Science Forum

charles brough · Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 2:40 pm Post subject:

ARE WE CROWDING THE EARTH?

The environmental problems that are of so much concern to the people of the world do not necessarily mean that the Earth's resources are less but that we are more. It is hard to dispute that, but the dire predictions made decades ago have not been born out. When world population was much smaller, we were then described as being “over-crowded.” The worry over “over-crowding” is no longer a popular concern. It might seem that with the right technology, we could pile up our numbers indefinitely. By living in high rise buildings, we would never even be limited in space---never have to be jammed together. In that sense, there could be room for one hundred billion of us . . .

So, it seems that it all depends upon our technological ability to keep compensating for the continuing decline in per capita resources. Can we depend upon science and technology? If we continue to elect “born again” presidents and be taking in Pat Robertson-trained people into the bureaucracy, fight an increasingly intense rear-guard action to keep “creationism” out of our schools, face mounting proposals to teach Christianity in the schools, and have more mainstream movies appearing on religious subjects, might we have cause to wonder if public opinion isn't shifting away from science and technology?

Here is another consideration: is being jammed together the only definition of “over-crowded”? There are a number of animal species that undergo a population crash in numbers when they reach a certain population level. They are not necessarily stressing their environment and not starving to death or dieing of the usual diseases. In some cases, the adrenal glands show us that they die of stress. One way to interpret this is that they felt over-crowded.

How do we know when a species feels over-crowded? Does that happen with us? What conditions have to materialize before we feel over-crowded? This has been researched and tests with young adults and all indications are that they do not feel over-crowded. I have personally observed in some Asian countries that people like to crowd together. In Indonesia, for example, the whole concept of “privacy” is alien to the great mass of people. We seem strange to them for wanting it, but we do. We in the West need time alone in order to relax.

This raises the question of why stress seems to abundant in our modern society. Has it something to do with feeling over-crowded? Rats and mice have been shown to exhibit so much stress from feeling over-crowded that they experience a behavioral deterioration. It has nothing to do with hunger but just being too close. We humans have a space of a couple of feet from us that we feel uncomfortable when someone else breaches it. In the desert, two strangers meeting will not approach more than ten to twenty feet from each other. Relatives will get to within a foot or so before anyone becomes uneasy. Could this be what drives the rats and mice to unsocial behavior? Keep in mind that, at the risk of being insulting, rats and mice have much in common with us and helps explain why they are used so much in medical research.

I would like to suggest that there is yet another thing that has a bearing on “crowding.” I propose that we feel crowded in direct proportion to how much we are ideologically divided. It is hard to feel close to someone who has an entirely different picture of human origins, who figures we humans have a goal which you do not regard as credible, follow a different moral system and figure the failure of mankind to achieve those goals is caused by something entirely different from what you believe!

Charles, http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com