So after the conversation that appeared in my past post this doesn’t seem like it is going to be well-received. All signs say that now is the right time to post this, though. This post is going to contain views that upset people greatly when I explain it to them. It isn’t something that most cultures find acceptable. I rarely find someone that agrees (although I think most people must agree in principle, it just isn’t culturally acceptable for them to say it).
The two signs that were brought up. I rarely watch TV, but I watched the season finale of Numbers (though didn’t watch any of the others from the season). Spoiler: The main character in the end decides that it is worth getting arrested and losing security clearance and possibly his job (and breaking federal law), because he wants to send research to Pakistan to help save millions of lives (it had to do with engineering food or something). Details aren’t important. The overarching principle is that it is worth sacrificing everything you have in order to save millions of lives from naturally occurring devastation.
Second sign. I recently watched Paul Ewald’s TEDtalk. (If you are unfamiliar with TEDtalks, you must start watching them!) You can watch it yourself:
Basically it talks about how we can naturally evolve pathogens to be less dangerous. The typical medical perspective that germs are bad and we have to try to cure people when they are affected by them.
My position. Maybe those germs and natural disasters that are killing people are there for a reason. Maybe it is precisely because we keep trying to stop all this stuff that diseases are getting worse and killing more. Maybe it is because we are destroying the Earth that there are so many famines and other natural disasters.
I think there needs to be a paradigm shift. We should stop looking at death as a disease that we need to cure (implicit Fountain reference). Death is a natural part of life. If we continue to keep people alive and overpopulate the Earth, then the Earth is going to wipe our species out and humans will be no more. Why is it seen as a worthy and noble profession to work towards cures for cancer, AIDS, etc? Those diseases exist for a reason. If we get rid of the reason (too many people living too long), then we get rid of the disease. The pathogens are just trying to survive like the rest of us.
OKay. So this hasn’t been as clear as I really wanted it to be. I’m not advocating killing people, but my Taoist roots are coming out. I think we should live more in accordance with nature (this means dying when it is our time) instead of trying to live forever. It is just causing more “problems.”
But the point of AIDS and other diseases is that they take someone before it is his or her time.
Death is part of life, but that doesn’t mean it is right to run to it. Saw the Fountain and one of the things I noticed wasn’t just that the character was fighting death (which the Inquisitor cruelly embraced at one point of the film), it was that he was fighting to have a life with his love (who didn’t look terribly old but was continually under threat for one reason or another). Perhaps his problems were both not being able to enjoy the life he (and she) had as well as the amount of time the two of them spent together being cut short. The director tried to make the film about death, but the characters in it, quite frankly, had other issues to deal with as well. Perhaps it isn’t death as a whole to be feared as much as it is a life badly spent or too shortly cut.
About ecology and population levels. I would like to point out that most of the claims about overpopulation come from nations where there are low birthrates but high pollution rates. And these claims, by their nature, criticize nations with high birthrates but frequently lower pollution rates. I’ve tried to make the point that this is ignoring the real and direct cause of pollution/ecological damage.
Look at real world China, it only threatens to surpass the USA in pollution output when it begins to rapidly develop-something that happens alongside its very strong (and relatively successful) population control policy. If ecological damage was related to population levels China should have been the top polluter for a long time instead of only threatening to become so only in a time after it has implemented population control policies.
By: Nathaniel on June 2, 2008
at 11:40 am
“But the point of AIDS and other diseases is that they take someone before it is his or her time.”
This is exactly the cultural bias that I want to eradicate. It is so ingrained that it is near impossible to see as a culture bias. When a bear kills a fish for food, do we say that that was before the fish’s time? No, we say that it is a part of nature. When someone dies, it is a part of nature no matter when it happens.
As for overpopulation, I wasn’t really trying to push the pollution thing, but there must be a place for people to live as the population grows. Then we, as a human race, decide that it is more important to destroy where other animals live for ourselves. This is throwing ecological diversity out of balance.
You definitely have a good point, though. There are ways to not be so threatening and still have a large population. I just don’t think it is necessary to have such a large population (comparatively no other species does).
By: hilbertthm90 on June 2, 2008
at 12:03 pm
Makes sense to me.
It isn’t our numbers that are so bad, its our behavior. Even our past rough treatment of our environment has served a purpose… if it wakes us up.
Since i believe that we are part of a highly intelligent system, that knows what it is doing, i tend to agree that death and disease serve it well. The system has a sunset clause in our contract for a reason.
Cheers,
jim
By: insomniac on June 2, 2008
at 1:16 pm
Another point to consider is that our diseases are also primarily caused by our behavior. Just about every disease can be traced back to human caused degradation of natural systems. We have damaged our immune systems as well as the ecosystems that provide us with proper nutrition. Our free will has allowed us to make unhealthy choices. That’s the way life is: wrong choices can cost you.
Cheers,
jim
By: insomniac on June 2, 2008
at 1:29 pm
“You definitely have a good point, though. There are ways to not be so threatening and still have a large population. I just don’t think it is necessary to have such a large population (comparatively no other species does).”
Thanks, though-by the numbers I think ants (and a few other things) kick our butt. What sets us apart is the ability to make choices that have impacts.
Which is why I tell people I’m not worried that there could be 11 billion people in the future. I’m worried about what those 11 billion people are going to want to do (consumption and so on).
And about death. I know I’ll die, but there is a list of things I’d like to do before then. If I die before that happens its possible that I’ll die unhappy. I feel the same is could well be true for others so there is a reason to feel sorry for most people who die younger rather than older.
By: Nathaniel on June 2, 2008
at 3:34 pm
And Insomniac may be more correct than he realizes. Biodiversity in tropical areas may serve as a buffer between humanity and unknown diseases hidden within the many ecosystems contained within. By clearing tropical forests diseases may then be released to human communities and from there onward.
By: Nathaniel on June 2, 2008
at 4:59 pm