My problem with Utopias is always that in practice they so easily
flip into Dystopias, a fascist purity which in the end obscures the
human altogether. The 20C has been an interesting experiment this
way, with some terrifying failures, and it's always been the problem
inside the ideals of humanism. That was substituting Man for God;
here you're substituting Nature for God. I can't see it's any
better, and as Dave points out, the real problems are the usage of
resources and the distributions of power.
A
>Alison Croggon wrote:
>>
>> Whew, Josephine, are you really trying to line up with the Moral
>> Majority...
>
>Not at all. My observation is that nearly every 'problem' we
>have could be solved by reducing the world's population. I'm
>thinking about things like environmental sustainability and
>competition for limited resources.
>
>The aids reference was to do with ecosystems. Generally if a
>population of a species becomes too large, nature adjusts by
>a plague or other natural mechanism to bring things back
>into balance. In man's case this includes war. We have
>removed most of natures checks against mankind's
>overpopulation by not sending our surplus males to die in
>hand to hand warfare and by so called 'improvements' in
>medicine. Aids is the latest equivalent of the black death,
>I wasnt making a moral judgement about sexual preferences.
>
>And I'm not proposing we go out and kill people David,
>(though I have a personal wishlist of who would be in the
>75% *grin*). The Chinese tried to reduce their population by
>restricting birth control to one shild per family. THey are
>on the right track. THey just have to accept that 51% of
>babies are female...
>
>No, its a nice thought, but the mechanics of how to reduce
>by 75% is beyond me.
>
>I dont know otiose? ANd doesn't decimate mean to reduce by
>10% only - I see this misused a lot.
>
>Not meaning to offend here, just trying to be brief - I'm
>very busy for the next few days and havent got the time to
>say what I really want to say the way I would like to say
>it. SOrry for the misunderstanding.
>
>I'll shut up and get back to my task for a while
>Josie
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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