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Population control
The_Fruit_Punch_Wiza
Veteran
How can we do it in a way that doesn't harm?
I say promotion of abstinence, rewards for celibacy, and sex education combined.
I say promotion of abstinence, rewards for celibacy, and sex education combined.
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Sarcasm aside, I know what you're saying. The population is high and it's putting a strain the resources and blah blah blah, so we need to stop reproducing, because that's the compassionate thing to do. However, that's the theory proposed by Malthus and it's not really based on any hard data. It has been shown to be inaccurate time and time again.
The world population is going to peak at 9 billion, whether you get involved or not. If you feel it's necessary, then that's your personal choice.
Well, yeah given the immediate concerns.... Never mind Mathus specifically, but with Scarcity of Resources available resources will not be sufficient to meet the demand of rising population. Only 3% of water on the planet is potable, so overpopulation problems will start with the lack of drinking water for millions of people across the globe right now. Land available for agricultural production is also shrinking, which means the amount of crop produced will decrease with time. If population increases and crop production decreases, a large part of population will be left to die of hunger. You already know how Thomas Malthus had predicted this problem of food shortage due to rise in population two centuries ago through his theory of population. Scarcity of resources will not just be restricted to food and water, it will also affect various other walks of life, including health services, jobs and many basic amenities. Then we get to the other problems. The amount of waste produced by increasing population will hamper the waste management program in several countries. Untreated waste and poor hygiene will result in the spread of diseases. This is already happening in India.
A large population makes the spread of contagious diseases even easier. Health resources available with us will not be sufficient enough to cater to the needs of the huge population in case of an epidemic, and the death toll will be difficult to handle. Entire planet will experience large scale outbreaks of diseases, which will wipe out a large part of population by itself. Increase in population will also increase the anthropogenic activities which cause global warming and related climate change. Larger the population, more will be the environmental issues that we will have to deal with like pollution and deforestation. We have proved time and again that we won't hesitate to encroach upon the natural surroundings and destroy them if we don't have a place to stay. This will result in loss of habitat for various species and cause a severe ecological imbalance on the planet. It would be foolish to expect that we will be safe from these overpopulation effects, as all lifeforms subsisting on this planet, including humans, are dependent on each other, either directly or indirectly.
These overpopulation problems would not have affected us if we had unlimited land and resources, but that is not the case. Already limited resources are being continuously divided into smaller and smaller portions, especially the land. Perhaps we are yet to understand the hazards of overpopulation, or maybe we will continue to turn a blind eye to them until it causes some serious calamity. The need of the hour is to identify the solutions for these overpopulation issues, and to come up with some measures to curb incessant growth of population. If we don't put in efforts today, tomorrow may not even give us a chance to ponder over the situation
Which part? The green revolution is over, and we're out of trump cards.
You mean by what I already proposed or your invocation of Goodwin's law?
we reward exclusive relationships institutionally and culturally (marriage), to combat infidelity and to promote healthy development of children, and also many other various reasons, and so I think we should reward celibacy in order to address the problem of overpopulation before we wipe ourselves out from sickness, disease, and starvation.
If we teach and promote abstinence positively, then we get less people having children. If we reward people who live celibate lives (lives which are harder to live than noncelibate ones) we will get less people having children, and if we have sex education then we get less people having children.
Via the means you proposed, I wouldn't go down the other path twice.
Well, lets talk about water first. Yes, only a tiny percentage of the world's water is drinkable and it's not evenly distributed. Australia and African countries have a great shortage of water, yet many parts of Europe have more fresh water than they know what to do with. Is the answer necessarily population reduction? We have water restrictions which work quite well and we're building a desalination plant to handle some of the demand. Yes, I am also aware that there's the question of what to do with the salt. Careful and controlled return to the ocean works quite well.
In short, I think technology is a viable answer.
Untreated waste and poor hygiene - I wouldn't that that's the effect of overpopulation, but poor managment. Corruption is rampant in India, so much of the money that's meant to be used to help people, ends up in the wrong hands. India is not a good example to use because there are so many other problems that come in before overpopulation.
Food:
We are nowhere near maximum capacity when it comes to food production. It comes back down to management and technology. World vision is doing some great work in Africa by teaching communities to produce their own food.
An overall example would be Japan. It has a very high population density, but their resource management is great, so they have the world's longest life expectancy.
I wouldn't say it all comes down to population. It's an oversimplification of the problem and moves the focus away from proper management and development, which I think can be quite dangerous.
May I ask how your interest in this area was sparked?
An article about the mishandling of hygiene in India. I read something about how in India open air defecation and contamination of the water supply is the leading cause of problems there. My immediate thought was that it's obvious it'd become a problem with such a dense population so the thought came to me that if more birth control and sex education was available it'd curb the problems.
That's an interesting way of putting the question. To be specific, cause harm to who or what? Our individual freedom to make babies? The fertilized egg in the woman?
All of your suggestions have been tried, and failed dismally. You are going up against the fundamental instinctive drive of life, the Urge to Merge. Sex. People are going to do it. Period. No marketing campaign saying abstinence is now the cool trend, classrooms filled with charts showing the link between sex and pregnancy is going to stop girls and boys getting it on.
As for rewards for not having children (I assume you mean that, since the thought of having a girl prove she's a virgin to get a reward is kinda squirky), that sort of social engineering runs into our moral grey zone pretty fast.
So given that, (1) people are gonna get it on, and (2) people have a limited capacity to care about abstract issues like global population growth, what can we do? The only window we have is that people want sex, not necessarily children.
Provide free and effective and easy to use birth control and encourage people to use it. That includes men as well as women, and both before and after sex contaceptives.
What are we doing, instead? World religions tell people contraception is a sin that sends them to hell. Fundamentalists scream for the sacred right of every fertilized egg to be born.
So what we, as a species, have decided is to let nature take its course, more or less. Nature will eventually take care of overpopulation.
That's humanity, for you.
Neither, of those I mean the planet.
Right that excuses them. What was I thinking? Human urge should be absolutely satisfied even if it hurts others.
We can't address the problem if we don't honestly confront the issues.
It certainly does, but what would you prefer?
What excuses that?
Increasing the capacity to care about global population growth is a start then. Trying to say it's an urge, let 'em do it is as ridiculous as saying give an addict his drugs. It's harmful.
And isn't that even more telling that it has more to do with pleasure and sensuality than any piss poor excuse people try to think up?
I'm for that as well.
I'm a Buddhist. Theravada Buddhist. That is idiotic to me. world religions do that but they also say sex is a sin as well don't they?
That's a grey area too because we don't know if they're people. Can't deny that we don't know. We might be promoting even more filicide with our ignorance.
Right so you're suggesting wait for the entire planet to be destroyed, all of humanity, all animals, and the whole planet gone because people can't learn to control their sexual urges? That's irresponsible.
I think Japan is a great example as to how the world can deal with over population. They do not have as many homeless people as the U.S. or India they have more educated people, people who live longer, they have better technology and they also respect nature more than most developed Countries.
They're a leading society in our world and do all this in a space smaller than California. The future is being led by Japan right now. They don't do everything better, but probably most of it. If they can do it, the rest of the world should be able to learn from them.
No, I'm saying you can't get most people to control their sexual urges through an intellectual appeal. It's looking at the reality of the world so you can actually do something effective instead of wasting time, effort, and resources.
That leaves either letting people choose to have sex without pregnancies, ie a massive contraception campaign, or coercion, or a combination if you want to get really serious. China was rightfully slammed by human rights groups across the world for their one-child policy but it worked.
Real population control is going to have a social cost, that's all I'm saying.
Why?
Because that's the way people are. I don't know how else to put it. Emotion always trumps intellect. A small group of people can be motivated enough to take vows of celebacy, but that does not mean you can get an entire society to do it. Even then, there's a reason why monks and nuns did not live in coed quarters. Those vows would take a beating otherwise.
Put a group of men and women together, and they're going to have sex, and nothing you say is going to talk them out of it. You can give them the resources not to have babies while they're doing it, though.
On the subject of chastity pledges by teenagers, we have the salutary example of the "Silver Ring Thing": increases in STDs and unwanted pregnancy when the ring is abandoned.
Besides natures own control mechanisms that are mention before (mainly resources) there are some cultural aspects that already have population control in them. Like no sex for marriage and there are more of these "hidden" control mechanisms.
If you really want to get in to this topic. Here is an excellent source
http://oyc.yale.edu/molecular-cellular-and-developmental-biology/global-problems-of-population-growth/content/class-sessions
My niece was part of that Silver Ring Thing movement. She and the girls in her church group all joined. A rather self-selecting membership with troubling evangelizing by Christian organizations built into the program.
And studies did show that when a teen member broke their pledge, they tended not to use protection and ended up with higher than average incidents of std and pregnancy.
Given a choice, people want sex and will use contraception if it's available and socially expected. But that's only one part of the problem. We also have cultures where after marriage, large families are expected and wanted. Usually these are cultures with no social security type program, and children are the only way anyone can get care in their old age.
And, not all cultures have the same rate of population growth right now. So if you tell some people they need to not have so many children, they see it as an attempt to keep their population down while everyone else expands. Even in the good old USA, we have people screaming about how the white population doesn't have as many children as Hispanic and they will eventually be a minority. So does the educated white population preach abstinence to the Hispanics (who are mainly Catholic, so can't use contraception), and how well do you think that's going be received?
On top of that, the conservative political class wants to gut social security, so people will have to rely on children to support them in their retirement. Oh, and let's also eliminate sex education, access to contraceptives for teenagers, etc.
What a mess. I'm not saying we can't try to educate people, only that it's going to have very limited effect.
QED.
Population only seems to be out of control due to small part of the world consuming too much out of greed.
Oh, without a doubt in my mind.
hi Ch'an_noob ... my thoughts have gone to the same view on the issue. Tackling poverty and inequality must be addressed if we are to talk about the human world population issue.
I agree, but how?
The discussion needs to ensure mutual respect and I urge caution in discussing human population control. There are many good books and much research into this area and I can source some of it for you if you are interested. A good friend of mine is a Buddhist practitioner and an economist who is active in this area.
Rapid population growth is a symptom of problematic economic and social development rather than a cause - and if we are not careful suggestions that womens fertility rates are to blame for environmental degradation can arise. Any discussion in this area must begin with commitment to eliminate the gross inequities among nations and groups of people.
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Buddha contemplated entering Nirvana straight away after his enlightenment due to his concern that people would not listen to him because it's totally against their own igonrant reality and would instead slander him and the Dharma, hence cause more suffering for themselves and others. But luckily he stayed instead and tried to help people that are ready to listen.
I am just ashamed I wasted so much money on myself and hardly ever helped others before learning about Buddhism. I earn quite a good living for my age yet I complained about not having money cause greed is always expanding.
Any discussion about change to human population growth needs to include activity from a broad international network - it could happen if the commitment was made.
My concern is that any activity in any country be consistent with international and the nation's own specific human rights standards rather than allowing these to be violated " on the altar " of population control.
There is a tendency ( often well meaning it seems to me ) for us to believe that people need to be persuaded to have fewer children - and this is seen as being possible to do , or maybe even enforced, without addressing the conditions in which they live.
Access to safe, effective birth control methods must be seen as only a part of comprehensive health services - can not be offered in isloation and can't be done in the absence of basic health care services which require a standard of living which many people in our world do not have.
Isn't reproduction kind of an ego trip? People want to see their genes passed on, some want to raise little clones of themselves, little junior bankers, junior professors, whatever? If we conquer ego, then...no kids? (Simplistic, yes, I know.) Aren't there already enough unwanted kids on the planet that need loving parents? On the other hand, some of those unborn children might have grown up to be great humanitarians, gifted scientists, visionaries that move humanity forward, whatever.
Europe already has a shrinking population, which is causing economic problems there. Birth control methods, food, health care, education, a decent standard of living need to reach the poor of the world, as andyrobyn said. This takes money, and a restructuring of the global economy, and a reigning in of the corporations and their greed. Good luck with that.
Sex education, family planning provision. Giving all the women of the world the same possibilities to choose when to start and stop having children that women in the west have had for nearly half a century.
Its everywhere on TV and in books and films and stuff, just basically saying that there is nothing better than having kids and a family.
And everybody I know at the age of 20-21 is either wanting/planning/having kids already because they believe that its the best thing they can do with their lives.
I think we need to start with flyers to why kids and having a family is nothing compared to what you can do when you aren't nailed down with kids, and instead of glorifying family life, maybe glorifying all the cool stuff a childless couple, married or otherwise, can do.
Make the idea of having a family not so normal or nice, make people see it for what it really is.... a pain in the arse and a good way to end any freedom you might have when not being a slave to your job.
Abstainance doesn't work, its never done anything other teach kids that sex is evil and against god, and messed them up.
Promote contreception, by any means possible.
Also, stop with the benefits, if some chav slag has a kid, I think that people who are capable of taking care of a baby can put their names of a government waiting list, and a baby is born to a mother who is just going to use it for a free house and a bank full of tax payer money, then take the baby off her and give the baby to the couple who can take care of a kid.
Not only would that give a lot of kids who would grow up to be chav scum like their chav scum parents a chance to grow up right and be decent people....
But also I think with the benefit system over here in the UK, having a baby is a good way for A LOT of people to get free money and stuff, if you take that away I guarantee that the population of the UK alone will reduce massively in the next couple of years.
And, are you honestly saying that taking a baby away from its mother because she's poor or making people get government permission to have one is the kind of society you want to live in? Or would the rules only apply to chavs, whatever they are?
Been up north?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chav
http://www.penguinsix.com/images/chav.jpg
http://www.buytextbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/create-chav.jpg
For more details watch a TV show called Jeremy Kyle.
A chav is generally working class, which is fine because I'm working class and I'm not a chav.
They are violent, jobless and benefit taking.
A chav is the guy wearing a shell suit, drinking cheap lager in the centre of the city and completely drunk at 1pm, because it was his dole day.
Chavs are the people who mug people when they are on their way home from work.
Chavs are the people who nick your car and drive around blasting crappy dance music as loud as possible.
And they are totally common, ALL of my neihbors are chavs, and if my street burned down, I would be annoyed that my stuff is ruined, but I don't care how many of these pricks died.
All they do is collect the dole, then have a baby who will be dragged up to be another chav, and maybe have 6 kids, just so they can get benefits and stay out of a job.
The closest I have seen a chav to working is when I bought a bag of weed off one.
There is NOTHING I would love more than to see a chav bitch giving birth, which her scumbag boyfriend who beats her up next to her, when the baby comes out and them both grinning because of all the benefits they will get and the free council flat they will receive, then a guy in a suit comes in takes the baby, walks out the door and hands it to a nice looking couple who are decent people and who look happy just to see a newborn baby that they finally have and will raise the baby to be a decent member of society and then the suit man walk into the delivery room and say "The birth wont cost you anything, but you will receive no benefits or anything on behalf of the state, GET A JOB!!! have a nice day."
No, I don't mind the government having that power.
They already have enough power to fuck up everybody else who is a decent persons lives, why should chavs get the other side of the stick?
Bollocks to them.
If that happened, then people wouldn't be gaining everything that is offered from the government from having a kid, no benefits or free housing.
If the government stopped handing everything out to young mothers, and people who aren't fit to take care of kids have their kids taken and given to people who can.
I would put millions on the population of the UK to have dropped at least 20%.
My parents had me and needed to receive government payments to keep me in food and clothes and so they can cope.
My parents aren't chavs either, but I shouldn't have been born, because my parents shouldn't be having kids if they cant afford to look after them and require tax payer money to keep me alive and clothed.
I have 2 siblings, and if what I said happened, then I wouldn't have any and I wouldn't be born either and the population would absolutely pulmmet.
The problem is that those resources are poorly distributed. And I'm being nice with the word "poorly"
But at the same time you shouldn't push it.
I wonder how fast reincarnation is, because if somebody invents soylet green and soylent mush for babies, it would be weird to have been killed for food, then be a baby eating your former self.
But there are other answers besides eating the remains of humans. We have magnificent technology, truly magnificent. And if anyone had half the wit to they would put a lot of it towards developing new agriculture techniques, as well as new water desalinization methods so we can use seawater instead of our dwindling supply of precious fresh water.
OK, so here's the scene.
A young mother crouches in the corner of her tiny flat, whimpering and clutching her baby while someone bangs on the door. It's the PCP, Population Control Police, here to take the baby because she didn't prove she had enough income and pay for a license. She managed to hide her pregnancy, and of course couldn't get prenatal care, and had the baby at home with help from an underground network of midwives who will be put in prison if they are discovered.
The baby was tiny, sick, as malnurished as the mother. Still, PCP found out. Someone heard the baby's crying and snitched.
The booted thugs in uniform bust down the door and pry the crying baby from her arms while she screams. They shock her into submission with their tasers. The baby will be taken to one of the many state run orphanages, because there is certainly no line of well to do people wanting to take on another Chav baby.
The young woman will be taken into custody and put in jail if she doesn't tell them who the midwives were who helped her give birth.
............................................
And you actually come onto a Buddhist board and tell us this is your answer to overpopulation? You are letting your prejudice blind you to the humanity of those people you dismiss as parasites on society. Every poor person can be seen as a burden. Find another solution, please.
I think the government shouldn't pay for peoples kids, no child benefits, no benefits for slags or chavs that get knocked up.
If people have kids, then they pay for everything, you only have kids if you can provide for them.
And for you to say, that a baby should be allowed to be with its mother who cant afford it, so it can freeze or starve to death is bad to me, and I think that if you cant look after your child, then it should be given to somebody who can.
This isn't about policing the population, its actually A LOT more libertarian than any of the suggestions on here on how to tackle the subject.
Its all personal responsibility, you can reproduce, but you wont get any financial help from the state, all the government in my scenario are doing is taking children away from irresponsible people who cant feed or cloth their kids.
If your story was real then that woman in your story is a disgusting person.
How can she call herself a good person and say that she loves her child when she doesn't have any money, yet still has one, and instead of the government taking it to where it can eat and live, she wants it to sty there with her and live a short, hungry life.
If my idea came to pass, there wouldn't be any more kids in the foster system than there are now.
People would realize that they cant have kids because they cant afford them and if they do, then its 9 months of pregnancy for nothing.
And I think within 5 years of that happening, the population would be a nice steady one, not to many people, and not too few.
Its tough love, but I don't want to pay for your kids, so they can grow up and mug me.
It will make people think twice before doing it and the population will never be anything to worry about again.
I don't want kids, but if I did and had a great girlfriend who I know will make a great mum, the sad fact is, is that I have a crap job that hardly pays for me and my life, and even if I wanted a kid more than anything, I can't afford it and I wont receive help from the state, so what can I do?
Nothing I can do, I cant have a kid, its that simple.
If we decide to have one any ways, and the baby is born, then what can we do now?
I cant afford to feed it, I cant afford clothes for it, what now?
We have got home from the hospital, and the baby has pooped its nappy and is now hungry, what can we do?
Errrrrrm, maybe we shouldn't have had a baby.
Maybe the baby should go to somebody who can look after it.
Sure there will be a few harsh examples made that will cause a few people misery, but these people and their offspring have cause way more misery, so I have no sympathy.
So watching the news and watching some chav slag break down in tears because she is the first person to get knocked up after my anti-benefit policy came to pass and she no longer has any kids, then good, I don't care.
She will have probably had 4-5 kids, they would have grown up to be chavs and would have done nothing but made life harder for good people whilst she sat on her lazy chav slag arse and collected her tax benefits, well fuck that!!
The streets might be quiet for once, we might be able to walk around certain areas at night for once, I think I might go for politics now and try and get this idea passed.
No matter what systems of control we create, human beings will always suffer from the state of desire and people are going to keep having sex. Especially in today's age, where non-marital sex is seen as much more acceptable than years past. At times, partners may feel pressured to have sex because of social stresses placed on a relationship to engage in physical intimacy often as the sole form of loving expression. Not to mention the constant constant use of sex as a tool for media and consumerism.
I think that we must continue to develop new technologies to both sustain a growing population, in the form of resource management, recycling, and earth-friendly energy sources, as well as increasingly effective birth control methods, that do not involve destruction of a living fetus unless absolutely necessary.
Most importantly, young people must be eduacated properly. And by educated, I do not mean health class. I'm talking specifically about parents. A parent should be responsible for instilling in their children a sense of respect for what sex is, how it should be expressed, and the importance of safety and responsibility. It seems like too many parents these days leave such things to the high school education system or the media, neither of which will provide a proper understanding of the significance of a sexual relationship.
We cannot stop humans from procreating, it is the natural course of events. But we can try to make the world a safer and better place for those born into it.
But doesn't it seem off that we now have to keep bringing in new technology and make our environments more synthetic, just to make sure we all don't die?
My idea is the best and is undesputable, we need a gentle way of lowering it, and then we will have a nice managable poulation count.
How could you talk about living beings in such a cruel, heartless, and uncaring manner? Why are you spreading such awful negativity among a community of loving Buddhist practitioners?
Everything that you just said has caused me physical pain, and I mourn for your sad and sorry heart.
No, it's what actually will happen if you give your government the authority to decide who can and can't have children. It's what government does, because once you give them a mission and permission to do whatever they want, there are no boundaries to what a government agency will do to enforce their rules. That's a lesson people keep having to relearn over and over. This is the social cost of real population control. Oh, and only the poor will actually have to suffer the cost of controlling a population.
Please contemplate the real world consequences of what you want and are willing to allow.
I haven't read such a farrago of disgusting, inhumane and non-Buddhist (or, more accurately, non-acceptable) nonsense since I stopped glancing at the Daily Mail.
I can only hope that it is a joke.
just like your karma has let you upset (if you were)...
One of the problem with this logic is the implied ignorance of humans (how the human mind work, how humans function in general).
Simply look at poor country in Africa to see your hypothesis put into practice. Results differ greatly from your expectation.
I'll repeat another poster. Go away. Nobody here wants to play this game.
Nonetheless, what is your opinion about the act of spewing hatred and disgust at someone who spew hatred in a Buddhist forum?
What is your opinion about the possible results of such an act?
After an attempt to have a discussion, when it becomes obvious all someone wants to do is throw hateful words out, you defend the helpless.
I am not sure how much we can do personally to prevent those who are in the Global South from starving other than focusing the dollars we spend on fair trade products, lobby our policymakers to be responsible global citizens and contribute whatever we can to NGOs with a proven track record of delivering effective aid to those hit by misfortune.
There was a story I heard somewhere about a boy on a beach in Thailand after the tsunami who was walking along and throwing fish that were still alive back into the water. There were thousands upon thousands of fish. A reporter came up to him and told him,
"There are too many fish, without some sort of tractor to pick the fish up it won't make any difference."
The boy looked at him with a puzzled expression and said,
"To the fish that I throw back in, it makes a difference."
Perhaps asking him to use a more respectful language would be appropriate.
Interesting interpretation of "right speech", is it from you?
Any details about the manners which one would defend the helpless?