What I struggle with is even if say the richer nations of this planet could actually put a stop or significant slowing in place, how do you tell that to poorer nations that are actually on the upswing (ie. China, India, etc) to limit themselves? I have to believe they think that they deserve all that the richer nations have had. And even within one society, you probably have the same ambitions amongst the lower classes.

I don’t know, really it is probably going to come down to population control. Perhaps a taboo subject amongst various cultures and religions, but if you can’t change the behaviors, you have to make less of it or ultimately just face the consequences.

No solutions here either man, other than to say this is one heavy post, and I am a bit more depressed now.

Thanks for the post/s. yes, a simpler life is often a richer one, in many ways - it’s almost always a healthier one. I remember reading a book about primitive cultures, and the writer explained how free of stress they were, largely because they had so few choices to make each day. We start making choices the seconds we roll over out of bed, with what clothes to wear, right down to socks and undies. And it doesn’t end until we hit the hay at night. Makes a lot of sense to me.

If you dig some blues, check out Jeff Healey’s first Album, “See The Light” - killer stuff.

Hey Mark

I think the digital thing is absolutely a great example of stuff we have to buy more of - I said once it’s like running on a bigger and more powerful treadmill, running faster and faster and ultimately going nowhere. I think a lot of things about digital photography fuel this endless desire for more - one of which is, very simply, the very quantitative nature of the cameras .. they’re measured by megapixels - so they have a number .. this one is 10mp .. and the next one is 12mp, so it MUST be better, right? And the next one is 14; our little brains, so good (for most people) at counting, go crazy, and we need more and more .. newer, bigger, more. Car manufacturers figured this out long ago .. there’s a reason why they expressly state the year a car was made, rather than a simple name? 2008 sells better than 2007 - this competitive advantage is lost, and some catalyst for the consumer to buy, if the cars were called Red and Blue. There’s a built in little tool to create a perception of ‘better’ in 2009 than, say, 2008 .. it’s like I wrote above, we’re sold on the idea that if we make this one little purchase, our lives will in some way be more complete — and the danger, of course, is that the opposite happens - the more embedded we become in this cycle, the less complete and more unhappy we become.

I agree with you completely about the onset of ‘development’ in less-developed nations (again, look at the nation, and how the premises established there).

I don’t agree that population control, in any sense that we know the term, is a solution. It’s treating a symptom, and the effect of this is twofold: (a) it doesn’t remedy the problem, and (b) it actually blinds us to really seeing, and hence dealing with, the problem, which typically perpetuates, if not enhances, the problem. Have a look again at the first table in the post above. How many of those points have occurred as a result of ‘overpopulation’? I’d say none. They’re all a function of rampant, overconsumption . So we can talk forever about how we need to stem the flow of population growth, even reduce population, but the problem doesn’t go away. Instead, we feel good about ourselves because we’re reducing the population, right? So, we consume more.

I forget the term, but there’s a phrase they used to refer to this kind of effect with regard to oil and gas consumption in the 70’s and early 80’s. Rising prices drove US consumers towards smaller, more fuel efficient cars. And what happened to mileages driven? They soared. In fact, they actually pushed overall and per capita consumption of gasoline higher than it had been previously. The term begins with a ‘J’ .. Jared’s Effect or something like that. I’m sure other factors influenced it, for sure, but to some degree, this is what happened.

It’s like an alcoholic getting busted for drink driving - taking away his car keys doesn’t stop his alcoholism - in fact, it often leads to increased drinking, and the symptoms simply manifest themselves elsewhere.

I remember a discussion with some environmental activists about this topic, and one of them referred to me as naive to think we could remedy any kind of systemic addiction problem and that trying to address that was simply living in la-la land. I replied that I think it’s no more naive and Disney-esque to think we might be able to stem population control either, so if we’re going to propose fantastical solutions anyway, we might as well suggest those that focus on the reality of the problem, rather than ones that won’t provide anything more than a temporal slowing of the problem at best.

Thanks for reading through this meandering waffle.

Cheers

Carl

I know you site the example of oil and gas in the 70s/80s, but perhaps hitting people in the pocketbook is really the only way to drive such a drastic change. I know when I was in Germany, where gas is $6/gallon - it is a pretty rare site that you see a SUV. And then of course, smaller cars = not enough room to buy lots of stuff at the store. And at those gas prices, of course internet shipping fees will go up, reducing the appeal of purchasing online. Sound crazy???

I’m glad you got something out of it. Dealing with addiction is one of the most difficult things we can do - I think because it’s at its core, totally egoic. Our ego builds our sense of who we are, and changing that, even questioning that, is extremely frightening. But you’re right, it can start early, it can restrict the influx of threads that feed addiction - but so much of our culture works exactly the opposite way - we treat children, from the outset, so poorly we make them more susceptible to this kind of addiction. Then we constantly teach them that rewards will come in the form of ’stuff’, even that rewards themselves are measurements of happiness - the end over the means kind of thing.

Another facet of addiction treatment is breaking the behavioral patterns - the manifestation of the addiction - so doing what we can to change behavior should help - but I think it’s do embedded in our way of seeing the world, largely due continual exposure to manipulative advertising and other forms of marketing, that it will probably just redirect itself some other way. We’ll try to find some replacement for oil and gas, and continue absorbing everything the world around us has to offer.

Lastly, why shouldn’t what we say here sound crazy. Tell me the current situation isn’t crazy?

Cheers

Carl