Larger Populations Chasing Food Was Evident in the 1930's "Dust Bowl"
Discussions taking place in the U.S. today are preoccupied with religion and the rights fetuses but not the lives of children and adults. The plain, simple and obvious fact is the earth has a finite capacity to produce food and housing. How many people the earth can keep alive is imprecise. Nevertheless, we started to see the limits in the 1930's.
Let's digress for a moment and talk about a favorite Christian topic, "natural law." A good source of entertainment is to watch how "natural law" is used for self-interest not the public's interests. Natural law has shown since the beginning of the earth that nutrients, water and light are needed to produce food. Take these away and no food for animals or humans. That, "the Lord will provide" or "prayer works" do not overrule this law of nature, i.e. "natural law."
While native Americans altered the environment some they did nothing like white people settling the plains. A growing white population plowed up the prairie to sell wheat and corn. That left the soil exposed. The long prairie grass that had protected it was gone. When a drought and winds came along the dust bowl was born. Hoards moved to California. Now there is a shortage of water there.
Research is now suggesting the dust bowl weather itself may have been influenced or exacerbated by smoky industries in the east. That is, the effect then was a light version of what is happening in real time today.
Why was there no warning about over population and its inevitable effect on the food supply in the Bible or later by the "great philosophers?" The answer is simple. These were written by wealthy men. There was no money or power to be gained by facing reality. "Natural law" needed to be rationed carefully and used only when it was advantageous to those who made it up.
Natural law was a great idea for controlling women. It could be equally good for guiding our policies the size of the population our natural environment can feed and house.
Now would be a great time for someone inside the faith to lampoon the old use of "natural law" and point to the REAL laws of nature. Unfortunately, the big male players in the faith have nothing to gain by doing this and will keep on their long path of looking after themselves first.
gotta give you credit old feller. I don't know of anyone who can pack more nonsense into a short blog than you can. first, your comment on natural law. you confuse the so-called "law of nature" (i.e. survival of the fittest, the interplay of population and resources and all that) with the natural moral law appropriate to a rational being. it seems in fact that you subordinate the natural moral law to your law of nature. any college sophomore who took phil 101 would know better than that. second, there was, as far as I know, no widespread famine in the US as a result of the drought of the 1930s. there were individual instances of hunger due to unemployment, drought induced farm failures, etc. but no widespread famine. interestingly. there was a maker and shaker in the USDA, Wallace by name, who thought that cutting farm surpluses would raise farm income. so we destroyed livestock in an effort to engineer scarcity. brilliant! true, the plains farmers had flocked to semi-arid lands, which they abused, and which lost profitability after we stopped feeding Europe in the years after WWI. and then, as you know, there were the politically induced Russian famines in the early 1920s and in the Ukrainian instance, in the early 1930s. in the latter instance, Uncle Joe stole the Ukrainian produce, partly to break the will of the Ukrainian peasants and to obtain currency to bankroll Soviet industrialization. a real two-fer that one. third, the smoky industries in the east. apparently you can't resist the temptation to project today's global warming hype back in the warm period in the 1930s. does that, then, account for the cooling that began abruptly in the early 1950s and persisted until the mid 1980s? rest well tonight. you must be very tired after penning blog.
ReplyDeletesm "you confuse the so called "law of nature' with natural moral law..." More of that good shuck and jive from the Catholic and Lutheran playbook. Here is a definition from Wikipedia, probably a little more street usage than that used in your Catholic philosophy class, "Natural law is an idea that there are forms of law that exist by themselves in nature..." I understand from your post natural moral law approves of denuding the land so it will not produce. Whatever floats your boat.
DeleteI don't think that you have the foggiest notion of natural law, natural moral law or any other so-called ethical system. I suggest that you go to your search engine, put in any of the these terms and then do some homework. a lot of good stuff out there, easy to understand. and always remember, I'm not your tutor.
ReplyDeletetsm "go to your search engine..." Been there done that. I talking not about the indoctrination you have had on how the term is to be used in a classroom of between clergy. I'm talking about the sociological forces that brought it into being and the way the term is commonly used politically today. It's always amusing how your "ethical systems" always favor the clergy and those males in power who came up with them. Since you gave me advice to further my understanding, I'll return the favor. Read up on philosophy published and discussed from a feminine, atheistic or racial perspective. It would help you.
Deletenot interested in the classroom? don't you think that it is at least important to understand what you condemn. as to sociology which is, or should be considered a derivative
ReplyDeletediscipline, I suspect that you are devoted to what should be called woke sociology, that neo-Marxist, Nietzschean stuff that become the bane of our existence. you should then extend your homework project to include thinkers like Nietzsche, Gramsci, Marx, the French post-modernists, etc. I, myself, have given them quite a bit of attention in the past several years. and I don't much like them, but that said, I have learned a lot from them. you could likewise. if you did it might even loosen your goofy preoccupation with male domination, oppression of women, power in general. perverse sexuality and the rest.