You Did A Good Job Today
Living in Tokyo one of the things that is bluntly brought to my attention is just how many people there are walking around on the planet. Tokyo is technological marvel in that it's a city with a population living in the area that exceeds that of the entire population of Canada. I remember reading somewhere that there are about the same number of people alive now on the planet as to everyone that's lived since the dawn of man.
This kind of stuff blows my mind. Obviously agriculture got us a long way towards this number, but nothing has helped out like medical science has. How often is it that somebody dies of some kind of illness before the age of 18 in industrialized nations? Hardly ever right? Back then many people died from either being physically handicapped, various illnesses etc. a bad role of the genes dice, but that doesn't matter anymore. If there is something you wrong they can fix it most of the time. If I had been born during the stone age I sure would be dead now. I was born with my feet turned inward and I had hearing problems as a child. I surely would have been somethings lunch since I mostly like wouldn't of heard it coming (or not until it was too late) and then if I did I wouldn't be able to run very well due to my legs. Thanks to medical science my legs were broken and reset straight when I was a baby and I had 3 sets of tubes put in my ears to take care of the drainage problem I had. (I eventually grew out of that problem)
My point to all this is that we have basically removed natural selection in the human race. No longer due genes determine who lives and who dies. Since everyone lives the population can't regulate itself. This also poses the problem that the gene pool is polluted (for lack of better words) with less than perfect genes. If you are not right at birth we fix it. If you are considered unattractive, we fix that too. In the short term this seems ok, but I wonder what this will do for the human race over the next few hundred years. Also, people are living longer than ever. In the stone age, you were lucky to live to see 30. Now almost everyone lives to be over double that.
On top of that, how long can we sustain this population growth? Economically we are setup to depend on this, so doing the one child thing fails as China has proven. I think there are no real answers yet that are doable. Moving to other Earth like planets maybe, but with the current investments in the space program, I don't see that happening ever.
Something has got to give though. The way things are run around the world, we have already surpassed the peak of modern civilization and are now on the beginning of a downwards slide. Resources are becoming more expensive or running out. Not enough drinkable water. Food chain is being interrupted by man's obvious mistakes, and ones we have yet to notice until it'll be almost too late.
I guess I can say I am glad to have lived when I did. Living in a time where you get to experience the peak of everything is a bit selfish, but it will surely go down in the history books as one of the most interesting times to have been alive. I am not making a judgment of what we should or shouldn't do, but just my own opinion and observation. There is clearly no simple solution.
Currently Listening:
You Did A Good Job Today
Living in Tokyo one of the things that is bluntly brought to my attention is just how many people there are walking around on the planet. Tokyo is technological marvel in that it's a city with a population living in the area that exceeds that of the entire population of Canada. I remember reading somewhere that there are about the same number of people alive now on the planet as to everyone that's lived since the dawn of man.
This kind of stuff blows my mind. Obviously agriculture got us a long way towards this number, but nothing has helped out like medical science has. How often is it that somebody dies of some kind of illness before the age of 18 in industrialized nations? Hardly ever right? Back then many people died from either being physically handicapped, various illnesses etc. a bad role of the genes dice, but that doesn't matter anymore. If there is something you wrong they can fix it most of the time. If I had been born during the stone age I sure would be dead now. I was born with my feet turned inward and I had hearing problems as a child. I surely would have been somethings lunch since I mostly like wouldn't of heard it coming (or not until it was too late) and then if I did I wouldn't be able to run very well due to my legs. Thanks to medical science my legs were broken and reset straight when I was a baby and I had 3 sets of tubes put in my ears to take care of the drainage problem I had. (I eventually grew out of that problem)
My point to all this is that we have basically removed natural selection in the human race. No longer due genes determine who lives and who dies. Since everyone lives the population can't regulate itself. This also poses the problem that the gene pool is polluted (for lack of better words) with less than perfect genes. If you are not right at birth we fix it. If you are considered unattractive, we fix that too. In the short term this seems ok, but I wonder what this will do for the human race over the next few hundred years. Also, people are living longer than ever. In the stone age, you were lucky to live to see 30. Now almost everyone lives to be over double that.
On top of that, how long can we sustain this population growth? Economically we are setup to depend on this, so doing the one child thing fails as China has proven. I think there are no real answers yet that are doable. Moving to other Earth like planets maybe, but with the current investments in the space program, I don't see that happening ever.
Something has got to give though. The way things are run around the world, we have already surpassed the peak of modern civilization and are now on the beginning of a downwards slide. Resources are becoming more expensive or running out. Not enough drinkable water. Food chain is being interrupted by man's obvious mistakes, and ones we have yet to notice until it'll be almost too late.
I guess I can say I am glad to have lived when I did. Living in a time where you get to experience the peak of everything is a bit selfish, but it will surely go down in the history books as one of the most interesting times to have been alive. I am not making a judgment of what we should or shouldn't do, but just my own opinion and observation. There is clearly no simple solution.
Currently Listening: