Has it been too long ... ?

[Perraine]

Perhaps it's caused simply by "information overload"? We are no longer capable of absorbing so much information, so we've had to learn to "filter out" those things that don't interest us or concern us directly in our day to day lives.

 

Which is why I added the second part to my "thought experiment". Perhaps only a world altering disaster or world war can give the world that boot in the posterior that, IMHO, it needs?

[Striker879]

Would the focus then shift to the disaster or war, or are you speculating that those events would sharpen the focus on progress?

 

Granted that there were great advances made in several areas during the two great world wars, and people were focused on whatever their part was in the war effort. Did they also spend energy on staying abreast of those emerging technologies though?

 

I think that the general public has their focus mostly on what is good for them personally, and what is around the corner that may be bad for them personally. Even the greenest people I know do continue with some things that are not in the slightest bit green (even after acknowledging it isn't green) because it's what they are comfortable with or cheaper for them.

[HeyYou]

What we need is a significant population reduction. That would relieve a lot of our problems...... Including 'global warming'.......

 

That said, in this day and age, folks are more concerned about things that directly affect them, and their social media presence..... to care much about pretty much anything else. Remember back in the 60's, EVERYONE was interested in the space program, today, you barely hear about it. And then there are the advances we have made in existing technology. Back in the day, getting 100 horsepower per liter was a major accomplishment, today, there are engines putting out over 200 HP per liter, and are daily drivers..... In the 70's and 80's, getting 200 horsepower out of your 400+ cubic inch engine was considered 'a lot', today, the AVERAGE four cylinder can do better than that. And get better gas mileage doing it.....

 

Look at computer technology. I remember when a 66 megahertz processor was considered 'fast', today, a simply device in can hold in your hand is a couple hundred times more powerful..... The average car has more processing power than the space shuttle ever did. The typical smartphone can likely make the same claim.

 

It isn't like we have come up with anything truly new, we have simply radically improved existing technologies.

[Striker879]

Population ... the one thing nobody wants to talk about, and yet it is at the root of pretty well all of the world's problems.

 

I'm not throwing the first stone though, I have three kids and seven grandkids, making me part of the problem.

 

I remember my Toshiba laptop (replaced the Tandy 8088 laptop that was obsolete long before the saleman saw me coming). 386 SX-25 ... bleeding edge for about one week after I paid far too much for it, but it played Privateer just fine and got me hooked into this gaming gig.

[HeyYou]

Ah, Privateer.... the game that prompted me to spend too much money on a throttle, stick, and rudder pedals. :D Got me HEAVILY into the Flight-Sim style games. Too bad they don't make 'em like that any more. I LOVED the forced-feedback joysticks. Made flight sims a whole new experience. Unfortunately, not even 'most' games supported them. Even fewer now.....

 

Yeah, there are just too many people on this planet, for the resources at hand. But, I suspect that is going to be a self-solving problem anyway. Eventually, we will do ourselves in, either directly via war, or the release of some biological/chemical agent, or nature will simply get tired of us screwing up the planet, and take steps to reduce our impact. (perhaps completely......) Not like humans are ever going to do anything about it. Too many obstacles in the way. (religion, politics....)

[Striker879]

Ah, Privateer.... the game that prompted me to spend too much money on a throttle, stick, and rudder pedals. :D Got me HEAVILY into the Flight-Sim style games. Too bad they don't make 'em like that any more. I LOVED the forced-feedback joysticks. Made flight sims a whole new experience. Unfortunately, not even 'most' games supported them. Even fewer now.....

 

Yeah, there are just too many people on this planet, for the resources at hand. But, I suspect that is going to be a self-solving problem anyway. Eventually, we will do ourselves in, either directly via war, or the release of some biological/chemical agent, or nature will simply get tired of us screwing up the planet, and take steps to reduce our impact. (perhaps completely......) Not like humans are ever going to do anything about it. Too many obstacles in the way. (religion, politics....)

 

Very true ... not much chance at getting elected on a "Reduce population" platform. Plus the rich guys bankrolling the candidates aren't going to go for it one bit. No way to achieve 10% net and 10% growth with a reduction in population.

 

My general outlook is that if it's not in the best interests of some guy who is already richer than God, then it isn't going to happen.

 

- Edit - Privateer Gemini Platinum ... it got me to dust off the joystick and give it a whirl.

Edited September 5, 2020 by Striker879

[Perraine]

I'm not convinced "over population" is really the issue. We do have the resources to support our current population quite easliy, we just need to be "better" at how we allocate and use them.

Going back to something Striker879 said earlier, I don't so much think that it's about the "actual" advancements that are a consequence of war or hardship, but rather the "perception" of the world and our place in the world.

 

Take for instance the Black Plague of the 14th century. Now that was a horrific time, and it certainly did lower the worlds population (very nearly a knock out blow for humanity) And certainly their were advancements in medicine, hygiene and other "technologies".

 

But I think the bigger changes to "society" were more subtle, yet more profound.

It re-organised entire social structures, the lack of "able bodied" men meant that "workers" could ask for better treatment and higher wages. It meant that many women had to "take up the slack" in some fields of endeavour, or they rose to positions of power due to the vacuum left by dead husbands or sons.

 

(And no, I'm not suggesting that women "had it good" back then, but it did change how women even perceived themselves and their place in society. Women "accepted" their place in society, because that was "how it was". The same is true for "peasants" or the masses. There was a time when "the people", or women, would have never even considered standing up for themselves, because their their place in the world was pre-ordained)

 

The lack of "farmers" mean that agriculture changed from being mostly large grain crops to less "worker intensive" agriculture such as Stock farming, so that even the very basic dietary structure for humans changed. It changed the very nature of conflict and warfare, because no longer could tyrants raise HUGE armies, with thousands of conscripts, so "technology" had to replace it. Or they had to learn to "negotiate" rather than fight each other. It rearranged borders, because many "landholders" and their entire families died, so that new territories could be awarded or taken away.

 

In other words it changed the very fabric, the very thought processes, of "society", in previously unthinkable ways. I believe that WWI and more specifically WWII did the same thing. Notwithstanding the technologies that arose, it did, again IMHO, fundamentally change the way people looked at themselves, and at their neighbours.

 

Now, again, I'm not suggesting we should immediately start WWIII, and I'll use the Apollo missions again as an example. Only perhaps 99.9999999% of the worlds population actually had anything to do with that undertaking, yet it captivated the world ... "Say what now? We are putting a human being on another celestial body FFS!"

 

It touched most people who witnessed it to their very cores. The discovery of the first extra solar planet might have done it, But I think the scientific community missed the ball there, by not shouting about it loud enough. The first landing of a space vehicle on an asteroid? That one I think was marred by racial/social inequities. A manned mission to Mars? Well, they keep talking about it, but as yet, AFAIK, no-one has actually shown or picked the crew for the mission, or done one of those "right stuff" photo shoots, so we might need to wait a few years for that kick in the pants moment.

 

I dunno, maybe it's just me?

[HeyYou]

Indeed, reducing the customer base would not be in the best interests of anyone selling anything...... That, and I am sure the 'hitler' comments would abound as well. (eugenics.....)

 

Besides, of late, if you aren't promising to give everyone everything, you don't get elected........

[MrJoseCuervo]

Unless you sell coffins

[Striker879]

I recently watched a YouTube on this British guy (some famous bike racer ... well famous to some but was the first I'd heard of him). He was going to a cotton mill to make his own custom bed sheets for his canal boat (British canals are like their roads, very narrow, thus the need for custom sheets), but he was making the cotton fabric first. Apparently the mill was the first cotton mill (sort of kicked off the industrial revolution) but it came at a time when Europe was just starting to recover from some pandemic (I'm at a disadvantage here ... I can recall details of what I've read far too long down the road, but if I watched it the brain doesn't file the info away in the same way).

 

Anyway, what I do recall is that much of the workforce was women and children. They could be spared from the more physical labour intensive tasks like farming. These are knock-on effects to events that require changes to how we do things. Change what you do, and how you perceive the world follows.

 

I tend to be a "looking down the road" sort even though I'm a very live in moment kinda' guy ... maybe a consequence of grandparenthood or just getting old. I didn't mean we are at a particular point in the "drive towards" a population driven collapse. Where I'm coming from is, at what point do we start to address something that has been building for quite some time?

 

I remember discussions in the alternate geography course I took in high school (Urban Geography was the name of the course) where we were looking at the current (back then) population and where it was projected to go. It was approaching 4 billion back then (around '69 or maybe '70) and the talk was how we'd need to tap the bounty of the sea to feed everyone. Well maybe we haven't taken the last fish out of the sea yet, but we are certainly pushing things to the point where we're fishing places (and depths) that weren't considered back in my high school days.

 

I read an article yesterday or maybe the day before about how we are about one month behind (compared to last year) the point where we (meaning the whole lot of us) have taken more from the planet than it "produces" in a year. Yes this is a derived stat, so it's only as accurate as the quality of the data fed into the calculation. Even if it's out by a month or more it is still offering us another perspective on our relationship with the place we all call home. Two months fudge factor still has us taking a year's worth from the planet in less than a year's time. I won't be around long enough to see the consequences, but my kids may be, and certainly my grandkids will.

 

I can vividly remember going out into the back yard after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar suirface, looking up in wonder at the fact that there were two people from this planet on that distant orb. The fact that there were faces and names associated with the event gave it that universal renown. There had been plenty of unmanned craft on the moon before Neil and Buzz landed. They didn't capture the imagination of the masses as the machines weren't relatable to people who had no notion of what it took to send a machine to the moon, and failure just resulted in the lunar equivalent of a stove or fridge that no longer worked.

 

A similar failure for Neil and Buzz would mean those faces wouldn't be seen here on earth ever again, and that is part of why the conquest of space outside of low earth orbit has lacked popularity. Even the human loses with the shuttles only brought out a sense of "they died for what". Low earth orbit doesn't have the allure of the moon (easily seen by anyone) or possibly Mars (where somebody points not far from the horizon and says "There ... that star that is reddish and not twinkling .. that's Mars). I watched the shuttle go over where I live once with a small telescope ... wasn't a big crowd of watchers even though the event had received some local media attention.

 

Perhaps watching Neil step off the ladder and onto the moon's surface with Walter Cronkite keeping us apprised as it unfolded boosted my science passion, but I brought that with me to the television that night so it doesn't stem from the lunar landing. An interest in science isn't something for everybody, but I find the disinterest in science "movement" disappointing (if not disturbing). Very few of that crowd have any idea of how much we take for granted today began as technologies developed to put a man on the moon, or land a vehicle on Mars, or sent a probe outside of the solar system.

 

I have a better picture in my mind of where Voyager 2 is headed than where we who remained behind are going.