Ch. 2 - The Bottleneck

Chris OConnor · Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 8:00 pm Post subject: Ch. 2 - The Bottleneck

This thread is for discussing Ch. 2 - The Bottleneck. You can post within this framework or create your own threads.

Chris

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." - Nelson Mandella

tarav · Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 7:06 pm Post subject: Re: Ch. 2 - The Bottleneck

On page 32, Wilson maintains that, "The encouragement of population control by developing countries comes not a moment too soon". The United States is not among the many countries that have or intend to have official population policies. Why would you/or wouldn't you support such policies in your country?

Interbane · Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2004 12:28 pm Post subject: Re: Ch. 2 - The Bottleneck

I personally think that it's inevitable. I would definitely support something like this. As long as they didn't kill my third child if we had an accident.

This reminds me of "Ender's Game".

Dissident Heart · Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2004 4:19 pm Post subject: Re: Ch. 2 - The Bottleneck

Quote:
Humanity did not descend as angelic beings into this world. Nor are we aliens who colonized Earth. We evolved here, one among many species, across millions of years, and exist as one organic miracle linked to others. The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness was our cradle and nursery, our school, and remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life.

That is the essence of environmentalism. It is the guiding principle of those devoted to the health of the planet. But it is not yet a general worldview, evidently not yet compelling enough to distract many people away from the primal diversions of sport, politics, religion, and private wealth. Pg. 40

Here is Wilson providing a succinct description of the 'essence of environmentalism': a brilliantly informed portrait of who we are, where we come from, and what we are to do. The "what we are to do" component involves the universal environmental ethic he is attempting to produce with this book.

And, it is an issue of devotion and healing, of interconnectedness and individual sacrifice, of humility and reverence for the fragile yet superabundant bioshpere that miraculously continues to foster life.

Wilson argues that we have stumbled into this bottleneck of too many mouths and too little nutrients by way of our evolutionary processes:

Quote:
The reason is simple: it is a hardwired part of our Paleolithic heritage. For hundreds of millennia, those who worked for short-term gain within a small circle of relatives and friends lived longer and left more offspring —even when their collective striving caused their chiefdoms and empires to crumble around them.

The long view that might have saved their distant descendants required a vision and extended altruism instinctively difficult to marshal.

Thus, we are employing a Paleolithic software within a Biospheric age: our ideas of kin, relatives, family, culture, nation-state must change; they must be reorientated away from short-term me-myself-and I ethics, and towards long-term we-ourselves-and Us ethics. The Biosphere must become our new foundation for identity, solidarity, purpose, meaning, and love.

This means radical restructuring of our economic practices where the GNP (gross national product) is replaced by the GPI (genuine progress indicator) and Environmentalism is NOT seen as simply a special interest, but as the accurate and scientific and moral view of Life on the Planet.

tarav · Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2004 5:32 pm Post subject: Re: Ch. 2 - The Bottleneck

I would also support population control policies in the US. I am surprised that more people haven't commented on this idea. I thought for sure that such an idea would be controversial for those of us living in countries with no such policies. I am also interested in hearing how people from countries with such policies feel about them.


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