Have been listening to Alex Jones a fair bit recently. He is a proper old fashioned fire and brimstone preacher, but for conspiracy theories. He was ranting about how the "global powers" want to cull the human race, which is clearly an act of almost unthinkable evil. It made me recall a poster at work. It was complaining about how 1,000,000 people die in Africa every year of Malaria and asking me to donate a small amount of money to stop this happening. I recall pointing out to a colleague that it would be irresponsible of me to cure Malaria without paying for those additional people to eat.
As I was walking home from the gym (through Glasgow town to the less salubrious quarter of Partick) I pondered this and thought that at some point, there is likely going to be a time where there are too many people for the Earth's limited resources to support (at our current level of consumption). Ok, so, I still can't imagine culling 70% of the Earth's population to save my own bacon. But, lets look at it from another perspective - imagine the earth is failing, perhaps it's falling into the sun or something. A rocket ship has landed and can take 30% of the people on earth to safety. Would you want to be on the ship? Would it be ok to leave 70% of the population behind?
Thought experiment
As I was pondering all of this, I came out of my reverie as I was accosted by a very drunk young man (at 11am on a Saturday - gooooooo Glasgow) looking for his bus fare home. I looked at the horror show of life shuffling by me: old men in suits sat in doorways too drunk to stand; fat mums screaming at their kids, cigarette in hand and I wondered if it would be such a terrible thing if these people didn't make it onto the rocket ship?
As a thought experiment, I tried to snapshot a group of people in my mind and figure out the 70% who would be left and the 30 who would come with me to start a new life on another planted. During the 20 minute remainder of the walk, I found 1 other person I would want to share a planet with and I think that was only because she wasn't wearing a bra...
Or we could consider that biology doesn't remotely work the way you describe but certainly human science and engineering doesn't. As I have pointed out in a rant or two, e.g. Full or Empty?, the resources of the Solar System are, for practical purposes, infinite.
ReplyDeleteYou're thinking inside the box, as usual. I'd say, "Clearly I have taught you nothing" but I've always presumed I'm pretty much speaking to myself when in conversation with you... after all, there's two enormous egos in the way.
That said, as a People of Walmart fan and long time alien and mutant spotter, I'm entirely open to the idea of culling 70% of the human population. The problem is making it the right 70% and, clearly, for this to happen successfully I should be the one in charge.
I dance around and sing a song and know that I can do no wrong.
Alex Jones Rules!!!!!
Fag.