Wednesday, June 21, 2006

The curious sustainability of bad ideas

Some things inspire popular culture, others infect it, or are infected by it.

I think I have found the object of reference and goal that Greens can use for their future utopia:

The survivors of war, overpopulation, and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten outside world. Here, in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure, freed by the servo-mechanism which provides everything,

The pivotal situation with the domed city is that all people have only 30 years to live. This is enforced by a life-clock embedded in the left palms of all newborns (who are bred, not born). A series of colours then indicates one's status, as does the clothing one wears.
But all would otherwise not be perfect. Humans need crises to feel anguished and involved. Bleakness is, after all, the new gold standard of art, beauty, and thruth:
Not only was the world headed for catastrophe, but there was little that could be done to avoid it. Some parts of the world might see some minor and temporary recovery, but "a minimum of ten million people, most of them children, will starve to death during each year of the 1970s. But this is a mere handful compared to the numbers that will be starving before the end of the century"
Which, of course has to be revised and postponed by the advocates of this sad truth so that it would hopefully come true some day.
The consequences are already clear - Earth is under mounting stress from human activities, with its climate changing and its ecosystems failing. But recognition that we must act urgently to preserve our natural habitat has been undermined by persistent failure to admit the multiplier effect of human numbers. Without policies to reduce world population, efforts to save our environment cannot succeed. With smaller populations, living in greater harmony with nature, our horizons may stretch far into the future.
However the science inspired by fiction causes further fiction to accepted as science:
Social pressures on both men and women to marry and have children must be removed. If society were convinced of the need for low birth rates, no doubt the stigma that has customarily been assigned to singles and childless couples would soon disappear.

Compulsory control of family size is an unpleasant idea to many, but the alternatives may be much worse. Some governments practice involuntary population control, these usually being the poorer, less educated, overpopulated countries. Most times these countries use vasectomies on all fathers of three or more children, or a program of sterilizing women after their second or third child.
Stunningly, none of the of the fearful theories bandied about can explain our continued existence as a species – our already present sustainability, if you will, and provides insight into the whacky world of the do-gooder and their theories.

Never mind the jihadist trying to kill you now, we have naturally occurring atomized carbon to sequester!

The fuse is lit!

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