What is the world coming too?

[Tetsuo_Shima]

I hope, with all my heart, that all supporters of the VHEMT's ultimate point of view die out before they get a chance to convince us that they are correct and I really dont care who reads that. Willful 'sacricfice' of the human race is in no way an answer to any problem, I just find it repulsive that anyone could ever follow that train of thought.

The human race holds the wonderful gift of intelligence, why not use the intelligence to try and push technology forward to try and formulate new ideas to save the planet - even if it is developing space travel and leaving the planet to it's own devices, at we'll still be around (thankfully, 99.9% of us share this point of view). A far better solution than ritual suicide which is ignorant, stupid and just generally wrong. Hell, maybe if we stick around long enough we can develop some technology that might prove beneficial to the rest of the species that inhabit the earth.

Let's assume, even, that humans did go plain crazy and sacrifice ourselves for the good of every living thing - eventually another species is going to evolve to take our place and then we'll have acheived nothing apart from the extinction of the greatest creature that ever walked the earth.

What is the world coming to indeed?

 

[Ronin Storm]

VHEMT doesn't advocate suicide. They advocate a lack of procreation. As a planet, we're already suffering the problems inherent in escalating overpopulation. Why add to the already immense burden on our ecosystem?

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

But it is in essence the mass suicide of our species, the deliberate ending of our livelihood. Overpopulation is indeed a problem, but the solution is not to make sure nobody lives at all. That's just crazy talk. If there were some humane way to cut back, but certainly not eradicate , our numbers then I guess that would be of great benefit to all. However, who's going to decide wholives or dies?

 

[Ronin Storm]

Woah, hang on. Still think you've got the wrong end of the stick there. There's no talk of dying here. No talk of killing people off, 99% viruses or anything crazy like that. There's even a total lack of talk of enforcement or other fascist means of preventing people having babies. VHEMT merely believe that adding new babies to a world that is replete with children who the world already seems not to give a shit about is destructive to them and to our global ecology.

Thousands of children need good homes already. Probably tens or hundreds of thousands. There's absolutely no way, realistically, that people are going to globally stop having babies, but if a good proportion of us decide to not create new babies we can better put resources at caring for the ones that have been created.

So there's no deciding who lives and dies. There's only a personal choice, which you have anyway whether you choose to exercise the right to make that choice or not -- should I have babies or not? VHEMT note that people default to having babies where, probably, our default should be not to have babies.

We are a species expanding at an exponential rate. Our planet cannot continue to support us at that rate of growth. We aren't colonising Alpha Centauri or whatever any time soon and we are staring down the barrel of imminent ecological disaster within two or three generations. Aside from anything else we might do, we can slow this disaster down by reducing our rate of population growth and the only way we do that is by not having children.

But, as VHEMT note repeatedly, it's your choice. They encourage you to live a long and exceptional life. Just don't make new babies.

 

[SgtFury]

The problem there is if all the people who genetically and intelligently have something to give to the human race (not saying any of us have ) stop having babies what would happen then?

Just a thought.

 

[Ronin Storm]

We just don't know what anyone realistically has to offer to the human race when they are embryonic or even an uncombined pair of genetic materials. Should we breed super geniuses to find they are sterile? Or athletes to find they all die before they're 25? Or maybe some marvelous balanced equation to find they're all fatally susceptible to the same strain of flu? As a species, we are diverse for that very reason -- to keep the species alive whatever may come.

Besides, how crucial are our genetics when it comes to, say, inventing the spacecraft that gets us to Alpha Centauri (or where ever)? Maybe we could take any child and through an excellent child rearing we help them become the super genius that saves the world.

And, in any case, it seems to me that this is still just guessing, hoping that the next generation will fix everything for us. We're running rapidly out of time. Better those people with a genetic or intelligent contribution to make do that contribution now, not hope that their children will do what they did not, I feel.

Damn, didn't intend to become a spokesman for VHEMT.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

I'm not saying they are killing people, but through ceasing to breed they are promoting the end of human life. I'm not entirely sure if you only support them to the point of halting, or even cutting back into, population growth or if you would actually have us go all the way and walk the human race into oblivion.

I also realise that it is a personal choice, and for that I am glad. Don't want to have kids? Alright then, its your choice. But to choose not to have kids, and provoke others into thinking the same way, with the aim of obliterating your own species? I think some radical questions have to be asked at this point.

If this is the way we have ended up thinking then our evolution must have been flawed.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Do I want humans to die out? Nope. In that, my stance doesn't fully mesh with VHEMT's. I do believe that we should make huge efforts, as a civilisation, to halt our rising population. Indeed, a slow dwindling in population by maybe two or three billion (making a rough estimate at a world population of around eight or nine billion) would suit me fine, but I'd look for that to happen over maybe a millenia (pulling a number out of the air).

We're already outstripping our planet's ability to cope with our demands. Either we go somewhere else or we find ways to stop the destruction. Our incessant overbreeding, as a civilisation, will probably lead to our destruction otherwise. How much resource pressure will it take for the burgeoning nuclear powers to decide that emptying their nuclear arsenals on their neighbours is a really good idea...? I have no idea, but the bombs are there and the pressure is there and it's ever-mounting.

What is the world coming too? Too many people with too high a demand for our ecosystem to handle, would be my answer.

Unfortunately, I also disagree with VHEMT on another point: a purely voluntary birth control system seems highly unlikely to work, especially when you consider it is in direct conflict with whole nations' belief systems. The only way I see humanity, as a species, curbing its blind expansion is through some radical sterility loss across the board. Now, I'm not advocating we seek some mechanism to forcibly sterilise people, but if we walked into an evolutionary or ecological avenue that made that reality then a whole bunch of overpopulation issues would die off within a generation.

As for flawed evolution... we are what we are and we've turned out the way we have. Evolution is just a name for the way we have survived, applied in retrospect; somehow we came out top of the food chain, proved ourselves "fitter" than other species, or whatever. We're human and like any complex organic system we have our strengths and flaws. Was our evolution flawed to lead us to overpopulate? Only insofar as any organism when it no longer has any ecological controls applied to it. Tigers are few because the energy pyramid in which they sit only provides enough energy to sustain a few of them. Humans have managed to expand the footprint of that energy pyramid again and again so that more and more of us can exist. There's only so much land and only so many resources, though, and we're filling all that we can. Maybe it wasn't evolution that was flawed... just our own igenuity.

So, I'll choose to not have children, ever. It would almost be a futile gesture, but in fact none of the ecological reasons would be the ones I'd state for not having children. I simply have no interest in creating babies.

There was an interesting and amusing one liner in the VHEMT site that tickled me:

Make memes not genes.

I'll buy that.

 

[DocBot]

The only real effect they might percievably accomplish is to lower the global birth rate. This would, as Ronin already pointed out, be a good thing. For the planet = for the humans species. I am however a firm believer in the theory that the global population will be "culled", either from lack of resources or a pandemic, if we don't stop overcrowding the planet.

Then when it comes to the bit about how important our genes are compared to child rearing as regards the production of geniuses - that's a whole other story. I think it goes something like this:

Geniuses will be geniuses regardless of their upbringing. "Good" child rearing that stimulates intellectual growth is limited by the latent intellectual ability of the child in question.

[please note the "I think" above]

 

[PsiSoldier]

Talking of the end of the world...

There'd be alot less death if the Chinese didn't discover black powder

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Or if the Colombians hadn't cultivated white powder, but thats another story...