How Many People Must Survive for Humans to Continue
Sitting in a comfortable arm chair, I find it interesting to contemplate a dismal future. It is a dismal future only in that it is our real future.
How many societies or groups have survived since people similar to humans existed? The answer is almost none. The link speculated on how many human survivors it would take to repopulate the world after a disaster wiped out most of us.
People at least similar to humans have been around for a brief period in the life of planet earth. Earth is millions of years old, humans have been here only 200,000 to 300,000 years.
During those 200,000 plus years, some societies grew to dominate others than were destroyed by yet stronger groups or wiped out by climate or disease. Each time some humans survived and history moved along.
If we take our own mindset and project it backwards in time, we can imagine what each of the dominant groups thought about themselves. "We are a superior people. We are invincible. All others are less than us."
We can assume they were religious or superstitious. They all must have thought their god or their rituals were what would make them successful and survive. It didn't help them.
Surely, every educated person in the world knows this, that all past societies thought they were special and invincible. Yet, nearly every group today thinks it is invincible and will exist forever.
If you worship a god and think that will protect your group from going into oblivion and you from being dead forever, welcome to the club. It has had many previous members. We don't know what happened to them.
"We are a superior people. We are invincible. All others are less than us."
ReplyDeleteWe get the government we deserve" (hazy, but commonly attributed to French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville). Is Trump a reflection of us? A reflection of American hubris referring to certain other countries as "s___hole nations"? We are after all the the "exceptional nation", the "indispensable people", the "greatest nation on the face of the earth". Wasn't it Nazi Germany that declared themselves the "Master Race", and Israel "God's Chosen People". What do we and they have in common? Militarism and the belief that we can impose our will on others at the point of a gun.
"Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves"(Philippians 2:3.). This, along with the Golden Rule, should be the basis of our foreign policy and how we relate to our fellow man.
Thank you, Michael. Well said.
ReplyDeleteYes, well said indeed!
DeleteAn excellent point on this election day (MN). Donald has done an exceptional job of highlighting our faults and just how unexceptional we are. Even the Golden Rule fails when an indecent man grabs as he would like to be grabbed.
DeleteTrick question. Unnecessary question. The smallest number would be 2; a male and female, both capable of offspring.
ReplyDeleteNow, why would one be concerned with the answer unless one was contemplating mass genocide, mass catastrophe or something similar? Certainly, the abortion rate is of concern since it not only eliminates children one by one it also desensitizes us to death. After all, if we can kill unborn babies, why know someone whom I dislike or is using a resource I want. Kill half the people and it opens up a bunch of coveted real estate for the survivors.
Jon states, "We can assume they were religious or superstitious. They all must have thought their god or their rituals were what would make them successful and survive. It didn't help them." I don't make that assumption.
It is true that all governments have come and gone and that none are no more than a few hundreds of years old. Since John Adams once stated, 'Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.", one can take away that the USA is in existence today (we still have the Constitution he referred to) because it is still moral and religious. But how long after those characteristics are gone will our government last?
It is also true that major religions have lasted much, much longer than any single government. If one considers Christianity a separate religion from Judaism, then Christianity counts its years as 2018; assuming Christ was born at 0 A.D. However, if one considers Christianity as the evolved Judaism that saw the coming of Jesus Christ from the Old Testament prophets, then both Judaism and Christianity are as old as mankind. The Book of Genesis is the beginning of mankind with Adam and Eve.
Yet, neither Judaism or Christianity believes it will live on forever on earth. A Final Judgment will occur, earth will end.
The article was interesting, this question of a minimum viable population has been considered by many scientists for many species. Perhaps they all forgot to add a book and snake to their calculations. It would take a lot of fiction and snake oil to come up with an answer of 2.
ReplyDelete