Various threads put me on reflection about how seriously some people take the idea that it is possible for human beings to somehow "own" areas of land, or even that there is such a thing as an association between land and people that can last for millennia.
That strikes me as exceedingly odd. The world's population did not reach one billion people until around 1800, and it is now doubling every few decades. At the same time, we are expecting Earth to sustain ever growing levels of personal consumption. And our international relations and much of our general policies seems to make a point of thinking nothing of exploding things with a certain panache and pride whenever possible.
Now, logically, it is simply not possible to expect to have anything resembling a stable society if personal space for each individual keeps getting halved at least once (and soon twice, then even more often) during the lifetime of every generation. We are not collectively exactly well adapted to that. And indeed, for nearly all of our recorded history we have instead chosen to keep the demographic dilemmas manageable by engaging in periodic rituals of pride and prunning, more often known as "war". At times that was made less necessary by famine and disease.
The bottom line is that we have quite a history of knowing how to deal with widespread death, but are nearly clueless about the ways of dealing with stable population levels - and it definitely shows. Even our political models seem to be all but fully incapable of dealing with the massive amounts of people we now have. We are simply too many now for our traditional means of dealing with conflict, disagreement and personal ambitions to fully work anymore. We have lost so much of the privacy and power of decision that former generations used to take for granted that seeking individual traits has become a major motivator, particularly since the 1990s.
Still, the basic human needs are almost unchanged, even if we don't always realize how much harder it can be to fulfill them these days. We still seek recognition, active voice, personal space, security, safety and prestige. More to the point, we have a very strong tendency to basically freak out when denied the hope of attaining them all.
Don't you think that many of the most persistent or difficult troubles that our societies face these days are ultimately sustained by the considerable confusion and uncertainties that this rapid and misunderstood demographical change caused? We are still attempting to rely on values, strategies and priorities established along many generations that simply did not have need nor capability to deal with this situation as it is.
Survival of oneself and offspring used to be a fairly high priority just a few centuries ago. Now our challenges are more symbolic and abstract in nature, and so is our behavior - except that the demographical realities have become more challenging and just as indispensable as they ever were. To ever more worrisome levels we keep hoping to succeed in "third-partying" the weight lifting of our lifestyles and end up complaining that "things" just don't go our way, perhaps without realizing that we are in effect turning our back to those same "things" and hoping for no good reason that they will simply settle in a way that is more palatable, perhaps of their own accord.
In essence, I suspect that we are collectively at least a bit deluded into expecting reality to bend to our convenience instead of accepting that it is our need and duty to bend ourselves in order to enable our goals into existence. That combination of increasing levels of demographic challenge (of ever greater complexity), less personal confort, more development of false "needs" and additional difficulty at attaining participation on the decisions that affect our present and our future seems to be a recipe for eventual disaster to me.
That strikes me as exceedingly odd. The world's population did not reach one billion people until around 1800, and it is now doubling every few decades. At the same time, we are expecting Earth to sustain ever growing levels of personal consumption. And our international relations and much of our general policies seems to make a point of thinking nothing of exploding things with a certain panache and pride whenever possible.
Now, logically, it is simply not possible to expect to have anything resembling a stable society if personal space for each individual keeps getting halved at least once (and soon twice, then even more often) during the lifetime of every generation. We are not collectively exactly well adapted to that. And indeed, for nearly all of our recorded history we have instead chosen to keep the demographic dilemmas manageable by engaging in periodic rituals of pride and prunning, more often known as "war". At times that was made less necessary by famine and disease.
The bottom line is that we have quite a history of knowing how to deal with widespread death, but are nearly clueless about the ways of dealing with stable population levels - and it definitely shows. Even our political models seem to be all but fully incapable of dealing with the massive amounts of people we now have. We are simply too many now for our traditional means of dealing with conflict, disagreement and personal ambitions to fully work anymore. We have lost so much of the privacy and power of decision that former generations used to take for granted that seeking individual traits has become a major motivator, particularly since the 1990s.
Still, the basic human needs are almost unchanged, even if we don't always realize how much harder it can be to fulfill them these days. We still seek recognition, active voice, personal space, security, safety and prestige. More to the point, we have a very strong tendency to basically freak out when denied the hope of attaining them all.
Don't you think that many of the most persistent or difficult troubles that our societies face these days are ultimately sustained by the considerable confusion and uncertainties that this rapid and misunderstood demographical change caused? We are still attempting to rely on values, strategies and priorities established along many generations that simply did not have need nor capability to deal with this situation as it is.
Survival of oneself and offspring used to be a fairly high priority just a few centuries ago. Now our challenges are more symbolic and abstract in nature, and so is our behavior - except that the demographical realities have become more challenging and just as indispensable as they ever were. To ever more worrisome levels we keep hoping to succeed in "third-partying" the weight lifting of our lifestyles and end up complaining that "things" just don't go our way, perhaps without realizing that we are in effect turning our back to those same "things" and hoping for no good reason that they will simply settle in a way that is more palatable, perhaps of their own accord.
In essence, I suspect that we are collectively at least a bit deluded into expecting reality to bend to our convenience instead of accepting that it is our need and duty to bend ourselves in order to enable our goals into existence. That combination of increasing levels of demographic challenge (of ever greater complexity), less personal confort, more development of false "needs" and additional difficulty at attaining participation on the decisions that affect our present and our future seems to be a recipe for eventual disaster to me.
