For two contradictory resons, its a vague statistic to use:

1. We have already destroyed most of our original food sources and habitats, eg. wild yams in australia are mostly gone.
Our ecosytems can’t sustain as many people as before civilisation.

2. We have learned many things during civilisation (not neccessarily because of civilisation) and developed traditions such as permaculture and forrest gardening that can sustain many MORE people than we could before and repair ecosystems faster than they could without us, without neccesarily using technology or traditional farming methods at all.

Surely some people will die in the collapse (and are already) but the constant repetition of these vague, morbid figures seems too controlled and cold. I refuse them.

My Comment: How can hunter-gatherer societies be considered more “sustainable” when they have been regularly wiped out or absorbed by civilized societies? Clearly, civilized societies have proven teh most sustainable vis a vis the most challenging factor of all: other humans.

We currently live in a society where we are divorced from the cycle of birth and death. We don’t kill our own food, we don’t live closely with several generations, we are insulated by heating and air conditioning from the seasons. The only deaths we are likely to experience are those of elderly relatives, and those are traumatic events, spaced widely apart in our lives, that we are expected to feel very badly about. Our social conditioning is to feel a horror at death that is, on the face of it, ridiculous. Everyone dies, why be horrified at it?

In earlier cultures, this fear of death isn’t as present. You are brought up to be closer to a larger number of people, some of whom are old and die during your childhood. You are expected to kill your food, and the sight of a dead body doesn’t scare you or weird you out. You become conditioned to the fact that everyone dies, and you will too. You learn that the manner of your death is more important that its timing. Voluntary euthanasia when your time is up becomes a life-affirming decision.

I see the antithesis of this every day in our modern culture. People are afraid of death, and go to extraordinary lengths to defer it. Our safety culture demands that we do nothing dangerous or anything that might degrade our health. Every activity is scrutinised, not for its possible gains in terms of fulfilment and achievement, but for its possible detrimental effects to our health and lifespan. This is blatantly ridiculous.

You can avoid cigarette smoke, red meat, alcohol, salt, all those ‘bad things’ for your entire life…and YOU WILL STILL DIE. However, you also never really lived.

Grab life by the balls, do things that are dangerous. Live before you die, and die knowing that you have lived. Face your death head-on and be unafraid.

When you can’t keep up with the tribe any more, give your favourite spear to your best friend, kiss your children one last time, and walk into the woods to face the wolves with a grin on your face

Marcus
(sorry for anonymous post, the icons are a tad confusing)

‘Human rights’ and ‘animal rights’ (although I personally don’t so much like the term ‘rights’ but that’s pretty irrelevant for this discussion) are two faces of the same coin. You can have neither or both. It is to be expected that a culture that produces the Holocaust will produce factory farms as well; it is also to be expected that a culture that produces factory farms will also produce the Holocaust. Both have to do with (among other things) treating living beings as objects. You can focus on ‘human rights’ or on ‘animal rights’. But without going to the root of the problem, any results that you can hope to get will be cosmetic at best (a bit better ventilation in the sweat shops; slightly bigger cages for the chickens). And if you go to the root of either problem… I’ll bet that you’ll find that it’s the same for both ‘human rights’ and ‘animal rights’.

That’s not evolution. And it’s highly questionable to boot, both in practice and in ethics (especially for someone who loves to talk about mass equality!).

[quote]I’m not suggesting that one can’t identify with a non-human group. I’m saying that regardless of what you claim your “percieved social group” as, you are then individually responsible/obligated for helping a group of which you are a part of.[/quote]

Yes, the group. Not necessarily individual(s). Don’t misunderstand me, I intend to provide and protect as many people as I can, but I do have limits. I try to recognize them, not ignore them.

[quote]If you consider the question “Should we stop billions of people from dying tragically?” meaningless then by all means feel free to discontinue debate.[/quote]

If one lacks the ability to act, I think that, yes, the question loses some meaning.

[quote]What’s so insufferable about “Hobbesian mythology”? [/quote]

It’s not that it’s insufferable so much as it is false. It implies that members of uncivilized cultures lead lives that are ‘nasty, brutish, and short’. Actually, it’s really not so much an implication as a direct statement. Yet that fails to consider that the quality of life generally is much greater for said people. The only insufferable part is in accepting such a false premise as a starting point upon which to make further, equally flawed premises.

I’ve been recommended “Ishmael” once before am now doubly looking forward to reading it.

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jhereg,
Any evolutionary stages that require the use or threat of force are undesirable. Transhumanism offers several proactive methods (nanotchnology, eugenics, etc.) for which to influence our own evolution. Whether or not these methods are favorable is irrelevent as we are still only trying to illustrate the fact that it is possible for humans to control their own evolution.

I’m not suggesting that one can’t identify with a non-human group. I’m saying that regardless of what you claim your “percieved social group” as, you are then individually responsible/obligated for helping a group of which you are a part of.

If you consider the question “Should we stop billions of people from dying tragically?” meaningless then by all means feel free to discontinue debate.

What’s so insufferable about “Hobbesian mythology”? The only thing I could find online about it ended up with an interesting argument for Anarcho-capitalism. I’ll look into the rest of the site.