Push and Pull views on Population

Malthus,  like many on Quandary last night,  are right to worry . Man doesn't seem to care about how he uses resources .(And it good that some care enough to talk about it )

But to shift the debate away from man to mere mechanism is to miss the point .

Malthus's idea and observation is an important one 

the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,

That the superior power of population it repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."^[9]

The drivers  we find easiest to latch onto are NOT deterministic,  just drivers . 

The  choices we make are the critical things.  Because the choice to limit the population of the earth is already being made and reinforced by education there is still some resilience left to plan with .Who on the panel really cared about our great heritage in planning ? the full growth curve contains a few things other than steep lines dummies! 

The problem is always the same with the students of mere description they name a few variables and may even have an equation or two together 

BUT they don't want to know about feedback looks inside the organism ( Whitehead) the job of sorting this stuff is not for the wannabes but for those who study and show themselves approved ( one area where Flannery and brown are right - but when would they ever put their minds where there mouths are and Listen to production ecologists AND psychologists and sociologists working together ) 

Misery and vice must not be linked to the mechanism or we will be ack to some socialistic soap opera handing out all our savings to the poor . 

So what does Quandary feed ? The road to panic rather than the road to planning . 

The inspiration that Perara gave by reminding us about attitude was great . The source of  a  balance between optimisms and pessimism is hidden to those who skim over the people problems like Flannery , Brown and Malthus . 

Big topic for another  day - what resources will we really running out of ? We are running out of optimism at the moment?