Consider this, from Marshall Sahlins (Stone Age Economics):
The market-industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely unparalleled and to a degree nowhere else approximated. Where production and distribution are arranged through the behavior of prices, and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending, insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity. ... Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation.
(emphasis mine)
We humans are manifesting a level of mental disease that is both frightening and corrosive. Far too many of us are in react mode, driven by inchoate fears and resentments. Far too many of us are willing to pollute our spirits with negativity, eagerly engaging in name-calling and other forms of vilification. Far too many of us are willing to glorify violence or resort to violence, often just for entertainment or personal gratification.
We seldom acknowledge the import of overpopulation, but Calhoun's research with rats has proven that when a critical level of overpopulation occurs, the outcome isn't pretty. With rats, abnormal sexual behavior, hyperaggression, eating their young, and increased mortality are a few of the problems that occurred. With humans, well...isn't it past time we acknowledge that our species has passed a critical tipping point?
When I was younger (and naive) I thought our species was in its adolescence--obsessed with sex, drugs, and all other forms of self-gratification, especially as regards our economic behaviors. However, I've come to understand that overpopulation is a macro-level manifestation of our species' hedonism. Regardless of how much energy we devote to denying the ravages of overpopulation, they are writ large by our increasingly sophisticated, increasingly corrosive socio-cultural and technological constructs--the very same constructs we use to remain in denial, and to externalize responsibility for our collective hubris.
Bearing this in mind, I feel overwhelmed with disappointment about the choices we (as a collective) have been making, because we seem to be moving inexorably back into 'balance' on a planetary scale. When it's time for Gaia to roll over and scrape us off her backside, the inevitable consequences of our hedonistic overpopulation and denial of personal responsibility promise to be extreme.
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