Healthy, vibrant, successful species DO NOT OVER-POPULATE. They limit population size to the available land, food, water, etc. If they don’t, Mother Nature steps in, via weather, disease, predators, insufficient resources (land, food, water). This is true of all 10 million current plant and animal species living on Earth today.
Humans today are NOT living healthy, vibrant, successful lives. That’s why, globally, we have so much trouble, so much hate, division, frustration, destruction, even killing. WE DID live successfully for most of our 3 million year history, but we began losing that success and vision of peace when we became self-aware (the age of ‘self’).
Over-population is not the sign. Out-of-control population explosions are seen not in healthy species but in viruses, plagues, cancers, pestilences, STD’s.
The key to returning to successful human life is returning to living in harmony with our design (living in peace).* Over-population is not a problem but a symptom; while living in collision with our natural design is the root cause. When we fix the root cause, the symptoms (such as over-population, chronic hate, wars, etc.) will quickly disappear.
NEWSFLASH: Correcting the root cause is the only way to get our exploding human population under control. If you are waiting for someone else (politicians, leaders, etc.) to “fix it” … never happen!
What does “Living in harmony with our human design …” look like? Picture people living in communities, villages, tribes. Not just living in their community but living FOR their community. According to Peter Block in his book The Abundant Community, living FOR community and having the support of your/our community are the greatest indicators of safety and security for humans, greater even than the supposed protection of governments and the military. (Governments are more likely to cause war, strife, hate, division, than they are to correct it. We want peace – governments have their own, conflicting, agendas).
From a human standpoint, there are 7 billion of us vs. a few hundred “leaders.” Thus, WE in our communities get to pick how WE WILL LIVE. We choose our priorities. These may be different than those of the next community, and that is just as it should be. Successful life is not one-size-fits-all.
The Role of Government
An unintended consequence of central governments is that they draw people away from living naturally. They draw the power from community (which is personal) to nationalism (which is impersonal). Why work hard in our community when government is promising to (fill in the blanks – educate your children, feed the poor, protect you. Sadly, in actual practice, government down-grades education; keeps the poor in poverty; and makes our lives globally 100X more dangerous).
So are we saying that we should abolish governments, or that governments are bad. Definitely not. But governments, politicians, bureaucrats are elected, paid, hired, or voted in, to do one thing – TO BE PUBLIC SERVANTS. The minute they go one inch beyond serving the public (that is us), they have overstepped their bounds; acquired power (and money) that should remain with us in our communities; and must be immediately reigned in. In fact, in the United States, our very Declaration of Independence has specific directions regarding exactly what we must do when government gets out of hand (as it surely has – governments, including the U.S., are oppressing the very citizens that they were pledged to serve. That must stop).
And a bonus: when governments return to their proper role, solely as public servants, $$ millions of bureaucratic red-tape, waste, and fraud will be eliminated and the money returned to you and I to use where it belongs – in our families and communities. That will empower the poor in ways that government never will.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” J Krishnamurti
* The definition of Peace is: “Living in harmony with our design.” This statement is true for ALL living species.