Survival is nowadays a common word ! Like all animals, humans have instincts, genetically hard-wired behaviors that enhance our ability to cope with vital environmental contingencies. Our innate fear of snakes is an example. Other instincts, including denial, revenge, tribal loyalty, greed and our urge to procreate, now threaten our very existence.
Feeling fear is a good sign that your survival instincts are intact. You need to appreciate the dangers to stay safe.
Any attempt to control human behavior is bound to meet with resistance and disapproval. Unless we can change our behavior, humans are facing the end of civilization. Our problem has several elements.
(1) We have invented economic and social systems that encourage greedy behavior, and we have actually institutionalized runaway greed.
(2) We are in a state of complete denial about the growth of human populations.
(3) Earth's finite resources simply cannot support 7.6 billion of us in the style to which we’d like to live. (4) We must make a choice between quantity and quality of human life.
(5) To head off the inevitable collapse, we can no longer wait and merely react but we must become proactive. We must find ways to control dangerous human instincts, especially denial, revenge, tribal loyalty, greed and our urge to procreate.
Human instincts evolved long ago when we lived off the land as hunter-gatherers and took refuge in simple shelters like caves. Although our instinctive behaviors were adaptive during prehistoric times, they no longer work in modern man-made environments. Our brains appear to be organized in ways that promote such duality
I'm missing something, aren't I?" "Brains", he snapped. "And survival instinct. The Hawklord's been waiting for you for three hours." "Tell him I'm dead.
In fact, some of our instinctive emotions have become extremely serious impediments now threatening our very survival. Let us focus on denial, tribal loyalty, revenge, greed, and procreation. Any attempt to control human behavior is bound to meet with resistance and disapproval however, we have reached the point where we have no alternative.
Some humans, unfortunately the most successful from the perspective of natural selection, combine greed with breeding and have obscenely large families. Rather than be celebrated on TV, such people should be social outcasts, ostracized from society, because they are stealing other’s rights to reproduce.
Earth simply doesn't have enough resources to support all of us in the style to which we’d like to become accustomed. Moreover, resources such as water, land, and food, are finite, whereas human populations are always expanding, steadily reducing per capita shares.
People are encouraged to think that resources are ever expanding when the opposite is true. We are in a state of total denial about the overpopulation crisis, instead of confronting reality, people only want to relieve its many symptoms, such as shortages of food, oil, and water, global climate change, pollution, disease, loss of biodiversity, and many others.
That survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manners, civility. Anything. It's such a powerful force.
Overpopulation is a near fatal disease that cannot be cured by merely alleviating its symptoms. Of course, eventually, our population must decrease, but we could lessen the upcoming misery by taking action now. Unfortunately, most people are unlikely to be proactive and are much more likely to procrastinate until they are forced to react.
“Take an aspirin, get a good night's sleep, and come back in the morning.” Unless we face reality and reduce human populations, we are in for a world of hurt and even greater human misery.
- CLUE!BOX
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