I'm a fairly old guy. As Fairly Old Guys are wont to do, I've been pondering.
In the last 60 years or so, I have observed the Earth going crazy. It's not the same Earth I was born on, and society has upended itself to the point that it is now upside down from what it was when I got used to it all those years ago. Furthermore, the crazy has been accelerating, and I wonder why. That's something I ponder.
Another thing that I've observed is that my planet is getting crowded. When I was born, the world population was around 3,000,000,000 souls. Now, it is at 7,695,749,479, and climbing. In just my lifetime, the world population has increased by 257%! That's something else I've pondered.
Then, in the quiet of one dark night, those two ponders bumped into one another. There were bruises. I'm curious now whether the two may be connected.
Lemmings
So, lemmings don't commit deliberate mass suicide for the betterment of their fellows as was commonly believed... BUT their migration habits often bring them to a bad end, and get their population back under control. Predators further keep them under control, and it appears that the predators' life cycles are geared to lemming population explosions.
Are people really very different from that? Human populations are out of control, and sure enough predators abound (more so than they did when I was younger and the population was lower), and migratory populations are wreaking havoc on host populations, with the concurrent clashes of cultures that brings... just like lemmings migrating and finding a bad end in that migration.
China and the United States have nearly the same land area. The US is about 2.5% smaller than China. However, the population densities in those two countries are vastly different. The US, with a 2019 population of 329,093,110 has about 36 people per square kilometer. China, on the other hand, with a 2019 population of 1,420,062,022 has about 151 people per square kilometer - a little over 4 times the US population density. China has a net OUTFLOW of migration. 324,919 people flee China every year. The US, on the other hand, has a net INFLOW of migration - and that inflow is a whopper. According to the UN, the US immigrates about 900,000 people a year... the most immigrants of any nation on Earth. The next closest is Germany with 370,000 immigrants a year, a little over a third of US immigrants.
Link
Lemmings. Migration. Disaster.
There is more to this population explosion than just folks refusing to work because they can lay around and make babies instead. Medical science has progressed to the point of being able to overcome Darwin. No longer is Survival of the Fittest the rule. Nowadays, a great many people who are UNFIT to survive make it through life all the same. Think on that just a minute - the human race has overruled Nature. We are allowing, perhaps forcing, unfit-for-survival humans to tip our population. This is having the deleterious effect of diluting the human gene pool, and is allowing unfit (including mentally unfit) humans to overrun the fit among us. Humans are living longer, on average, having more babies, on average, and getting crazier, on average, than ever before in the past. This is expressing itself in mass shootings, higher crime rates, and mass immigrations that are producing strife in culture clashes. The Human Race is, in effect, producing it's OWN predators.
It seems Mother Nature will always have her say.
At the time of the America Revolutionary War, about 3% of the world population was urban, the other 97% rural. After the Industrial Revolution, that jumped by a factor of 10, and 30% of the world population was urban, the other 70% rural. NOW, in 2019, 55% of the world population is urban, and a mere 45% rural. That trend is increasing, by about 1/3 to 1/2 percent per year currently. How the hell are humans going to feed themselves if that continues? City folks can't farm. they don't have the arable land to support themselves, and most no longer have the know-how to produce food. If everyone moves to the cities, who will be left in the countryside to feed those teeming masses? I knew we were in trouble when a survey of city folks a number of years ago indicated that they don't know where food comes from - the upshot was that it just "appeared" on grocery store shelves from their point of view, and THAT was the source of food.
Link
As population increases, as people live longer and unfit-for-survival folks increase among the general population, insanity is increasing as well. I personally believe that is the reason for the current political climes. Folks who are increasingly urban, uneducated, and greedy are voting themselves raises at the government expense. Not knowing where food comes from, or how it is procured, they think that just printing - or borrowing - more money will solve all ills. They seem not to realize that money does not equal food. How would they know? That has been their experience of life! Few of them realize you have to grub in the dirt, worry over rainfall, or kill odd beasts to make their steaks and side salads. Just printing more money will do nothing to husband the fields when everyone is rushing to the urban ant-hills.
Socialists in particular seem to think that's how it works. Just "control the means of production", print enough money to make everyone rich, and all will be well. I have to wonder, however, how all those Socialized, Unionized, United Factory Workers are going to produce anything at all, even by "owning the means of production", when they weigh 73 pounds and look like Death Camp survivors because no one is out in the hinterlands making food to feed them. Who will they get to work those fields, grub in the dirt, and kill their steaks? Certainly not to pampered city folks who are busy voting themselves raises at the government expense! They think just printing more free money is the answer!
John Titor was probably a fraud. I'm almost certain he didn't really come from the future to warn us... but he WAS a fantastic prognosticator. When pressed, he refused to flat out state that the war he saw coming in our future was ideological "left vs. right" or cultural "urban vs. rural". Instead, he insinuated both and confirmed neither... and I believe, from what I see, that he was right. Sure, his time-line was way off (Russia never nuked DC in March 2015, for instance), but I believe it was on track for what is coming...
... because, at the basic level, humans are lemmings.
We are overpopulating, and stacking that population with idjits and lunatics - and producing our own predators via such mechanisms as the aforementioned increase in unfit-for-survival insane and stupid folk..
Immigrants are swarming "the good lands", which, if unchecked, they will turn into the same shit-holes they came from. When they do, there will be a net outflow of people from the old "good lands" (newly made shit-holes) to new "good lands" (former shit holes), and the cycle will continue. Crazies will continue to increase, and push crazy and stupid to the masses, who, because they are conditioned to crazy and stupid, will eat that crap up... until they die.
About half of the US population is stupid enough to live within 50 miles of a coast. I suspect that the rest of the world is more or less the same. When Global Warming raises the sea level far enough, those folks will drown, just like migrating lemmings. Some will flee the coasts inland to rural areas, but - as John Titor said - farmers have nothing better to do when they stop farming than hide in the bushes and shoot interlopers.
Mother Nature will have her say, some will survive, and the human race will continue... but it's going to be a hell of a ride, it appears.
Buckle up, y'all, and don't be lemmings!
Note: it took me an hour and 15 minutes to formulate this post. In that time, the world population has increased to 7,695,761, 115 people, a net increase of 11,636 people. That is 2.6 people PER SECOND, and factors in the dying folks in the same time period. By the time I get this posted, and more importantly by the time you read it, there will be many, MANY more. Some of them are crazy, and many of them are stupid. A few are fit for survival, the rest are not. Good luck, folks!
Link
.
In the last 60 years or so, I have observed the Earth going crazy. It's not the same Earth I was born on, and society has upended itself to the point that it is now upside down from what it was when I got used to it all those years ago. Furthermore, the crazy has been accelerating, and I wonder why. That's something I ponder.
Another thing that I've observed is that my planet is getting crowded. When I was born, the world population was around 3,000,000,000 souls. Now, it is at 7,695,749,479, and climbing. In just my lifetime, the world population has increased by 257%! That's something else I've pondered.
Then, in the quiet of one dark night, those two ponders bumped into one another. There were bruises. I'm curious now whether the two may be connected.
Lemmings
Quote:Behavior
Like many other rodents, lemmings have periodic population booms and then disperse in all directions, seeking the food and shelter their natural habitats cannot provide. The Norway lemming and brown lemming are two of the few vertebrates which reproduce so quickly that their population fluctuations are chaotic,[4][5] rather than following linear growth to a carrying capacity or regular oscillations. Why lemming populations fluctuate with such great variance roughly every four years, before numbers drop to near extinction, is not known.[6] Lemming behaviour and appearance are markedly different from those of other rodents, which are inconspicuously coloured and try to conceal themselves from their predators. Lemmings, by contrast, are conspicuously coloured and behave aggressively towards predators and even human observers. The lemming defence system is thought to be based on aposematism (warning display).[7] Fluctuations in the lemming population affect the behaviour of predators, and may fuel irruptions of birds of prey such as snowy owls to areas further south.[8]
For many years, the population of lemmings was believed to change with the population cycle, but now some evidence suggests their predators' populations, particularly those of the stoat, may be more closely involved in changing the lemming population.[citation needed]
Misconceptions
Misconceptions about lemmings go back many centuries. In the 1530s, geographer Zeigler of Strasbourg proposed the theory that the creatures fell out of the sky during stormy weather[9] and then died suddenly when the grass grew in spring.[10] This description was contradicted by natural historian Ole Worm, who accepted that lemmings could fall out of the sky, but claimed that they had been brought over by the wind rather than created by spontaneous generation. Worm first published dissections of a lemming, which showed that they are anatomically similar to most other rodents such as voles and hamsters, and the work of Carl Linnaeus proved that they had a natural origin.
Lemmings have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they are driven to commit mass suicide when they migrate by jumping off cliffs. It is not a deliberate mass suicide where the animal voluntarily chooses to die, but rather a result of their migratory behavior. Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. They can swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. In such cases, many drown if the chosen body of water happens to be the Atlantic Ocean, or is in any case so wide as to exceed their physical capabilities. This, the unexplained fluctuations in the population of Norwegian lemmings, and perhaps a small amount of semantic confusion (suicide not being limited to voluntary deliberation, but also the result of foolishness), gave rise to the myth.[citation needed]
So, lemmings don't commit deliberate mass suicide for the betterment of their fellows as was commonly believed... BUT their migration habits often bring them to a bad end, and get their population back under control. Predators further keep them under control, and it appears that the predators' life cycles are geared to lemming population explosions.
Are people really very different from that? Human populations are out of control, and sure enough predators abound (more so than they did when I was younger and the population was lower), and migratory populations are wreaking havoc on host populations, with the concurrent clashes of cultures that brings... just like lemmings migrating and finding a bad end in that migration.
China and the United States have nearly the same land area. The US is about 2.5% smaller than China. However, the population densities in those two countries are vastly different. The US, with a 2019 population of 329,093,110 has about 36 people per square kilometer. China, on the other hand, with a 2019 population of 1,420,062,022 has about 151 people per square kilometer - a little over 4 times the US population density. China has a net OUTFLOW of migration. 324,919 people flee China every year. The US, on the other hand, has a net INFLOW of migration - and that inflow is a whopper. According to the UN, the US immigrates about 900,000 people a year... the most immigrants of any nation on Earth. The next closest is Germany with 370,000 immigrants a year, a little over a third of US immigrants.
Link
Lemmings. Migration. Disaster.
There is more to this population explosion than just folks refusing to work because they can lay around and make babies instead. Medical science has progressed to the point of being able to overcome Darwin. No longer is Survival of the Fittest the rule. Nowadays, a great many people who are UNFIT to survive make it through life all the same. Think on that just a minute - the human race has overruled Nature. We are allowing, perhaps forcing, unfit-for-survival humans to tip our population. This is having the deleterious effect of diluting the human gene pool, and is allowing unfit (including mentally unfit) humans to overrun the fit among us. Humans are living longer, on average, having more babies, on average, and getting crazier, on average, than ever before in the past. This is expressing itself in mass shootings, higher crime rates, and mass immigrations that are producing strife in culture clashes. The Human Race is, in effect, producing it's OWN predators.
It seems Mother Nature will always have her say.
At the time of the America Revolutionary War, about 3% of the world population was urban, the other 97% rural. After the Industrial Revolution, that jumped by a factor of 10, and 30% of the world population was urban, the other 70% rural. NOW, in 2019, 55% of the world population is urban, and a mere 45% rural. That trend is increasing, by about 1/3 to 1/2 percent per year currently. How the hell are humans going to feed themselves if that continues? City folks can't farm. they don't have the arable land to support themselves, and most no longer have the know-how to produce food. If everyone moves to the cities, who will be left in the countryside to feed those teeming masses? I knew we were in trouble when a survey of city folks a number of years ago indicated that they don't know where food comes from - the upshot was that it just "appeared" on grocery store shelves from their point of view, and THAT was the source of food.
Link
As population increases, as people live longer and unfit-for-survival folks increase among the general population, insanity is increasing as well. I personally believe that is the reason for the current political climes. Folks who are increasingly urban, uneducated, and greedy are voting themselves raises at the government expense. Not knowing where food comes from, or how it is procured, they think that just printing - or borrowing - more money will solve all ills. They seem not to realize that money does not equal food. How would they know? That has been their experience of life! Few of them realize you have to grub in the dirt, worry over rainfall, or kill odd beasts to make their steaks and side salads. Just printing more money will do nothing to husband the fields when everyone is rushing to the urban ant-hills.
Socialists in particular seem to think that's how it works. Just "control the means of production", print enough money to make everyone rich, and all will be well. I have to wonder, however, how all those Socialized, Unionized, United Factory Workers are going to produce anything at all, even by "owning the means of production", when they weigh 73 pounds and look like Death Camp survivors because no one is out in the hinterlands making food to feed them. Who will they get to work those fields, grub in the dirt, and kill their steaks? Certainly not to pampered city folks who are busy voting themselves raises at the government expense! They think just printing more free money is the answer!
John Titor was probably a fraud. I'm almost certain he didn't really come from the future to warn us... but he WAS a fantastic prognosticator. When pressed, he refused to flat out state that the war he saw coming in our future was ideological "left vs. right" or cultural "urban vs. rural". Instead, he insinuated both and confirmed neither... and I believe, from what I see, that he was right. Sure, his time-line was way off (Russia never nuked DC in March 2015, for instance), but I believe it was on track for what is coming...
... because, at the basic level, humans are lemmings.
We are overpopulating, and stacking that population with idjits and lunatics - and producing our own predators via such mechanisms as the aforementioned increase in unfit-for-survival insane and stupid folk..
Immigrants are swarming "the good lands", which, if unchecked, they will turn into the same shit-holes they came from. When they do, there will be a net outflow of people from the old "good lands" (newly made shit-holes) to new "good lands" (former shit holes), and the cycle will continue. Crazies will continue to increase, and push crazy and stupid to the masses, who, because they are conditioned to crazy and stupid, will eat that crap up... until they die.
About half of the US population is stupid enough to live within 50 miles of a coast. I suspect that the rest of the world is more or less the same. When Global Warming raises the sea level far enough, those folks will drown, just like migrating lemmings. Some will flee the coasts inland to rural areas, but - as John Titor said - farmers have nothing better to do when they stop farming than hide in the bushes and shoot interlopers.
Mother Nature will have her say, some will survive, and the human race will continue... but it's going to be a hell of a ride, it appears.
Buckle up, y'all, and don't be lemmings!
Note: it took me an hour and 15 minutes to formulate this post. In that time, the world population has increased to 7,695,761, 115 people, a net increase of 11,636 people. That is 2.6 people PER SECOND, and factors in the dying folks in the same time period. By the time I get this posted, and more importantly by the time you read it, there will be many, MANY more. Some of them are crazy, and many of them are stupid. A few are fit for survival, the rest are not. Good luck, folks!
Link
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’