Linear/Lateral

I don't believe it is a question of "changing" someone's thought process. Rather, I believe it is a question of educating how both thought processes work whether you are linear or lateral. As one contributer suggested, both end up getting to the same spot, they just take different paths to get there. I would add that both types of thinkers take the same steps, just in a different order. That is, the linear thinker is obviously very sequential. A linear thinker that is about to make a decision evaluates the situation, determines the goals and criteria of that decision, generates and evaluates alternatives, assess risks, and makes a choice. The lateral thinker may start with their favorite choice first in order to come to a determination on what the acceptable criteria should be or perhaps may even look at the situation driving the decision somewhat in different context. The key is that each party understands which step the parties are relative to each other. Each method has it's strengths and weaknesses. I believe both can work together without resorting to a 'forced" change in approach. From my experience, most people have a very difficult time trying to "adjust" their comfortable way of thinking whether going from lateral to linear or linear to lateral.

Linear thinking can cause “group think” and other dangerous mind-sets to develop within an organization and this type of thinking can absolutely kill innovation.

People I work with have been trained in formal methodologies to use to manage projects and the strict adherence to these guidelines can cause a severe case of linear thinking. I am a lateral thinker and this makes me rather uncomfortable, as though stuck in a rut when there actually isnt one....I guess that is hard to understand, but how do you create a system to educate people on the dangers of too much linear thinking and/or the benefits of lateral thinking?. Interesting questions and something that I will be thinking about more in the future. It is assumed that critical and creative cannot be combined, but personally I think that is simply not true.

how intelligent are we?

People will have to get used to the idea that never-ending economic growth and ever-rising living standards are impossible on a finite planet. 1) POPULATION If people live longer, and average family size is small, we cannot remedy the situation by constant immigration or large families. The population of any country cannot grow for ever. The resources are not there. 2)RESOURCES We have trashed the environment. Despite what some think, we are totally dependent on the environment for our food, fresh water, even the air we breathe. We are very likely to run short of energy and food - perhaps soon. If people realise this, are prepared to change their lifestyles & are willing to consume less & use new technology as much as possible the human race can survive. Otherwise - after the rioting - famine, war & disease will reduce the population to what the planet can sustain. The breakdown of civilizations has happened before. How intelligent are we? We have to wake up.

There is no alternative

The economy cannot recover because we have been, and still are, in a totally untenable cloud cuckoo land. There is no going back, there will be no recovery, the best we can hope for is the economy to stabilize at a liveable level.
As I posted earlier before they reset this thread, we are watching the beginning of the end of western liberal democracy. The decline and fall is going to be long and painful. Many of the things that people take for granted as a "right" are going to disappear, never to return.
The minimum wage, health care free at the point of delivery for benefits dependents and Public Sector workers. It has never been free for the private sector tax payer, they have had to pay not only for themselves but for everybody else as well. Soon everybody will have to pay for themselves at the point of delivery, there is no other way. Care of the elderly, same thing and so on and on until all you get, if you are lucky, is a modicum of law and order, sufficient public works to keep the roads passable, the waste collected occasionally and a helping hand if you do hit rock bottom.
No politician is going to say it, the media don't get it and economists have been exposed for the frauds they are. There is nobody out there who has the faintest clue what to do - just look what is happening in the Eurozne.
Welcome to The Headless Chicken Show.

Prepare yourselves

While experts chortle that human population will level off by 2050, they fail to appreciate that it will continue to grow by adding another two to three billion before that time. Humanity will hit 7.1 billion this year, keep adding 1.0 billion every 13 years and reach 9.2 to 10.0 billion by mid century.

By that time, we will have wrecked the planet beyond repair. We will have killed off tens of thousands of species. We will have poisoned our biosphere and disrupted the environment beyond comprehension. We will have created horrific living conditions in cities around the USA and the planet where human misery dominates everything. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be so big and that we'll be able to walk across the Pacific filled with plastic. Our 80,000 poisons will disrupt DNA for animals and ourselves. By 2050, we will be fighting wars for energy and screaming for food.

I laugh myself sick at men like the Pople and other nut-bags that think we can expand the human race forever. The Pope and other major religions stick their heads into the sand and into the past. They are hopeless.

"Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide [that adds 80 million net gain annually to the planet], but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all-ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet." Dr. Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates

Experts think that humans will become suddenly smart by 2050 and start winding down their birth rates. But, by that time, as illiteracy dominates most of those and our society-what do you think illiterate people do-go to the opera? No, they stay home and procreate more of themselves. As humans add 137 million new babies annually, there is no way to educate them, so they will birth more of them. Where did I get those numbers?

Check out that 57 million humans die every year planet-wide. Humans replace that 57 million and add another net gain of 80 million. That's 137 million more babies to educate annually. We cannot do it. Thus, I would like to see how we're going to stop the human herd by 2050.

Finally, the big arbiter will be oil energy. It will not allow us to feed ourselves and our enormous population once it runs out. Even if it didn't run out, we cannot keep up with feeding 10 billion humans because we won't be able to access arable land. But if we could, we still not be able to pay for it as to the horrific cost of energy.

"The cheap oil age created an artificial bubble of plentitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime....so I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves move toward depletion, we will be left with an enormous population...that the ecology of the earth will not support. The journey back toward non-oil population homeostasis will not be pretty. We will discover the hard way that population hyper growth was simply a side-effect of the oil age. It was a condition, not a problem with a solution. That is what happened and we are stuck with it." James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency

We stand in a Faustian Bargain that will end in Hobson's Choice. Be absolutely certain that Mother Nature enjoys the last laugh. Brutal, benign, ruthless and effective in her ability to cull the human race with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: disease, pestilence, starvation and war.
If we continue on our merry, stupid and arrogant path by adding 100, 200, 300 million to the USA, we will find ourselves in the crosshairs of Mother Nature's final equation. We're well on our way in 2011.

Cold hearted reality in America

Leftist dogma is very tedious. The plain facts are that the wealthiest 10 percent of all Americans pay more than half of all the personal income tax burden of the country (from about 52pc to around 56pc, depending on the year) and the top five percent of the wealthiest Americans pay over 40pc of the income tax. Trying to blame the rich in the USA is just cutting off your genitals to spite your rearend. They keep the country operating, and without their income taxes, the US would go bankrupt in three months.

Leftists must face up to hard, cold reality. Wealthy people are superior to poor and middle-class people. The middle class are average, or mediocre human beings, and poor people are inferior, or below average people. So society has always been, so it is today, and so it will always be. Politics and philosophy have nothing to do with the facts. Emotion doesn't change arithmetic or DNA.

The inferior members of the species are to blame for all that is wrong and bad about human society. They are the burden and anchor dragging civilization back from advancement. It is the responsibility and fault of the below average poor that human society is not better than it could be. They are the people who should be criticized and condemned, because their inferiority is the primary cause of all human problems.

sweeping statement

You're either:

a) Very poorly educated, forming your ideas of the world from what you watch on television or hear from your parents.

b) Angry and lonely.

c) A genuinely malignant waste of the earth's resources.

Human dignity

If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want to and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom; it should be right there in the Constitution.

But if you have twenty people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door: "Aren't you through yet?" and so on. In the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters.

Money, economics, and delusion

Saying the things that people do not want to hear my not make you many friends but you gains you respect when you turn out to be right! I am shocked as type out this blog. I would have never expected to see such change in this small amount of time but it is happening as I type.

We are now seeing the start of another era of inflation and jerky interest rates. The whole process is inspired by the foolishness of QE. When interest rates start to creep up and then shoot up we experience a massive public and private sector debt inspired financial blow-out. A financial blow-out of far great economic pain then would have been caused by fessing-up to bad debt and cleaning it out of the financial system in the first place. When interest rates shoot up everyone is going to be forced to remember the vast amount of bad debt hanging around in the financial system, we are in the eye of the storm, the 2008 financial crisis was the opening act.

We are now seeing the start of a global political process whereby the Middle East is freeing itself from regimes that were stood up by Western governments not so long ago. Once the Middle East countries free themselves where do you think they will politically lean? Will the new Middle East regimes politically lean towards the East or West?

It is clear to me that the outcome of political unrest in the Middle East is the start of a process whereby this region falls under the political influence of China. The Chinese will gain control over the regions oil reverses and a very young population of consumers, they used us in the West as a tug ship to get onto dry land, now they are not waterlogged and can walk on their own two feet the fate of the world is in their hands.

In the case of the UK especially, it is a combination of ignorance and delusion. Trying to trade with Europe alone is lke flogging a dead horse, the court of human rights will eventually lower the rights of everyone. State dependency will mean that a huge number of people are going to have a miserable future, it has been so intertwined with mindset that we cannot imagine a society without welfare. Students who grew up in the New Labour era demanding free university education so they can go and study philosophy is clearly absurd. China's growth is a massive opportunity for the brand Britain to export there, niche-marketing for high tech and sustainable products, but we need an army of home grown engineers, scientists and doctors.

The EU, with its unsustainable expensive social model, is living way beyond its means; more so than the USA. China and the other BRIC countries are going to grind us into the dirt. Britain has an opportunity to go its own way and to stand out in the world, all it requires is a bit of creative thinking, which can only start from a young age. Has the current generation missed the boat?

The Chinese leadership is composed of scientists and engineers who take a long term view and plan accordingly. The West's leaders are mostly lawyers, accountants, career politicians, resting actors, and assorted headline grabbers. They take a short term view of what impact they can make on tomorrow's headlines. Long term planning is a dream some of them have but none implement. That is our downfall in the medium term. The Chinese are trying to copy the industrial practices of the West, but they fail to realise that they must try something bold and new if their brave venture has anything more than 20-30 years to run before mother nature gives up and punishes mankind.



My point is we need to abandon capitalism AND socialism in its current form. Making a huge profit and/or fulfilling everyones needs like magic is never going to be sustainable. The pragmatic rulebook needs to be rewritten. We live in dangerous times. Times are changing and so must ideology. How many hearts and minds, if educated correctly and are properly informed would really want things to carry on the way they are?

Until we in the west being to accept that liberalism, mass migration, paying people to have children who will turn may not contribute anything either thanks to the benefits culture, outsourcing and the obsession with appearing politically correct and "multi-cultural" has all conspired to inflict great damage to our way of life and the traditional norms of our society, in terms of the way we use to work and solve problems; and until people wake up and realise these things without shouting "racism", or "tax the rich" in order to stifle the debate, nothing is going to change. The society that the liberal left has forced upon us since the 1960s, the damn baby boomer generation, with their moral relativism and "diversity" nonsense, created several generations of westerners who don't want to see the bigger picture, equating being proud to be western with racism. And because of this nonsense, they are people who don't know how to defend western civilization against the dangers we now face, both economically and physically, so it's no wonder we are being slowly left behind. We should be setting the example, not China. How right the Enoch Powells' of the western world were. Our obsession with promoting positive discrimination at the expense of merit is simply unforgivable. No wonder nuclear fusion, electric cars and the space programme has ground to a halt and the world is facing a population crisis. We spent so long trying to force ideals on other countries rather than leading by example that we have scared them away.

sad reality

The 2 most useless concepts that do the most violence to rational thought are blame and justification. In other words it is all someone else's fault, or someone's own particular actions or point of view are somehow justified. These are legalistic concepts to aid the often arbitrary decisions of actual legal systems. However, these otherwise useless concepts stop us from seeing things clearly. They are a means of avoiding uncomfortable facts we find inconvenient and they produce false logic. People can avoid looking at uncomfortable facts and therefore come to false conclusions. They also mean that people refuse to look at the consequences of their own actions by justification. These stupid concepts produce highly egocentric thinking. Nowhere is this clearer than with regard to the human population issue.

Too many people and poor food distribution plus greedy speculation are the problems facing us now. They will pale in comparison to the nightmare of water shortages. Then the shit will hit the fan unless we can tap into the oceans. But at what cost?
If speculators sink their greedy teeth into the supply of water there will be war as millions are displaced in the search for fresh water supplies.
We should get rid of speculation for a start. Next, improve the distribution of food and access to education, and the long term availability on a global scale. Easy to write but I see no other way for the ongoing survival of mankind - if that's the will of the planet.

the predictions are all coming true he was just wrong about timing, we are indeed living on the capital itself and not the interest like any sensible person would. It cannot last and I see no alternative other than to scale back our greedy lifestyles, and that will only buy the human race time.

Maybe someone will discover fusion power so we can actually have electric cars, that only leaves us the problem of what we are going to eat and what all our "stuff" is going to be made of.

I think that people don't want to face the truth about population growth. The fact is that people need to be allowed to be responsible for their own reproduction. Just because you can have six children, does it mean you should? Insisting upon having as many children as you want as a right is ridiculous. It's my right to smear chocolate all over my living room walls but that doesn't mean it's a great idea. In the future, people will have to take more responsibility for the numbers of children they produce. Another uncomfortable fact is that often people who have the largest families rely on the state to feed them. Ordinary people who don't rely on benefits simply don't have huge families because they know they can't afford them. It's controversial - but I think that having any more than four kids is nonsensical. We have birth control now. There are no such thing as 'accidents'. A woman can easily stop getting pregnant. It's time everyone grew up.

The alternatives are only the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

a new world order

The financial crisis was staged as part of a plot to transfer power from the developed world to vested interests and to place public funds in the hands of the global corporate elite in order to shape civilisation.

You only get this type of recession when you have massive wealth locked in a fraction of the population. We are experiencing a global crisis of OVERPRODUCTION. But this is a luxury recession. Thanks to industry being shifted to countries with cheap labour there is now too much of everything, and not enough in the Western world to simply be able to survive off the land.

The Orwellian society has continued to grow around us, and like the brutal religious leaders of the past ordinary people are being shaped without realising it. The first stage was to deindustrialise the west, get society addicted to consumerism and make them dependant on exports from other countries and easy credit, then hit them for six through the banking system.

Oil is running out, the global population is exploding and the west is over consuming. Something has to be done without making it overly obvious. We are but pawns to support the powers at hand as they dig their hands in our pockets for decades to come. We are expendable and we must continue to serve our masters and accept this as our fate and demonstrate humility and humbleness.

Unless We The People rise up with a rational exerted effort toward new energy technology and build whatever it takes to manufacture, erect plants, retool machinery there won't be a recovery in society as we know it.

To sum it up a doctor in America told his patient he only had 6 months to live, the patient said he couldnt afford his health bill so the doctor gave him another 6 months.

Maggie T's 85th Birthday

It is the Iron Lady's 85th birthday today and I am sick and tired of all my left wing associates talking about dancing over her grave. I am no child of Thatcher (from a philosophical point of view) as I do tend to stay in the centre of politics as much as I can but here is my take on it.

Thatcher was merely there when change was happening. Just as Blair was as well. The difference was (whether you love/hate either) in Thatcher's time, a lot of the change was inevitable. In Blairs, a lot of the decisions were made by them, mistaking the wave of economic success to themselves, precipitating it's terrible downfall.

Margaret Thatcher didn't destroy manufacturing, but restructured the economy including getting rid of the too powerful unions to get the country back on it's feet. The manufacturing that died was inefficient and outdated. Our products were being out made and out priced by countries such as Japan and we just called strikes every five minutes. How can we blame Thatcher personally for that?

For example cheap North Sea Oil coming on line and the miners making the coal situation and the dependent industries face a dead end. Maggie just put the boot in and made the changes.

It's funny how these changes are precisely an interruption in the overall scheme of things. Actually starting up an industry from scratch is pretty tricky.

It is also quite ironic that a lot of staunch Labour supporters were also buying Council houses and doing very well out of it AND then moaning that there were not enough being created as well.

I like to think of the years 1979-1982 as the hangover years
as the UK got back on the straight and narrow after the wild and
anarchistic times of the 1970s.

Blair and Brown could have changed what they inherited, as ‘Thatcherism’ was always supposed to be (in the greater scheme of things) a short term foot in the door, and did not have to continue down the path that they did.

All Thatcher did was become the first PM to view the UK as 'UK PLC'

She looked at various nationalised industries, saw that UK PLC was propping them and said:

'If we are propping it up financially, then its loss making. A loss making business has to be sorted out, otherwise its a pointless drain on the public purse'

So, she did.

I havn't yet met an individual who rails against her who can come up with a convincing argument for why the state should pump money into loss making industries. There is no justification, long term for the state pumping money into loss making outfits. Its a waste, pure and simple, and the result would have been an economy comparable to the Eastern Bloc.

The so called British Worker was the cause of the demise of most of British Industry. Under Callaghan and Wilson before him there was hardly a day went past without some people going out on strike.

Nationalised Industries were costing all taxpayers Billions a year. The steelworkers, Dockers, Shipbuilders, Engineering, even the motor industry were perpetually out on strike.

We lost jobs because no manufacturer could guarantee a delivery date or a price, so orders went overseas. The only ones to blame were the so called workers, and their communist Trade Union leaders. More pay for less and less work. We couldn't keep up with the rest of world and they super seeded us. Hence most of us drive German cars etc etc...

One of the effects of the Carbon Hysteria is to reduce CO2 outputs by shifting to fuels with more favourable C:H ratios. ie:- Oil and Gas.
In practice, I would suggest that this is more closely responsible for coal fading out. I remember about Britain being responsible for alot of acid rain. Our lefty Geography teacher used to go on and on about it.

Perhaps another factor was the decline in steel production in the UK, which is highly energy intensive.

The real trouble is that one just can't hide from the fact that buildings, ships, cars, all take a huge amount of energy to start out with.

For anyone who says that China is moderate in it's use of energy you gotta think again. The buildings, ships, cars, they're all still being made, and the labour is cheap. If these things are happening then the energy is being used somewhere and someone else is losing out.

I find it interesting that many of the people who complain about the environmental toll of mankind are left leaning. Often they are the same people who point the finger at Maggie because of the miners. But there's a contradiction there, no?

Maggie cleaned up the acid rain. And now we're gas fired and looking to become nuclear and renewable. No?

Better than not being fired at all, which is the Labour legacy. Living in the Northeast, Thatcher is still very much hated by the majority working class. Wander into any working class pub or social club on a Sunday afternoon and you will hear that it is Thatchers fault that the country is in the state it is in today. They really do not want to believe the destruction their beloved Labour Party has done to them - they really would not want to hear the truth.

The place really could still be full of pits and mines making sure people are dead by the age of 50 and these people honestly think life would be better.

As for Thatcher killing Manufacturing, well i am sorry to tell you silly people, yes you wont believe it and shall remain in denial, BUT after she closed the pits Maggie Brought you Nissan.

Not many of them know or like to know about that. The company that has basically kept a large area of the North alive was built by the one woman they detest and hate. The company that employs thousands, uses thousands of local suppliers, has improved wages, working conditions and basically brought the area up to date.

BUT

it is impossible to measure the net benefit of certain industries- such as a rail industry. whilst on the face of it it might have been losing money, the net benefit in terms of social wealth, mobility and unaccountable benefits means the equation should be more complicated than just one of state support.

Thatcher was 100% correct to break the unions (see Royal Mail if you want to see the effects of a over-unionised company), it at least gave companies a fighting chance to compete.

Make no mistake, this country is run by companies (most of htem SMEs), its power is commercial, its success dependant on profit. These policies kick started the UK back into life again - but that does not mean it had to continue. The labour government has always thought that the only thing that mattters is "state". In this they will always be wrong, the key is a balance.

Given the growth in public spending that had come before, and that has now come about again and the assumption that it would go on like that for ever, I think holding it almost steady for ten years was a huge achievement.

Of course more could and should have been done, but you're asking for superhuman determination there. Maggie was as tough as they come and even she had to fight every inch.

If Thatcher's influence on the economy was disastrous, we can only guess what adjective we'd have to apply for a continuation of what had gone before.


Thatchers legacy is certainly oversimplified, and probably overrated. She continued to expand government, for instance, during her time in power. Her real contribution was to remove power from the unions. Whether you personally like the approach the powerful unions had to managing the economy is neither here nor there. They were not representative of the people, the existed purely to further the interests of their members, and they should no more have a monopoly of the supply of labour than corporations should have a monopoly of the supply of goods or raw materials.

I have never understood while people who (rightly) fear the power of very large, unaccountable corporations were so happy to have equally large and powerful unions throwing their weight around in much the same way. At least the man in the street can buy shares in any PLC and gain a vote in how it is run. The same is not true of unions.

Credit where it's due - she was the best, and we'll never see her like again.

Pakistan and a moral dilema

I’m concerned for the biosphere, not being compassionate toward disorganized countries that cannot control their birthrates nor the quality of their children through wise reproductive traditions – human lives are secondary to the health of a civilization as the health of a civilization directly affects human lives by default.

There’s two different viewpoints conflicting here; one is that which is represented above and the other is to blindly walk into the abyss due to the post WW2 fixation on moral high ground liberal-esque values. This is either in favour of the biosphere by controlling humanity below the carrying capacity of each territory so that the natural ‘disasters’ are not disasters, such as in Pakistan.

Ok you say that people should be left to make the choice using their own free will? Im afraid when animal urges dictate our very way of thinking that very claim is flawed right from the start.

If the population of any country, not just Pakistan, was reduced to a sustainable level in balance with the biosphere then floods/ natural disasters would not have killed more than perhaps a few hundred, or thousand rather than a few million – that’s why it’s a self inflated natural disaster, it’s part natural but enormously bigger due to there being so many people for it to kill in the first place – population control and building your home wisely is important for it allows the best to rise above the crowd because there is fewer of them to get in the way.

Altruism and compassion from richer countries giving aid are used to domesticate the foreign populations, like pets on a chain of dependency unable to do anything for themselves – all to continue building the Empire bigger and more stupid and to make the problem worse in the future. It doesn’t help the territories that are conquest either, those levels of population cannot continue to be sustained, the food cannot exist after peak oil for anyone let alone the people who are in need at the moment.

The west also continues to import the third world into its territory regardless and ignores problems at home, completely contradicting the ‘war on terror', it is collapsing from within because it doesn't provide strong leadership to the territory it already has. It’s biggest enemy is itself and us in the West dealt with these critical threats, such as globalisation and corporate internal corruption, then they could more easily build the Empire and increase the quality of the territory they conquest rather than ‘develop’ them to death.

Since the dawn of civilisation several countries have missed the boat so to speak, but surely we need to balance the world in more ways than one before it is too late and everybody suffers? Biology and civilization structures interact to create greater things, but we need to face reality and stop being concerned only with the short term social reality because that’s what pays our check. Foreign policy is drugs, high immigration, oil and cheap labour, and look where that has left our economies.

Regardless of numbers, overpopulation exists when you can’t feed your own population, 20 million is 20 million people to feed, if any of them is starving, they’re either religiously anorexic or they’ve fucked each other too much. They’re going to have to bump off undesirables, that is reality, and feeding them with your happy aid is only going to delay the inevitable.

Be aware to me this a moral dilema, I don't want this to happen at all but I cannot see humanity as a whole going down any different path. The vast school of self-important liberals fail to view this current situation in terms of humankind and what would be best for it in the long run. We have a simple fact running throughout the World, thoughtful intelligent people are having few or no children while the masses of ignorant, cultureless weeds continue to breed without concious. What does this say about nurture over nature? Are too many people missing that initial chance? Do we have to accept that not everyone will make the same grade due to their biology? The best solution to the overpopulation problem would not be resolved by trying to educate third world woman, we know thats a pipedream.

The only way to put humankind and the Earth for that matter back on course is to adopt more Draconian methods. Yes to me it seems self defeating trying to save these ignorant breeding monsters, who are way over populated as it is.What may appear horrible at this stage could be beneficial for mankind in the future. I really do hope all these Conspiracy Theories are right and that the Elite are trying to depopulate 3rd World countries. Reckless breeding has gone on too long and need a check, much like a house clean. When the intelligent people have all been out bred out of existence I cant imagine what the world would be like.

Be aware this is evolution happening here - unlike fascism nature will eventually choose which humans are fit to survive in the future. It gives me no pleasure to say this. But cataclysmic change is going to happen, with all its promised attendant devastation, and neither you nor I nor anyone in power is going to do anything about it. People don't fix predictions. People fix problems. And until the Western world truly feels the burn, then overpopulation is a prediction, not a problem, by which time it will be too late, and the human solution to the eventual problem will be brutal, if nature doesn't get there first and make it even more brutal. In fact and again, I'm not enjoying myself here, it's too late now.

The scope of change required from the human race to prevent disaster is so large as to be virtually inconceivable. We can't and won't do it. Overpopulation, our desire to produce young and make sure everybody lives and overconsumption of resources will seal our fate - evolution has made a mistake by trying to combine our animal past with rational thought, the two tear each other apart but the former wins.

It all sounds deeply grim - and it is. But there is an upshot. While human nature is historically selfish and incapable of focusing beyond its own generation, we have two redeeming qualities that should give us a sniff of hope.

One: we're hopeless as a herd but we're quite nice once you get us alone. There's no reason why we can't ease the earth and its inhabitants into their final days with generous levels of palliative care on a small-scale basis.

Our other upstanding behavioural quirk that should console us a little is this: humans are pretty good at snapping into action once messes are made. But that doesn't avoid the fact severe hardship will happen first.

Prof Stephen Hawking, who reckons the human race has a hundred years left if it's lucky, says we should be looking seriously at colonising other planets. Maybe we'll figure out how once we're forced to.

Or maybe when the Earth becomes so clammy and choking that we can barely breathe, we'll invent an ingenious way to sort it out again - one that's far too costly and boring to bother with now. But until then we haven't got a hope in hot, hot hell.

Oh the humanity…..

Those who are largely criminal, those only fit for menial jobs, those able people who cannot be bothered to get out of bed each day and those not able to think logically and respond maturely to life either need to be given a fighting chance or forgotten about. I went to a park the other day and it was filled with rubbish. The council comes by every once in a while to clean things up. But the locals come in every weekend in the summer and have picnics and even though there are plenty of bins around, they just leave their rubbish behind, but still moan about what a terrible state the country is in. This is an analogy which is comparable to the way most people treat our planet, they expect to maintain a high standard of living in a civilized society but they don’t intend to give anything back. The rich, the poor, the middle class – everyone is to blame whether they can help it or not.

The champagne socialists and the religious zealots will preach back at me saying "I love people, I wanna have more people" or “people should do things under their own free will…hooman rites!” I'd like to visit these people when them and their kids are starving, living an overflowing trash dump, because there's so much overpopulation and incumbent waste and used up land and resources that there's just not enough to go around and I can simply say I told you so. There's a bunch of additional consequences that pretty little holier than thou comments aren't going to make go away, they are just taking a "heart felt" stance, shooting bile towards people stating the obvious in order to create an emotional response. Either that is to make themselves feel superior due to the fact deep down they probably know they are wrong, or they intend to avoid the truth as it is too painful to face up to. Both are acts of intellectual and emotional immaturity due to imperfections of the ego, but it is amazing how many people do it.

I think less people is a good idea. This isn’t about the people who hit hard times through no fault of their own, it is about the people who are either afraid of the bigger picture or oblivious to it even when it is staring them in the face and are not prepared to make any sort of contribution in order, to do anything about it, and we are not talking about money here. I'm sorry, but we need to either help these people become better citizens of the earth or just not have them at all. We need a society where everybody makes a contribution, and you don’t simply have to slog it out at work and pay taxes to make society and the world we live in better, even the disabled and vulnerable people who cannot contribute physically and/or financially to an economy have something to share. Or in other words the world does not owe us, quite the opposite. The lottery of life has provided us with the gift of existence as human beings, but for some reason we want even more.

It doesn't have to be done by actually killing people or punishing them severely, just limit births and change the nature of our education system to make people more aware of how serious the situation is at a younger age. China and India do it out of necessity. Necessity. Just take a look. I don't think that a group of rich people want everyone else dead. Who would they have for slaves? Who would they have to mindlessly buy their crappy products? Who would they have around to compare themselves to so they can know how rich they are? Sorry lefties I know how much you envy the lifestyle of rich and want to bring them down a peg or two but the simple fact is we've got more people than we have the resources and organizational skills to educate, feed and handle properly and sustainably.

So what we end up with is this huge population of uneducated and/or illogical who are too stupid or too ignorant or too thoughtless or simply too wrapped up in their own little bubble to realize that if the billions who live in abject poverty were to come anywhere close to their standard of living our beautiful planet would be wiped out! Infant mortality was so high in the past that people had lots of offspring to overcome this and carry on the bloodline – it is why reproductive urges are so strong and so hardwired into our biology, like every reproducing creature on this planet. The difference now is virtually every new child survives into adulthood, it is a wonderful blessing given to us by science and technology, but we have to realize that this gift cannot be given to us for free, it is off the back of insights provided to us by scientists. If we want low mortality rates, we have to produce less of them. Yes that sounds a little sterile and faceless but it is a simple consequence reducing fact.

You see the human race in general is not that advanced, it is only a tiny tiny percentage of the population that make the so called advances – and that is only an accumulation of knowledge and insight that the newer generations simply consume, distort and abuse. Our advanced way of life is propped up by the insights of these unique people. Put the average human being in the wilderness and they will be dead pretty soon. The average animal can survive a lot longer simply by using its instincts. All we use our instincts for now is to consume modern goods and services, instead of to survive, and our biology is being rewritten towards this trend – simply because we are given the means to, which itself is based on finite natural resources that are destined to run out, and where does that lead us?. The rich know this, they provide us with all these luxuries for us to buy because they are able to abuse our animal instincts so easily. The very essence of our animalist existence is being abused, and it makes so called freewill look like a complete illusion. On top of this, when the natural resources run out they become more expensive, increasing profit margins even further. It just shows how stupid and how short sighted our species really is on both ends of the social scale and how ‘humanity’ has no right to claim that it is superior in any way to dolphins, apes or indeed any of the charismatic creatures that occupy our world who have existed as a species far longer than 2 million years and never caused mass extinction and destruction of its host.

With a few exceptions, every social class of modern man is to blame, although for different reasons of which some are more morally corrupt that others, but the fact is, what is happening cannot be denied – the rich become corrupt and exploit the environment and the poor for profit, the middle class consume blindly to sustain their semi-comfortable, individualist lifestyles, and the poor who feel they have less to live for in this day and age are more prone to criminal acts, excessive procreation, tribalism and destroying the environment due to their sheer weight in numbers for their simple act of survival, and the fact that some of the richer ways of living does trickle down even to them. The irony is everyone is given a brain at birth to develop a sense of reason strong enough to overcome these impulsive cravings and see reality for what it really is. I mentioned blame before not in the sense of right and wrong from a moral point of view but simply that what is happening is happening, or in other words cause and effect.

The class system is self defeating, both the left and right of this simple minded political spectrum are too fixated about status and labels for their own emotional gratification that they eventually go against what they claim to believe is their ideological utopia, which makes me think that this irrational talk of ideology should be ignored and these people who fail to acknowledge simple facts should either be thrown out of an argument or given the chance to develop critical thinking skills and a sense of connection, otherwise I feel these people are simply too inferior to have serious involvement in decision making. Do not gasp, that is not a fascist statement or bigotry, it is simply promoting the fact that reality can only been seen in its truest form when all facts provided are taken at face value without self interest influencing cognitive judgment, of course we are all prone to it but there is such thing as making an effort.

To simply hate the rich or look down on the poor creates a divide which in the long term will be detrimental to the health of mankind and also our planet. In order to save ourselves from potential oblivion we all need a new form of aspiration that will lift us out of our collective infancy, which will raise living standards for everyone yet at the same time will have less of a negative social and environmental impact. Of course living standards cannot be raised if people are too emotionally attached to a certain way of life, which is why convincing people is going to be very difficult. Either they are shown in real terms what the consequences could be for them and their children and are given a choice as to what path they would rather follow, or we start a fresh with their children who have not yet become addicted through the education system, although that depends on how long we have before the tipping point.

We need to look beyond the one dimensional political spectrum and understand that there are many dimensions to this issue, socialism is parasitic and capitalism is cancerous, fascism is irrational, communism is stagnation, the other option, centrism is either abused by the likes of Tony Blair or is misunderstood by unpragmatic people for being indecisive. We need a healthy system that judges issues on their own merit using critical thinking, using a method of reason that will tame our animalistic shortcomings, whilst acknowledging that there are needs that do have to be fulfilled. The only way we can do that is if everyone looks at life in a more pragmatic way, connecting their emotional needs with the material world in a more disciplined and enlightened way, giving us a better understanding of the world and of each other. That is a philosophy; I know that sort of thing will never happen by choice until an appalling tragedy occurs at immense human cost, either by tyranny or by natural causes. It is the only way our species seems to learn anything, for example the tragedy of WW2, or the appalling state of communist Russia . The way things are going that is exactly what will happen, but at the end of the day that is how evolution works, and that is exactly what our global culture needs.

Discipline the battle between emotions and reason

How we perceive existence and everything we experience within it depends on our senses and external conditions which are in constant flux with no fixed nature to any condition, which in turn can reduce mental clarity and the ability to focus and will interfere with decision making, changing situations, insightfulness and impartiality. This causes a state of ignorance towards reality, discriminating against circumstance in order to fulfill a craving that is beyond reasoning.

Suffering and negativity within a sentient being is caused by craving, expressed as a deluded clinging to a nurtured sense of existence, selfhood or the things that we have been led to believe is the cause of a positive or negative emotion, then freewill and reality may become an induced illusion, as though it is being controlled by an external force. When it reaches the point where one craves that a certain state of affairs should disappear or change, the illusion is reinforced. Suffering ends when craving ends, which is achieved through a liberated state of mental enlightenment, which in turn leads to clarity and wisdom.

True liberation is not simply freeing a sentient being from suffering, (because that alone will simply push them towards an ongoing cycle of positive and negative situations, which will be difficult to escape from, and will reinforce the craving even further); it is guiding them towards freeing themselves, using a method which is deemed necessary. The negativity (for example greed, hatred and delusion) is a deep rooted affliction of the mind, creating suffering and stress, which needs to be uprooted through internal investigation and discovery, which will reveal the true of one’s self and all things within reach of one’s senses.

A person can only channel this sense of freedom and potential liberation outwards, as the craving has to escape from where it originated in the first place or else it will still manifest, this then leaves a void to be filled by mindfulness, which in turn has the effect of an enlightened perception of reality. Thinking and thought must not be allowed to confine and bind one to rigidity, so a person must learn to regularly mentally ‘detox’ in order maintain a pure mind, and make sure this routine becomes part of who they are. There are many things in life that are beyond our control. However, it is possible to take responsibility for and to change one’s state of mind, as we owe it to ourselves and to the future generations that the human condition can progress beyond the unpredictable and unfocused state it is in right now in order to prove we are beings more advanced than the animals we share this planet with.

Reality check

Population growth is a real difficulty for many developed and developing nations, and it is firmly embedded in the birth to death ratio. Basically too many children are being born and not enough of us are dying quickly enough. That doesn't mean that a few sections of society have too many children per family unit but that too many people have children full stop, and plenty are neglected. The nuclear family is sold to us as the only viable lifestyle choice and there are important economic and social reasons for this but we need to get real now.

Rising crime, over crowded cities, waste, ethnic unrest, lack of resources like power, water, roads, schools, houses etc and no suitable land available to build more on means alot of people are going to lose out as a result. Most island nations have populastion and immigration controls except the UK, it has to change if the children we do have are to have any sort of a decent future.

For the population to decrease we need people to start looking at a 'childless life' as a viable option and this needs to be sustained for a period. Of course it's a natural instinct for human beings to want to procreate and raise offspring but that is normally checked by the harsh realities of the natural world - something we will have to face on a catastrophic scale if we dont address it. We have have almost negated these factors now so we have to make hard choices as a society.


Idiotic governments who say we need overseas labour are fools. We can't keep expanding the UK any more, especially, when everyone knows the vast majority of immigrants are going to claim benefits. Therefore, I would like to know from you brightspark pro-immigrant fans, when do you stop it because it will have to sooner or later?? We are already on the verge of social and financial collapse and as
good as there in one respect.

We should follow Australia, New Zealand and other countries by clamping down on immigration, cutting child benefit to one child only. This would be a great help in solving the problem. People would only have the children they could afford to bring up. Also stop all this fertilisation treatment etc. It sounds harsh but back to nature, she will will punish us alot harsher if we dont act!

An over-riding obsession with racism that has dominated brainless social theory has allowed champions of multiculturalism and diversity, backed by organisations to use immigration as their most potent flagship. Anyone expressing even the mildest pragmatic concern has been labelled a racist.

The economic reasons for immigration - filling vacant jobs and attracting skills - have been exploded by recent figures and its only purpose appears to have been a deliberately engineered cultural revolution by the liberal left to justify their ideological high horse. The population growth we now face is merely one in many of its consequences.

It's a global issue and immigration is a tiny symptom of the real underlying cause. Medical advances and hygiene improvement s have led to an explosion in the human population of the planet - from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 6.7 billion in 2006 - almost tripled in 50 years! Look at any environmental issue and this is the cause - too many people. And the delight is that we are all taxed to pay for the rampant breeders to carry on making the problem worse. Breeding is no longer a necessity but a self indulgence and it is time the tax system was refined to put an end to its subsidy. Start with IVF - certainly one we don't need to be paying for, then look at all child subsides and move towards individuals being responsible for their own
life choices. And before anyone starts on the "right to have children", yes and you can also have the "right" to expect most of them to die before reaching maturity - that is not a moral desire it is a fact of nature, and too many people cannot seem to tell the difference when they listen to someone who states the obvious.

And before I get slated by let wingers and humanists.. FACT: If you don't adapt and respond to changing circumstances, you will run into problems individually and collevtively. Intelligence is the ability to do this. Ideology is the ability to ignore it. Anyone that doesn't believe that this will not end in massive civil unrest or war needs to take a fucking reality check.

We need to move on from immigration being something only racists and bigots moaned about and global overpopulation that only aloof scientists and malthusians ever talked about and understand that we need to show some restraint before the consequences of our so called 'rights' bite us up the arse.

Politics...The election aside... the reality

People have moaned n whined about the pathetic state of this country for years. Then they actually DON'T vote that idiot out.

There seems to be a lot of people with very short memories. Every Time we have had a Labour government we have had a recession. Yeah granted this recession is not down to Brown personally. But it is how to deal with the recession that makes the difference. All of you who feel that Labours ideas of borrowing more money, continuing with waste and not making any cuts are in any way going to bring the country out of the recession are barking.

YOU CANNOT BORROW MORE MONEY TO GET OUT OF DEBT.

Yes the Tories are now to make cuts, but that is because inevitably they follow a Labour government and know that is the only way to pay off debt.

And yes the Tories give tax breaks to the rich....But then the rich have more money then to re-invest into the country providing more jobs.

And on the subject of tax credits and the like. Why should it it deemed right for people to have kids willy-nilly and then look to the government to give them benefit. Should be simple, You want kids, make sure you can support them. You can't support them then use contraception and save the country money. Why should I have to pay to bring your kids up? But please bear in mind this doesnt apply to families who do make the effort but need that little bit of extra help, it is all about the 'career moms' who get twice what I earn through hard work every month in benefits.

People have short memories! Firstly, The Labour government inherited an enviable financial position from John Major when Tony Blair came into power. The tough choices that were made by John Major were unpopular but got the country back in a good fiscal position. But this government have blown that and put us in a position whereby the government are spending £4 for every £3 it receives. If this isn’t sorted soon, then we will end up like Greece. It really is that serious.

A solution will not come from Labour here. They are too entrenched in unions and commitments they cant meet. Regardless of the politics, there are 2 fundamental differences between Labour and the Conservatives. Labour will tax you to the hilt and then spend your money unwisely. Conservatives will tax you less and leave you to spend your money unwisely. I know which choice I would take!

By going with Labour you're saying YES to benefit fraud, mass spenditure at a rate of £5000 a minute minimum, Brussels controlling our laws and regulations, an inevitable joining of the Euro, more uncapped immigration from both inside and outside the EU, an ever decreasing NHS and overcrowded classrooms for our children..

Anyone who has studied history knows that the European experiment is just that - an experiment with a maximum 50 year life expectancy and that is probably generous. The EU would have been far better off staying as a trading club but the Empire builders and would be Napoleons still exist in mainland Europe and they have built an edifice which again will not stand the test of history. Britain always would have been better off living outside this madness but at least it stayed out of the EURO and privately even the pro-EU lobby must be thanking their Gods for that.

Just where all this money comes from to bail out Greece is puzzling, the USA is bankrupt, even Germany has a huge deficit and everyone is borrowing on the strength of taxes yet to be collected 10 years from now. The printing presses must be pumping out Dollars, Pounds and EUROs as fast as they can and has we have seen in the recent crash all the 'funny money' generated by banks and computers is not even as real as toilet paper. Where will it all end? - well its not hard to predict the end of the EURO and the break-up of the EU , we should all welcome that and get back to real life as trading nations and stop wasting money on this club which was only ever designed for the rich bankers and money markets who have shown us very clearly their experiment is a failure and they can't be trusted. Hard times ahead but Britain will benefit in the long run if the idea of the EU is consigned to the history books in the chapter marked 'bad ideas of the last century'.


Mostly oil rich Arab states and the biggest Casino player of all- China will get fatter. If we all default the entire of Europe gets re-planted as paddy fields with the dryer bits used for camel racing. It is competition that shapes winners and losers. The European experiment was a huge success in bringing most countries, with the initial stimulus of the Marshall plan to a pinnacle of prosperity in the '90s. But no system can survive unless its undelying wealth creation apparatus can compete.

If your mind can travel back a century or more when the UK was the workshop of the world, we had unlimited wealth and un-dreamed of international power, but our factory workers in Manchester lived lives of extreme poverty, with no health or education and died in their 40's. We learned over many years to balance the needs of capitalism with the needs of people and the EU enshrined these principles so that we all enjoyed a good long life with minimum wages, access to education and welfare. We simply now have to address the issue of competion with the powers in the East, we have failed to do that for the last 50 or so years, and now look at us.

A Guided Sleepwalk

Hitler and Stalin would blush with inadequacy at the scale of this revolution fought against the free nations of the world without a shot being fired, engineered with financial weapons and aggressive social engineering. The oh-so-moralistic-on-the-outside socialists jump on anyone who dares to defy them with common sense, yet they are determined to ignore best interests of the majority, bombarding them with lies and deciete just so they are given what they want. That level of greed is on a par with ruthless capitalism.

The tragedy is the so called 'free thinking' public are too succeptable to suggestion, as much as they might resist, and willfully point their arses into the air and gladly accept a good rogering, whether they know it is happening or not. What has gone wrong? Are the real free thinkers becoming too much of a minority to make a difference, or is free thought an illusion? For example, (one of many scenarios) you have to wonder what people think about day to day when their daily lifestyles are directly fueling the extinction of the orangutan. People have become so ingrained into their own little non-world that they are too conditioned to even care. As a result they have deliberately been denied the whole facts that they are supposedly entitled to in a free world in order to maximise profits for the products they consume, which is being done directly and indirectly. Some facts might be there but too many people choose to ignore them because it is easy option, fueling the positive feedback loop.

We have become so complacent regarding personal liberties that the negative consequences are starting to outweigh the benefits on a level unseen in the history of humankind. To forcefully take all power away from the people is just as damaging as giving power to the people. Knowledge IS power, but are the people ready to accept the truth/knowledge, as harsh and as brutal as it is? Not a chance we are too conditioned to accept ambiguity that we are ignoring what really matters. Never has britain and for that matter the whole planet been under so much threat wth such little understanding of realisation.

Socialism is not the answer

We may have been at the mercy of the greedy capitalist bankers recently, but why do left wingers seem to indulge on short sighted issues at the long term expense of the majority? Here’s why, they have no concept of the future or indeed the survival of 'their hive' and the vital decisions that are required. I find that as irresponsible and as uncompassionate as one could possibly get, indulging in assumption, ignorance, passionate indecision and indeed more erroneous decisions as a whole at the expense of real social, technological, ecological, creative, and economical prosperity. They forget that life is cruel to be kind by default, which there have always been winners and losers, eagerly brushing that simple fact under the carpet, pretending it doesn’t exist, at their peril.

The socialist ideal that everybody deserves to win just because they exist, regardless of effort or circumstance will always be countered by an inflated number of losers in practice, unless the true facts of life are accepted. You cannot ignore the facts of natural order, something we depend on for our way of life, not to mention for our very survival. Nothing is above the law, in this case natural law. They appear to be in denial about anything beyond their one dimensional, outdated agenda because they fail to comprehend the insignificance of their own lifespan, or in the case of a democracy their own term in office.

Unlike reckless, capitalistic boom and bust, sustained progress for everybody involves a planned step by step advancement in all areas, in a specific direction, driven by a suppression of impulse and a embracing austerity to fuel the cause, both of which can only ever be driven by either a collective desire to embrace intellect, or by brute force. I know which one I would rather choose, but I also know which one has to be the reality if it is going to happen, and it has to soon because time is running out. You cannot simply put faith in something you cannot control or fully understand (just because it is stirring an animalistic emotion) without eventual consequences that end up going against what they were aiming to prevent in the first place.

Socialism doesn’t work, because it acts, as it must, through the state, and in its interactions with people, there is always at least one party forced to participate who is abused, exploited and not acknowledged according to their circumstances.
Socialism simply satisfies the powerful emotion of envy, exploiting nonconformists like a downtrodden piece of crap.

It is like cancer; it starts out slowly, and grows until it wipes out the host it invaded. Like a religion it purports to offer a solution to human problems and offers people an excuse and a false solace against the inevitable traumas of life, simplified to a point to which the masses are able to comprehend, having it packaged as though it is a miracle solution because in the end people see what they want to see. This over simplification is lethal in practice against a complicated human and ecological world, which exploits every weakness of a flawed system by its very nature.

The concept of socialism isn't how the world works at all and it has never worked that way; it is just a fanciful construct that a few hard-line, supposedly hard done by left-wingers hold onto because reality is far more complicated than they can bare to face.

It’s very political structure denies incentive; innovation and information, which in turn leads to eventual dissatisfaction, laziness, ignorance, waste, inefficient use of resources and possible war. A civilization does not advance like that; the laws of nature which we are effectively dependent on (even in a world of technology) are not compatible with such a concept.

It can never be sustained on a scale larger than a local community such as a tribe or an extended family as everybody needs a reason to participate. Until every single human being willingly cooperates towards a common goal, and sustains it, the system just decays into a complete mess, unless they are forced to, which then goes against the left wing principle. If you leave everything to the common people alone, society will eventually live in caves like beasts, struggling to light a fire, fighting over the scraps, then the capitalistic survival of fittest ruthlessly takes over due to the personal will to exist, resulting in pain and misery on a scale much larger than what the creators of the socialist system wanted to move away from. That is the evil behind it.

boom and bust

The unholy combination of religious zealotry and political corruption and inertia will see to it that starvation will solve the problem. It's disgusting but that's the way things are in this world....a few random ideas:

We harness nuclear fusion, develop mechanized agriculture basic on electric vehicles, educate the poor, stop child benefit, by law the right to have a family should be based on means, food aid should only be provided to poor people along with condoms and mandatory education, interstellar exploration happens in order to make use of raw materials from other planets and asteroids, anyone who has more than 3 children should be fined and sterilized, economies should be directed towards new technologies rather than providing for the materialistic whims of the shallow majority, every state and law system is completely secular and adopt a one party system where every department is voted in and out depending on strict performance criteria, make sure every murderer is executed and every rapist and pedophile is sterilised, ban religion, give more scholarships for higher education,...oh I think you get the idea.

Sounds brutal and ruthless? Maybe, but the alternative is far worse. Most of us are useless when it comes to actually making/doing something that could enable survival apart from just passing on our genes and there will be one or more main events that cause the majority of the population to disappear in the future.

Totalitarian mass sterilization is surely better than millions of dead in a plague scenario and the problems of dealing with the dead bodies etc, but the ideal solution is to change our attitude towards mother earth and not just to educate more people, but increase their desire to be educated, but this is a mammoth task.

If 'god' has allowed this pending population crisis and suffering to happen then he/she/it is a fascist! Religion is out of date and is turning a huge number of people into brain washed drones. We talk about morals, but at which level are they most justified, for the good of the individual or for the good of mankind as a whole?

Bottom line: The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world. A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days. To those people who think having lots of children is their god given right, its not rocket science just do the math!

Do any of those self absorbed individuals who think it is their right to have children understand the heart of the problem? In raw nature it is an animal urge to have as many offspring as possible so at least two of them survive due to the cut throat environment mother nature throws at them. We now live in a civilised society where most children survive to adulthood and due to consumerism we have a high standard of living until a ripe old age. Do the sums, it is a simple trade off. We are genetically programmed to have a desire to reproduce like any animal does, but we also have something very large called a neocortex which allows us rational thought. Try using it. The planet's resources are finte, as are the resources of our own country, which means population growth has to be finite as well in order to maintain a status quo in living standard. We have three options 1) forced population control by the state 2) mother nature ruthlessly controls the population through famine and disease 3) we control ourselves by expanding our minds and looking out for the species as a whole, which is the best option? Have loads of children if you wish but you will only be condemning either them or their offspring to a far lower standard of living. Disagree with me as you wish but if you want a certain way of life you have to accept certain boundaries. It is about earning your rights with responsibility and they should both go hand in hand. There are 7 billion people in the world now and 9 billion predicted by 2050, and something has to give. We are sitting on a time bomb here and I beg you to think with logic over desire, because isn't that what makes human beings stand out? Try looking beyond your own little lives and think of humanity as a whole and you will see my point, because in the end it WILL affect in your own little lives in the long run. It is not an attack on any individual, but I wish everyone in the world would realise it. Things are changing in this millennium and we have got to a set of crossroads. This goes to people trying IVF off the state and people who have large families and claim child benefit just because they can. There is no such thing as a free lunch. I would love for the world to become educated enough to see that personal population control is the way to go, but there are enough stupid people out there for me to know that’s not likely to ever happen.

It may sound cruel, but I don’t see the benefit in all these humanitarian missions like Darfur. The genocide there is a result of competition for resources (because of overpop). It’s a human tragedy, no doubt, but if you save these people, they’re just going to create a strain on resources somewhere else, and once that strain becomes too great, or one group becomes too jealous, genocide will result again. Bill Gates may provide mosquito netting to prevent malaria in Africa. If you prevent malaria, how many rain forests will these people cut down to feed themselves? How much food will we need to send to place like Kenya (the Maersk Alabama was bringing food to Kenya, right next door to Sudan. When the Earth wants to have fewer people on it, it finds a way to get rid of them. Plagues like the Black Death or the Spanish Flu during the 1920s eliminated millions of lives in heavily populated areas. Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, etc. cut down populations. The original point doesn’t sound so cruel after all. I honestly think we’re due for another pandemic of a sort. Just seems like developed countries have been living too clean lately. People have forgotten the past and are oblivious to the future.

It is not sustainable and what good is being politically correct and ensuring ALL freedoms if it will lead to the downfall of humanity? Curbing population growth through family planning must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. Governments must reduce population growth by funding better family planning - even if it means shifting money from curing illness to increasing contraception and abortion, and reduce child benefit to just one child. Don’t get me wrong children are lovely and can enrich the lives of parents, but what is wrong with having a maximum of two children who will each receive a great portion of family resources not to mention that the planet has a biological load limit and I’m sure we have surpassed it already.? Voluntary human extinction movement take it a little far, but the ideal has it’s basis in everything that was discussed here.

Which leads to my next point…

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."

Democracy just plain doesn't work. And it will inevitably lead to tyranny. By employing democracy, it says that everybody has a say in who should lead the country. The problem is that this implies that everybody does know what’s best for the country and understands politics. My suggestion (as it would be apt to provide a solution albeit a rather simplistic one) is that qualified voting MUST be implemented whereby a person must qualify as intellectually apt in order to cast a vote. This, I know, is drastic but in order to combat this "apathy" as such, maybe such drastic measures are necessary. To end - I have to say that I believe in dictatorships as such where a bunch of qualified intellectuals run a country! But, in the real-world, I know this is impossible because of corruption and stuff but one can dream... The person that can't find "Russia (biggest country in the world)" but needs to find a way to find food and or money to feed his/her family should be able to vote because s/he knows his/her world and how government affects his/her wallet.

Democracy Is Fake When the Populace Consists of Ignorant Sheep Who Can Easily Be Manipulated By the Powers That Be. I like the idea of 'majority rules', except when the majority consists of un/misinformed pawns who have no touch with reality and are easily manipulated into believing virtually anything that could appear to further their personal interests. The majority should be considered, and forgive me for the term, 'retarded'. The powers that be are working only in their own interests to gain money, influence, and power over everything. They are not working for the majority, but pretend that they are, to the detriment of society. The world needs to be ruled by reason, and if people are too thick to understand reason, they can adhere to the concept under a similar whip under which they are currently facing. Eventually as their lives became better, I'd hope that they'd understand why it must be. I've had it with the bullshit. It's enough. I want reason to rule, at any cost. Bring on the philosopher. We need a dictator that has absolute power, yet cannot be corrupted.. maybe we need alien overlords or something. Some may say god will determine the outcome, but if that was the case we would go the same way as the Neanderthals. People are too ignorant, scared, and self-interested to be trusted with the vote, and the candidates are too ignorant, scared and self interested to be trusted to keep to their unrealistic promises, and once they get a taste of power it simply gets reinforced.

Both of these points are examples of short term whims which will inevitably lead to the downfall of humanity as we know it.
‘facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence’

john Adams 2nd US president. Argument in Defence of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials, but a quote that can be applied to many things.