Overpopulation

                According to Ishmael, one of the biggest offenses humans have made against the world is our boundless population expansion, and subsequent increase in resource production, which fuels even more population expansion. One of the more stunning moments I had while reading the book was when Ishmael predicted how human population would grow in the near future. Ishmael claimed that:

“At present there are five and a half billion of you here, and, though millions of you are starving, you’re producing enough food to feed six billion. And because you’re producing enough food for six billion, it’s a biological certainty that in three or four years there will be six billion of you. By that time, however (even though millions of you will be starving), you’ll be producing enough food for six and a half billion - which means that in three or four years there will be six and a half billion” (Quinn, 139).

Graph of expanding population (International...)

This was the first time that I was brought back to reality in a text that had been mostly theoretical, this was the first time that I looked down from the “taker thunderbolt” and realized that we may be about to crash into the ground. This prediction of population growth was spot on, seeing as how today we have passed seven billion and have already begun moving towards eight billion. This is the ultimate infraction of the peace keeping law, the ultimate blunder with the belief that we have the knowledge of good and evil. As Ishmael explains, we believe that being limited as a population is evil, so we grow without limit, which must be good. We ignore the fact that by expanding we are wiping out other animals, because we believe it is our destiny to conquer the world. Ishmael outlines an important problem in society, but doesn't say much about how to fix it, other than that it involves following the peace keeping law.

            

        A well known real world example of attempted population control is China’s controversial one problem of overpopulation and continue to “conquer” the world.  The fact that in our culture population child policy. This policy limits most couples to having only one child in an attempt to lower birth rates and slow population growth, with penalties for breaking this law. Even though China has the highest population of any country in the world, they recently formally relaxed the policy, allowing new exceptions for couples to have multiple children (China...). Many people view the policy as immoral, believing that couples should be free to have as many children as they want, and this is a perfect example of how our culture encourages us to ignore the control seems outrageous doesn't make the problem go away, it still exists, and we are taking away any forms of limitation such as China’s policy.

              Humans are still expanding, and yet we are still opposed to any population control such as China’s policy.  We continue to do nothing about this problem while our civilization continues to grow to the point where we crash and burn. The reason the topic of population rung true for me was because this is where I can hear mother culture whispering in my ear that limiting ourselves is immoral. Ishmael has opened my eyes to the problems that face humanity, and yet I still can’t shake the thought that it is inherently wrong to stop expanding our population. I know that population control seems immoral, but overproduction, over consumption and overpopulation are huge problems, and they will run our “Taker thunderbolt” into the ground. The question is, can we as a species overcome mother culture, or will we just continue to overpopulate and overproduce until we destroy the world?

Works Consulted:

"China officially eases controversial one-child policy." NBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.              <http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/28/22080954-china-officially-eases-   controversial-one-child-policy?lite>.

"International Programs." census.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.                     <https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/worldpopgraph.php>.

How We Set Goals for Ourselves

       One of the most human qualities is the ability to set a goal, and work to achieve it. Part of being a creative human being is discovering the boundaries of what we are able to do, and then pushing those boundaries to their limits. This is what people have done throughout the history of the human race, and we still do so today, only now, technology has a huge impact on this process. When watching the short film "Sight" I couldn't help but notice how much the male character allowed technology to control his everydaylife, and how technology could make someone lose their human qualities.

            

           The computer system inside of the man's contact lenses dictated his every action, his every goal. From small things such as slicing a cucumber in the kitchen, to larger parts of his day, such as going on a date, his "sight" told him what to do. The man in the film only cares about his accomplishments in his virtual world, with an entire wall of his home devoted to displaying his achievements in certain apps in his "sight." By allowing technology to play such a huge role in his everyday process of setting and achieving goals for himself, he effectively destroys his creativity, and becomes less human. His date (who isn't quite so absorbed in technology) seems bothered by the fact that he uses his sight to do everything in his life, and reacts with disgust to his use of the "wingman" app.  

   

The "Wingman" app 

         

          Although this film was clearly set in the future, I noticed how such negative effects of technology still apply to the here and now. In modern society, people have become more and more immersed in the virtual world, living their lives through social media, pictures, games, and apps. Our society hasn't yet gone to such extremes as the society portrayed in the film, but our growing fixation on choosing the virtual world over reality foreshadows what could be to come. People stare at their phones instead of having conversations, or will focus on documenting a moment through pictures and video rather than fully experiencing it. Technology has begun to take over the way we set goals for ourselves, and takes away part of our creativity, and part of our humanity with it. Instead of setting the goal of going skydiving,  we set the goal of taking a video of going skydiving to post to the internet. Instead of meeting a new person and getting to know them through conversation, we look them up on social media. Technology is a slippery slope, and we are beginning to slide towards dependence on technology and away from humanity. So maybe the next time you set a goal for yourself and go out and try to accomplish it, maybe you should leave your phones and cameras behind for a change, and really experience the thrill of accomplishment.