the two main requirements of successful reproduction seem to be, low intelligence and a high level of selfishness. This means that we will probably evolve to be far less social, and far less inteligent, and It may happen quite quickly in just a few centuries. Eventually a point will be reached wjhere we no longer have the intelligence or social unity to overcome even a small problem, then we go extinct, we we have not already. THe sad thing is that by then we may have all but destroyed everything else on the planet.
Of course it maybe that we will find a place for gene editing and eugenics, and use those to prevent that. But it is also possible that those things will only ever be available to a rich, technically advanced minority, which means that we will effectively split into two species. We may then survive, but at what cost to the planet.
Overpopulation is one thing it is bigotry ( often fed by religion) that is the root cause of humanities problems. If people were simply concerned about valueing life we would not have wars hate killings etc. IMHO
Do you think that evil called just as easily be called greed?
Evil and greed are intersecting sets. Neither is a subset of the other.
@PBuck0145 Sorry, I wasn't clear. I understand set theory, I don't see the application here and wanted examples of each. I think a belief in evil is just another religious belief and anything that people might call evil can be reduced to an example of greed. So evil is a subset wholly subsumed by greed.
@PBuck0145 Fair enough and thank you for that. I'm happy to accept your definition that evil is defined by the observer as, of course, that makes it subjective. I'm not trying to be pedantic but I work with criminals who do things others might describe as evil and I consistently see not evil people but careless, thoughtless, selfish people. Selfish being the most common trait. People who take what they want or inflict what they want, only because it's their whim and the wellbeing of others is of no consideration next to their desire.
who is promoting an increase in pop?
See the link in the OP:
[nymag.com]
In this country, & others, the very active war on womens' reproductive rights....every study of population growth ever done showed that if women given the chance to get birth control, they have Many fewer children
The concept of "overpopulation" is greatly misunderstood by most. Overpopulation is not necessarily about physical numbers only. Evolutionarily, overpopulation is about sustainability and environmental "fitness" for purpose of propagating the species.
In the case of the human species, its about cultural as much as physical numbers in a particular landscape. All species needs mechanisms of checks and balances to maintain evolutionary fitness and increased chances of species perpetuation. Part of our evolutionary journey towards species viability and survival was culture and society.
About 700,000 years ago when hominids were beginning their evolutionary move to becoming the species we are today they represented a physically inferior species in their environment. They were often smaller, slower, sensory limited organism. Often times their prey was significantly larger than them (e.g. mammoth, mastodon, ancestral bison) and their predators were as well (cave bear, smilodon. ancestral wolf, etc).
In order to survive, the early hominid needed to learn how to make tools to compensate for their lack of other physical attributes. Likewise, the increased cranial capacity lead to improved abstract thought and perception and the ability to modify their environment into tools. But this was not enough to insure their survival. Along with tool making capabilities they evolved a very complex communication system (language).
The complex communication capabilities allowed them to cooperatively to contrive methods for hunting the oversized prey and predators. This cooperation is known as culture and society. Had they not evolved these complex systems there is a good chance the species would not have survived.
As mentioned previously, all species needs checks and balances to dissuade or eliminate abberrant or evolutionarily "unfit" behaviors and traits. Society is just that system of checks and balances. But societies only effectively work in numbers below the tribal level. Beyond that the shear numbers begin to break down as cultural pressure is not sufficient to weed out behaviors that hurt the evolutionary fitness.
In closing, the human species has been overpopulated since the advent of agriculture (our ultimate downfall -7000 years ago). This innovation allowed humans to remain in stationary habitations and gather in numbers exceeding societal control over detrimental behavior and attributes. Evolutionary processes often work slowly, and humans have only been around a relatively short time evolutionarily speaking. So, we have been overpopulated and an unfit species for at least the last 7000 years. Our next step is extinction on another few millenia.
or more likely near-extinction, yes? I think we have already had a couple of bottlenecks? [io9.gizmodo.com]
I’m not sure about outside the US, But the population in the US is either at a standstill or just barely growing at best. There are more baby boomers retiring from the workforce today than there are being replaced by younger workers. For one thing, the newer generations of millennials and gen. Z just aren’t interested in families like the earlier ones. Many of them are saddled with college debts of tens of thousands of dollars, which makes it almost impossible to save for other big items like home ownership or even children later on. Another thing I have NEVER heard anybody mention is the lack of good jobs available nowadays that have decent heath insurance or paid time off or vacation time, I could go on. Given these circumstances, how is it possible to have a family, save for necessities and other essentIal things? Until or unless this changes, the future sadly is not promising.
I agree fully that overpopulation is a major problem and the cause of many other problems., It is detrimental to both humans and to our biosphere. In that sense it is evil.
For humans, evil does not exist independent of us. Something is evil when it violates the dignity and efficacy of us and our biosphere. Some is evil because of its effects.