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St_Francis
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Just and serious. But my main concern was the orginal comment didn’t mention either.
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St_Francis
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As you have put this, it is not at all what the Church teaches, but I am also not sure you meant what you said.
Well, the more children who are born now, the more will be acailable to care for the parent generation when it ages, no?
And the more people who are born now, the more people will be there to buy and sell, to invent and manufacture, so probably people will not be out of jobs because of large families.
Many of the economic problems, even the housing problems, we are experiencing now are related to the “boom and bust” demographics.
nonetheless, its kinda hard to say that even with the resourses we have we are overpopulated. I read sometime ago that Japanese would go extinct in 300 years, Europeans are decreasing their numbers also. maybe some of us americans should start moving to those places, and both problems would be solved.
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weller2
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Animals disagree:
Also, enjoy your fish, because they won’t be any cheaper
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weller2
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And that is going to be bad because? I, for one, would gladly welcome the opportunity to move to Florence for free! Much better climate than where I live.
And that’s why you think population decline is a problem: you’re putting profit before human welfare.
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Ridgerunner
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Said without the slightest idea what I really think. A person can’t even make a joke, it seems, without somebody going into ideological dysentery.
The fact does remain, however, that Italy is due in a few years for a severe decline in the native population; a fact nobody seriously disputes. Population declines have consequences.
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SuperLuigi
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I was talking about skyscrapers.
Nature does a good job of that. To steal a line from Star Trek “let the universe unfold as it should”.
Interestingly, a lot of places were there are now some trees used to be prairie. But in areas designated for logging, they can and do plant new trees.
The planet’s not as frail as you think and changes significantly without much help from man.
Northern Minnesota, for instance, was oak savanna only a few thousand years ago.
Saying it’s alarmist gives it a perspective in credibility which isn’t very high.
There will not ever be a Catholic world.
The feedback loops are confinement of runaway population growth to a few areas where people have a low life expectancy.
No, I think most people are called to marriage.
But we could always use more clergy!
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SuperLuigi
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:ehh:
So you think that less people just means empty cities?
What’s going to happen is they will import even more immigrants who don’t care for the values of liberal democracies. They’ll bring them in because (1) they’ll keep deluding themselves that immigrants will just automatically adopt because who in their right mind wouldn’t love my outlook on life and (2) they need the numbers to keep up their great First World entitlement society.
Would you live in Florence if they banned gay rights and women from driving?
I wonder…
Don’t see the world in such black and white American left-wing talking points.
Population decline will put major stress on these First World liberal entitlement empires.
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SuperLuigi
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That’s a very weak case for your argument.
Those species are threatened because of big governments around the world. Big government leads to bad, corrupt policies that harm the environment.
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SuperLuigi
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I didn’t cite specific numbers.
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SuperLuigi
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And yet all the Muslims have to do is give First World secularists an angry look and they’ll turn and run.
The growth rate in the Third World is slowing overall and what puts stress on resources are big government policies and corruption.
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Iron_Donkey
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Perhaps, but this has pretty near nothing to do with the human holding capacity. Now, if either wild animals or fish were our only source of food (or if you managed to show that we couldn’t just phase out eating fish and replace that part of our diet with something else that we control more), or if fish had learned how to farm efficiently and made significant technological advances and were still dying out, you might have a point.
As it, of course the world will change, and this will involve some animal species going extinct. But that doesn’t spell doom for us.
Also, I don’t like fish. Now, if you find a graph showing that cows, wheat, and potatoes are going extinct, you may be able to get me concerned.
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Ridgerunner
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I recall reading that most species that ever existed have gone extinct, well before man had anything to do with it.
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DMC12
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you know, if animals were being extinct because we keep growing in numbers it wouold mean that we should totally stop for a while. but really i doubt it is because of that, If we respected nature over money and comfort, i think those statistics would be changing.
and yes, animals becoming extinct is normal, there have bee several extinctions like the ones of the dinosaurs and others.
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Cricket2
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“Many of the economic problems, even the housing problems, we are experiencing now are related to the “boom and bust” demographics.”
Economic problems are a contrivance of those in power and one of the greatest forces behind our current situation has been globalization and privatization. Neither of these have occurred for the benefit of the masses, but at their expense and are prime examples of mismanagement of resources for the benefit of a few.
Economic problems are a contrivance of those in power and one of the greatest forces behind our current situation has been globalization and privatization. Neither of these have occurred for the benefit of the masses, but at their expense and are prime examples of mismanagement of resources for the benefit of a few.
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manualman
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No, this is NOT catholic teaching. Read Humanae Vitae again. “Serious” is the word. Ability to afford quality education (primary through college) IS a serious reason. Catholics, contrary to notions in some circles, are not necessarily called to have 5-8 kids each.
To the OP, what you don’t seem to perceive yet is that there are really FOUR types of human cultures in regards to population growth rates:
- Pre-industrial, poor agrarian societies with no modern medicine or technology. These have high fertility rates, high mortality rates and low population growth rates.
- Transitional societies. These still resemble group 1 above, but medicine, sanitation and some technology has been introduced from external cultures. Fertility rates are still very high, youth mortality rates drop dramatically and population growth rates are very high. Group 2 above tends to have a very limited duration before becoming Group 3.
- Industrialized, wealthy, urban societies. These, by their nature, tend to have very low fertility rates, low mortality rates and no internal population growth rates. This has been true even well BEFORE modern contraception and abortion were introduced (dating back to the 1800’s). Huh? Yes. This sort of culture innately puts larger families at economic disadvantage and structurally discourages them. For one thing, this sort of culture demands much longer education times which tends to push marriage ages back considerably compared to rural cultures. At the population level, modern contraception is not critical to relatively smaller family sizes. Even the crude rhythm method greatly reduces family sizes among those who desire smaller family sizes. And well before there was “medical NFP” people knew where babies came from and were able to recognize symptoms of fertility. Wiping and checking mucus is not exactly high-tech…
- The fourth culture group is the contraceptive culture. Most group 3 cultures in the world today have moved or are quickly becoming group 4 cultures. The hallmark of such cultures is that contraception is socially acceptable, widely available and dirt cheap. Without exception, countries with this culture have BELOW replacement fertility rates, usually FAR below replacement rate. The empirical data from the last century suggest that all cultures in any corner of the world will eventually reach this level once sufficient political stability and prosperity is achieved. Ironically, these people use (per capita) FAR more natural resources than any of the other of the culture groups above, but are the ones working the hardest to stop the growth rates of other cultures’ populations.
So don’t let anybody give you guff for having gobs of kids. You’re doing the world a BIG favor and slowing the rate of the collapse.
P.S. Groups 1-3 above are widely recognized in the filed of professional demography. Group 4 is my own postulation, but is supported by the fact on the ground (search CIA world factbook total fertility rates, if you want backup).
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manualman
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Good luck with that unless you’re willing to grow a beard and frequently affirm that there’s “No god but allah and Muhammed is his prophet…”
Otherwise, you’ll be as welcome in Florence as you are in Yemen.
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manualman
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BTW, here is some of the most comprehensive population research on earth: esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Documentation/pdf/WPP2012_Volume-I_Comprehensive-Tables.pdf
This is the UN’s newest global data and model results. It’s substantially better than the 2010 projections since they have finally stopped pretending that what I call group 4 doesn’t exist. They don’t call it “group 4”, of course. Instead, they acknowledge (finally) that below replacement group 3 countries won’t necessarily return to 2.1 TFR after a couple decades (essentially admitting that I’m right and they are a separate phase of the demographic transition).
Still, they cling to the fantasy that many of the persistently low TFR countries have experienced TFR increases in recent decades. If you look up the countries they cite, they’ve mostly seen significant immigration from high TFR nations, thus affecting that national averages. But will the kids of those, say, Mexican or Nigerian immigrants have 3-4 kids or will they assimilate to their new nation’s culture and have 1.5? The latter I’d say, but UN demographers prefer not to notice that. Thus, I’d still say that their low range projection is probably closest to accurate long term.
This is the UN’s newest global data and model results. It’s substantially better than the 2010 projections since they have finally stopped pretending that what I call group 4 doesn’t exist. They don’t call it “group 4”, of course. Instead, they acknowledge (finally) that below replacement group 3 countries won’t necessarily return to 2.1 TFR after a couple decades (essentially admitting that I’m right and they are a separate phase of the demographic transition).
Still, they cling to the fantasy that many of the persistently low TFR countries have experienced TFR increases in recent decades. If you look up the countries they cite, they’ve mostly seen significant immigration from high TFR nations, thus affecting that national averages. But will the kids of those, say, Mexican or Nigerian immigrants have 3-4 kids or will they assimilate to their new nation’s culture and have 1.5? The latter I’d say, but UN demographers prefer not to notice that. Thus, I’d still say that their low range projection is probably closest to accurate long term.
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edgarallanpo
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This is frustrating, because obviously very few people even read my post. It has descended to erecting strawmen and beating them down.
- Again, I’m not concerned about overpopulation given our current trajectory as a primarily non-Catholic world. I’m talking about the principle of being open to life, as is taught by our church, how this could be coherently actualized by everyone in the world without eventual overpopulation. Because even with technological advances in agronomy there is an absolute holding capacity at some point. So I’m wondering where the population limiting factor is in Catholicism.
- True, extinction is a natural process. This is irrelevant. Even from a completely ethnocentric view, we rely on biodiversity as a buffer for our own survival. Even if you justify speeding up animal extinction faster than adaptive evolution can keep up in order to create more space for humans, ultimately there’s a gray area where leaving the earth too void of biodiversity means risking a pandemic.
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Ridgerunner
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- There is no Catholic “doctrine” establishing a maximum population number or criterion.
- I’m not sure there is any connection between biodiversity and pandemics except within species. I can, however, see how some human diseases with animal vectors could lessen if the animal vectors decreased; e.g., what would happen to malaria in humans if the anopheles mosquito population decreased 99%?
Because of what I do occupationally, I review a lot of real estate titles. It’s astonishing how many families, large ones too, simply die out.
There might be some self-limiting mechanisms about which we know nothing.
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edgarallanpo
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Thanks Ridgerunner, I feel like I’m being unclear…
1. There is no Catholic “doctrine” establishing a maximum population number or criterion.
I understand. I disagree that with no checks on openness to life that there would not be an eventual overpopulation issue though (if people are actually practicing Catholic teaching). I guess that we are at an impasse though.
2. I’m not sure there is any connection between biodiversity and pandemics except within species. I can, however, see how some human diseases with animal vectors could lessen if the animal vectors decreased; e.g., what would happen to malaria in humans if the anopheles mosquito population decreased 99%?
I am. Have you studied ecology? This is extremely short sighted. What if we had killed all of the bees in the world before we had learned the important role they play in pollination, only because we didn’t like that they stung us?
I don’t know that being open to life will necessarily result in overpopulation. It might not. Before the Black Death, some might have thought overpopulation was imminent. Afterward, they would not have thought so. Japan has been “overpopulated” in terms of its agricultural capacity perhaps for centuries, but certainly for a century and more. I recall reading that after WWII, Australia promoted the idea among the allies that Japan be de-industrialized and reduced to an agricultural state. The Americans and Brits wouldn’t go along with it upon realizing half the Japanese population would have to die to achieve that. And yet, it appears Japan is likely to do it to herself. An incredible number of younng Japanese (Fully 40% of the marriageable women and 60% of the men between the ages of 18 and 34, have never even had a date), and very substantial numbers report that they have no interest in sex whatever. Nobody knows why.
Are most people in Japan on board with Catholic teaching on openness to life? Are you suggesting that we’ll rely on pandemics to limit our population growth?
There might be some self-limiting mechanisms about which we know nothing.
I’m sure, and plenty we do know about also. I’m talking about in a Catholic world, not about how people do in fact behave in a secular world.
1. There is no Catholic “doctrine” establishing a maximum population number or criterion.
I understand. I disagree that with no checks on openness to life that there would not be an eventual overpopulation issue though (if people are actually practicing Catholic teaching). I guess that we are at an impasse though.
2. I’m not sure there is any connection between biodiversity and pandemics except within species. I can, however, see how some human diseases with animal vectors could lessen if the animal vectors decreased; e.g., what would happen to malaria in humans if the anopheles mosquito population decreased 99%?
I am. Have you studied ecology? This is extremely short sighted. What if we had killed all of the bees in the world before we had learned the important role they play in pollination, only because we didn’t like that they stung us?
I don’t know that being open to life will necessarily result in overpopulation. It might not. Before the Black Death, some might have thought overpopulation was imminent. Afterward, they would not have thought so. Japan has been “overpopulated” in terms of its agricultural capacity perhaps for centuries, but certainly for a century and more. I recall reading that after WWII, Australia promoted the idea among the allies that Japan be de-industrialized and reduced to an agricultural state. The Americans and Brits wouldn’t go along with it upon realizing half the Japanese population would have to die to achieve that. And yet, it appears Japan is likely to do it to herself. An incredible number of younng Japanese (Fully 40% of the marriageable women and 60% of the men between the ages of 18 and 34, have never even had a date), and very substantial numbers report that they have no interest in sex whatever. Nobody knows why.
Are most people in Japan on board with Catholic teaching on openness to life? Are you suggesting that we’ll rely on pandemics to limit our population growth?
There might be some self-limiting mechanisms about which we know nothing.
I’m sure, and plenty we do know about also. I’m talking about in a Catholic world, not about how people do in fact behave in a secular world.
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