Can it be that Y2K is Mother nature's means of population control?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

In the wee hours of the morning, I was pondering anew the mess we've got ourselves into. I was also thinking about the Gary North posting- reality check #37 in which he states that there isn't enough stuff available for everyone to stockpile enough for a year or so(Titanic lifeboats anyone??). Anyway- the thought came to me that years ago, everyone routinely did have enough put aside for the year to eat, heat with, etc, or they didn't make it. If we can't do that now as a society, have we perhaps gone past the carrying point?

I think, given this train of thought, that if one realizes that it is only because of technology that we have the large population centers we now have, the longevity of the population and the numbers of people alive, perhaps it is fitting that technology cause the correction??

If one looks at natural systems in animals, either on land or in the sea, if the population of animal A grows beyond the resources needed to sustain them(plants, animal B, whatever), the popluation of Animal A crashes. This lets the population of animal B, plants, etc. rebuild and lets animal A exist at a sustainable level.

Can it be that Mother Nature intends that for us? If we have developed a way of living that is having such deleterious impacts on the earth(Global warming, pollution, etc), and a population that relies so heavily on division of labor and finely tuned transportation and electrical supply networks to sustain it, perhaps that population has gone beyond the level of sustainability? And that way of life untenable?

If this is so, who should survive? Is it just luck? Or does Darwinian "fitness" come into play? Do those that are able to see the problem coming, recognize it for what it is and take action have a survival advantage over those who don't/can't/won't?? Do those who have an ability to see the whole picture and a willingness to take action needed to sustain themselves and their loved ones have a survival advantage over those that won't budge from their 360 satellite dish tv channels?? Just wondering? Anyone want to comment?

-- anita (hillsidefarm@drbs.com), March 19, 1999

Answers

I've also pondered this type of question, only mine is about the fact that during clinton's state of the union speech, he was applauded 93 times except when he mentioned Y2K. only one stood up out of a thousand. That is, an educated, informed crowd of one thousand.

-- KoFE (Your@town.USA), March 19, 1999.

Only the strong survive. Those that have food, water, supplies, and the will power to live.

-- Noah (Noah@Ark.com), March 19, 1999.

Yes, in the wee hours of this morning I read your post and I agree. We have overloaded the planet with people demanding more and more consumer goods. The earth is stressed and people are stressed, as you can tell by all the hand wringing, moaning and worrying about "how bad will it be" posts on this forum. If this is natures way of remediating a problem, then so be it. I've seen the population double in my lifetime, and what I've seen has not been inspiring.

When I was in college we did an in depth study of overcrowding on rats.Many of the problems we havetoday reminds me of the rat study. First there was the rise of disease, and new health hazards. Second, the overcrowded population alone caused stress, which caused aberant behavior; males attacking females, males forming gangs, rats attempting sex with rats of the same sex, vicious or withdrawn behavior, neglect of offspring, etc., Sound familiar?

-- gilda jessie (jess@listbot.com), March 19, 1999.


Ever try reading the Bible. It's filled with lots of good news and it explains everything that's happening. More important than making preps for y2k, is making preps for where you're going after this life. PLEASE DO IT NOW WHILE YOU HAVE THE CHANCE! GOD LOVES YOU!!

-- !-!-!-! (nothing2c@aol.com), March 19, 1999.

Anita, you have touched on some points that have been in my mind too.While I am certainly for the free enterprise system, it seems that we have become such a greedy rich nation that we have lost true values. The industrial revolution brought us wonderful time and work saving innovations and then somewhere along the way it got out of control. Planned obsolecense(sp?) was built in so that we bought more and more to have the newest and the best even tho the old one may have worked fine.

Every family has to have a car for each member because carpooling or public transportation is so "inconvenient". The wonder of a TV turned into a TV in every room ,then add on a VCR and some game machines (they make such wonderful babysitters for the kids).Add on the factor of things that used to last 30 years now have to be replaced in 5 years,sometimes less.

The total effect of all this has to be increased pollution tho it makes our "economy" figures look good.

Perhaps this is the "upside" of y2k. Less gas, less electricity, not only means less pollution but we will finally have to turn to the ecological measures that we should have been working on for the past 30 years.

Solar, wind, and other methods never really were developed sufficiently to make them economically feasible to thelower and middle income brackets. And why not? Because then the electric companies would suffer. If you had a car that went 200 miles on a gallon of gas, then the gas companies would suffer.Greed again.

Just a few thoughts as we may soon return to a simpler lifestyle.A get off our butts and work lifestyle. It's a shame that a lot of lives may be lost tho, to accomplish this.

-- sue (deco100@aol.com), March 19, 1999.



I don't really see a conscious intelligence deciding that it is time to kill the 90% of the least prepared so that the earth-god can "heal the earth". On the other hand, at worst, it might seem that way to those believing in Western religion and philosophy if this house-of- cards comes tumbling down.

If I build a deck on my house that is too weak to hold me & my BBQ, and it collapses, is the deck punishing me because I have "offended my house and yard" by adding the deck? I tend to think I am getting my "just reward" for building a flimsy deck that can't hold the weight.

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@anonymous.com), March 19, 1999.


Dear Anonymous 99- no, I'm not saying that Mother Nature is a conscious intelligence deciding to wipe out 90% of the population. I'm just sugesting that as humans, we are truly part of nature and subject to its laws, though we try to forget that. And just as natural law rules the rest of the species, so too us.

We as humans though have decided for the most part that we are above all of that and it is not applicable to us. With the use of technology we have been able to bring society to where it's at, probably with great detriment to our environment and the mental and physical health of the humans in it. So- is this a form of correction??

-- anita (hillsidefarm@drbs.com), March 19, 1999.


Anita - We've had a pretty stable environment for quite a long time here in the USA. We have developed 'systems' and organized ourselves in such a way as to get the most of what we 'collectively' want (value). So here we are.

The environment is going to change on us. Not the physical, but the virtual, man-made environment. Having recently been down to Florida, I wondered about the transportation network we depend upon: roads and rail paricularly. It all goes through urban areas. If people get desperate then whatever moves on these 'arteries' will be stopped and pilaged. Which will halt any flow of goods.

There are many such point which threaten the flow on which we depend.

-- David (ConnectingDots@Information.Net), March 19, 1999.


Anita- This is strangely parallel to the high school fruit-fly experiment...the population of fruit flies rises to a point where the largest percentage is no longer able to sustain life on the resources available. This is not a "Mother Nature" problem- the human race is pretty much ignored by nature. It is nature who is controlled by man, and she should be worried. The only natural forces man has not been able to overcome are MAJOR natural disasters, which could account for only a small percentage of the human race. We humans have created our own ecosystem, nearly independent of nature. We cultivate items necessary for our survival(food and beer)-all other items are creature comforts or recreational. Since we have so much control over creation of our food, nature could do little to impact us without something on a grand scale. As we humans have managed to create our society of interdependency, so are we tasked with maintaining it. If we fail to maintain the necessary connections, or if too many links in this chain fail, we become fruit flies.

-- chuck harper (charper3@email.usps.gov), March 19, 1999.

I've been thinking about this in a slightly different context.

Throughout history, one of the means of "population control" has been war. Look at history and you'll see patterns of every generation or two, most societies get into a war. Sometimes they happen "organically," sometimes consciously. I don't have the time to research it now for for backup, but I've read the text of Papal Bulls leading up to the Crusades where the Popes at the time basically said "We've got too many young rowdy men here in Europe, and it's time to get them out of the country and get some of them killed. Maybe they'll even bring back some loot. Let's pick a fight with Islam, so we can get some of these guys out of Europe. Many of them won't come back..."

I think the American Civil War was a clear example of a society that had grown very quickly and peacefully for a number of generations, and KABOOM! "nature" did what "she" does to curtail that growth. After every major war there's a period of growth and reconfiguration that always leads to another period of reduction. It's really very obvious, if you look at it.

WWI and WWII were sort of anomalies, major wars so close together, but the speed of industrial growth in this century has also been an anomaly, so it makes sense in the pattern. After WWII, the threat of nuclear war may have been enough to keep things somewhat subdued, but frankly, we're due for another biggie. Tensions around the world are about the highest they've ever been, and I think it's American military hegemony and the still real threat of nuclear annhilation that keeps the whole powderkeg from blowing.

Y2K, however, may turn out to be our collective unconscious "backdoor" out of the usual way that these reductions happen. The wilder conspiracy theorists out there may even say that it was conscious. It was the military, afterall, that set the 2 digit date standard in stone.

Anyway, that's just a very rough and unformed view of the War as population control and Y2K as a substitute for War THIS TIME set of possibilities...

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), March 19, 1999.



Y2k is a way of bringing man/humans back into the foodchain.

-- x (x@y.com), March 19, 1999.

Well said, Anita.

As you know, having been around here for a while, we've alluded to this point several times in the last eighteen months (since I've been here). Yours is among the most direct and cogent statements of this perspective. And Sue's exposition is noteworthy and commendable. Congratulations.

I'm afraid that Chuck is imbued with the indutrial-age Western hubris so common in the developed world. We have a great impact on our planet. But, to think that the Earth does not or could not have an equally large impact on us reflects a lack of understanding of the complexity of the web of life of which we are a part. "Everything is greatly intertwingled."--- Tom DeMarco

Before becoming aware of Y2K, I was a major "doomer" based on my understanding of natural systems and our effects on them...and their effects on us. An argument can be made that, compared with the potential for population reduction cause by anthropogenically influenced natural catastrophe, Y2K is but water balloon in a rainstorm. But Anita makes a very trenchant point. And I really do appreciate the irony.

While I had hoped that we could return to living within the system by learning of its complexity and interconnectedness and by appreciating and revering its sacredness, it seems like we won't be able to without a good spanking and going to bed without supper.

Hallyx

"The world is sacred and, therefore, should be viewed with reverence and treated with respect." --- prime tenet of Pantheism

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), March 19, 1999.


Gilda -

You might want to add road rage to your list. Defitnitely a sign of over crowding in my opinion though not a huge population decreaser. Good post...

-- Valkyrie (anon@please.net), March 19, 1999.


Darwin's Doorway.

While war has impact upon population, Famine and Plague have a much higher impact. Historically, death caused by birthing complications certainly ranks in the top 5 killers. Population growth is controlled by the number of breeding females, not breeding males.

Thanks to various technology advances humankind has been surging past carrying capacity of the planet for several centuries. Thanks to the geometric growth of breeding pairs we are witness to the spectacle of human population growth to carrying capacity ratio approaching geometric scale.

Something will give.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), March 19, 1999.


Systems! Dynamic systems! A link still timely:

World Scientists' Warning to Humanity

http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/warning.html

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), March 19, 1999.



http://dieoff.org/

-- x (x@y.com), March 19, 1999.

Cool, --x, I was just about to post dieoff.org!

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), March 19, 1999.

"Nature bats last." - Paul Ehrlich

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), March 19, 1999.

<< I don't have the time to research it now for for backup, but I've read the text of Papal Bulls leading up to the Crusades where the Popes at the time basically said "We've got too many young rowdy men here in Europe, and it's time to get them out of the country and get some of them killed. Maybe they'll even bring back some loot. Let's pick a fight with Islam, so we can get some of these guys out of Europe. Many of them won't come back..." >>

Or words to that effect. Yeah, right pshannon. Sheesh!

-- Franklin Journier (ready4y2k@yahoo.com), March 19, 1999.


An excerpt from dieoff.org

We will see feral children mining the dumps for plastic to burn so they can heat the hovels they are forced to live in. The strongest kinds will set traps for fresh meat --rats-- while the weaker kids will eat anything they can cram into their mouths. Pandemics will sweep the world, punctuated every so often by explosions as abandoned and rotting nuclear facilities blow up. Leaking dumps and tanks will spew PCBs and radioactive waste into the feral food chain spawning surprising new shapes for young mothers to enjoy nursing. Toxic chemical fires, blowing garbage and trash, genetic mutations, filthy water, cannibalism...

As the Easter Islanders say: "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth".

I am sorry but I have to use shock treatment on myself on occasion to keep focused on preparation..

For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost.

-- x (x@y.com), March 19, 1999.


pshannon: "Y2K, however, may turn out to be our collective unconscious "backdoor" out of the usual way that these reductions happen."

Given present technology, that collective unconscious may be wiser than we think. A military conflict now on the scale of WW2 would well and truly poison much of the planet and put enormous obstacles in the way of its survivors. Whereas we realize now that much the same result can be achieved without using nuclear weapons.

Collective Unconscious may also find ways to avoid a debacle. We have to start looking past the cusp. What comes next? More of the same old same old? Or something new? Someone wrote, You meet your expectations."

Could be there'll be a spectrum of outcomes -- at some point all issues become local issues.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), March 19, 1999.


Evolution in action. Catastrophes are mother nature's way of correcting the proliferation of anti-survival traits.

-- a (A@AisA.com), March 19, 1999.

All of us have choices to make. One is: Prepare or Not to Prepare.

Y2K isn't a natural disaster that comes unexpectedly like a tornado while you are away from safe shelter.

Mother Nature has nothing to do with Y2K. Besides, she doesn't even exist.

-- making choices (makinggood@choices.com), March 19, 1999.


Mother Nature has nothing to do with Y2K.

Fallable man made the decision leading to Fatal OO Flaws ( FOOF ).

Expect Mother Nature to be far more reliable than the behavior of mankind before, during and after OO.

Mother Nature will sustain the wise who are self-reliant.

-- Watchful (seethesea@msn.com), March 19, 1999.


Anita,

All the things you ask about have a bearing on survival, but the "wild card" is really "luck of the draw". Where you are and what you are doing when TSHTF may nullify any or all of the others. Thus my choice of "Crapshoot" as most definitive, not only of Y2K, but of Life.

Gilda & Chuck,

The rats and the fruit flies are indeed illustrative of what's happening constantly to all species. But Chuck, I fear that you over estimate Man's power or under estimate Mother Nature's. I have heard that if you were to put all the nuclear weapons on the planet in a single pile and detonate them all at once that you would not release as much energy as a single mile-wide thundercell. Consider that Nature routinely plays with fusion furnaces (stars) and juggles entire solar systems with apparent ease. I cannot believe that a single species that appears as "soft, pink food with all the bones on the inside" to crocodiles is anything like a threat to its Creator.

Patrick,

There is a school of thought (and I suscribe to it) that WWI and WWII were really only a a single war, with the period in between a sort of "global time-out" which Germany used to re-arm and continue the conflict.

Hallyx,

Do you know what "The Good Red Road" is?

Mitchell,

Famine and plague do seem to crop up with depressing regularity throughout history, don't they? As for what will "give", there's lots of historical precedent. . .

"making choices",

Mother Nature not only "has to do with" everything, She IS everything.

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), March 19, 1999.


Yes- Mother nature definitely exists. Obviously not as a person, but as the laws of nature. And I can't think of a single reason why humans are not just as subject to them in their own way than say rabbits. Sure; some of what happens to us is a matter of "luck"; being in the right or the wrong place at the right or wrong time and all of that. Just as a rabbit might be really really fast but pop out of its burrow at a really really bad time. But in general, over the members of a whole population, not as individuals, which is how the laws of nature apply to us, it's not really just a crapshoot i don't think.

When it comes down to it, on a population level, survival is heightened by strength and ability and being able to do what it takes.

And the laws of nature are not very kind and not very forgiving. So, if you think of the world we live in as a giant feedback loop, eventually, what goes around comes around.....

And I think that we've been pretending for far too long that things can continue as they are and the population and the economy and worldwide consumption of goods can just keep expanding forever. So, if technology is how we hold all of this together, and the cause of much of it in the first place, perhaps technology, or the breakdown of it, will take it apart? Just how vulnerable we are as a population, and the threat we feel from this is very apparent in the huge sums of money being spent and even in the angst on this forum. Anyway, I've been enjoying seeing the responses here.

-- anita (hillsidefarm@drbs.com), March 19, 1999.


Anita,

We are in agreement. The "crapshoot" perspective is usually an individual one, although in the case of a comet, for example, striking the earth it would apply to everyone. As you noted, "kind" and "forgiving" are not natural terms, but man-made ones.

"Absolute" is more like one of Nature's terms; as in the Law of Gravity--no one disobeys it!

Still, your point is well taken. One of my favorite Einstein quotes is the one to the effect that, "God doesn't shoot dice with the universe!"

How about, the "crapshoot" has to apply to only a small part of Creation at any one time?

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), March 19, 1999.


Hardliner- yep- I'd agree that on an individual level, the crapshoot way of thought can apply. But not on a population level except for extinction type events(non man-made of course). On an individual level of course, everything is very relevant. For instance, if there is a 99% chance of surviving a particular kind of surgery, and you happen to fall into that other 1%, you're still 100% dead!

-- anita (hillsidefarm@drbs.com), March 19, 1999.

Hardliner

There is a school of thought (and I suscribe to it) that WWI and WWII were really only a a single war, with the period in between a sort of "global time-out" which Germany used to re-arm and continue the conflict.

andtime for Germany to react to the penalties imposed upon the people after WWI,...not the responsible government. Time for the German people to be beaten down to the point that they were ready, ripe pickins' for any clever manipulator to galvanize their pain into motive to wage another war.

Insofar as the so-called world leaders think they can still impose those draconian punishments upon "followers" of power-grasping governments, we still have some things to fear.

Can you say Iraq? Bosnia?

Ridiculous and repetitive human behavior that thinks..."we just need to "punish" those oppressed people a bit more. Then they'll get it."

If Y2K is more than a global bump in the road nobody's gonna do much war-waging except with stone knives and bear claws.

When will the garbage-thinking end?

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), March 19, 1999.


That dieoff.org is some more self-hating Horseshit that is put out by aetheist. Evoluton is a THEORY. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? A THEORY. It cannot explain symbiotic relationships, therefore it is completely wrong. This world is not uninhabitable by a long shot. The problems we are having are people policy problems. However, we must make nice. Must'nt hold anyone else accountable. We might offend them. If I sent you out in a car in minus 30 degrees; knowing the car would break down, and you froze to death, would Mother Nature be responsible?

-- KoFE (Your@town.USA), March 19, 1999.

Oh come on, KoFE,...the dieoffs of human civilizations are well-documented in history texts. No theory there. And Darwin is not involved. The fact that you mention atheists leads me to think that you have an "otherwise" agenda. How is what you "believe" any less theory?

Species thrive, survive and die. How are human beings immune? How except through what they can do to stop the mad juggernaut race to early extinction by fouling their own nest. Very few species do that.

Don't throw the atheist word around without references and imply you are making a scholarly contribution to this thread. Just jump out there and claim your deist proclivities. Be a man.

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), March 19, 1999.


making choices said, "Mother Nature has nothing to do with Y2K."

True enough. But the kind of thinking that got us into our environmental straits is analogous to the mindset that produced the technological glitch of all time.

Further, mc correctly observes, "Besides, she doesn't even exist."

Perhaps not as a physical entity, anymore than Santa Claus or God or Gaia, but as an objectivation of a worldview and attitude, yes, Virginia, there is a Mother Nature. It's not so much a "belief" as it is a way of looking at things. I "stipulate" that the world is sacred and conduct myself accordingly. If this attitude works--that is, if it can be maintained continuously, with no harm to the web of life, ie. it is sustainable--then it is good conduct.

I understand what you mean, makingchoices. I, too am a little uncomfortable with anthropomorphising or personifying Mother Nature. But it sometimes makes the conversation easier to conduct. Alluding to God as a person is the most common conversational modality among deists. That's why I prefer the vocabulary of Pantheism.

Watchful asserts, "Expect Mother Nature to be far more reliable than the behavior of mankind before, during and after OO."

In both positive and negative interpretations, I agree. This so-called complex social/economic/technical system we have devised is less reliable even though less complicated than most natural systems. We don't even understand our silly little manmade constructs, yet we feel we can understand and predict the behavior of natural systems.

Asks Hardliner: Do you know what "The Good Red Road" is?

Here my friend Hardliner is watering my Native American roots. The Red Road goes West, the direction of the sun, the direction of knowledge and wisdom, vision and enlightenment. It is the path we follow to join our ancestors.

Pilaya maya ye, Tunkashina Wakan Tanka. Pilaya maye ye. Teach us (show us the path), Great Spirit. Teach me.

Hallyx

"Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. The universe is God's self-portrait."---Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Sower)

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), March 20, 1999.


I must have hit a nerve.... I'll tell you why you did'nt answer my last question; It dealt with personal responsibility, and there was no one there to tell you what to say. Be a man? What happened to peacenik Donna?

-- KoFE (Beyond@2000.Not), March 20, 1999.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ