Population, Politics

Knatz.com had a complex while still incipient Society section on politics, still not yet recreated here. Right now though I add something implicit throughout Knatz.com that I here state explicitly, and I hope succinctly. Humans live in groups. Politics is natural to groups. But beyond a certain threshold the benefits of groupness can turn toxic. Beyond a certain population size, politics are toxic.

I don't believe there are any political solutions to our problems.

I believe that humans in groups no larger than two hundred, two hundred and fifty, are cute (until they run into another group). Chieftainships, nations, super zoos ... Uh, uh. I don't want it. Poison.

Left alone, we'll kill ourselves. Super groups will disappear. I hope.

But we're not left alone. The Church puts us in church. The state puts us in school. The economy puts us in the market: where we destroy the earth, destroy the earth, destroy ourselves, riding roughshod over natural limits: putting penny (after penny) in the fuse box, and then the next fuse box.

But that's all right. Just wait long enough. We'll destroy everything. And then there won't be any more of us. Or, we'll fail to exceed populations of two hundred. Or, the number is actually 225, 500: I don't know: some number. Some modest number. (There must also be a limit on how many correctly sized groups there can be: the earth could lose two hundred groups of two hundred; but could a million groups of "two hundred" remain unknown to each other?)

Or I'm wrong. And we'll spread to the stars. And then we'll run out of fuel, out of food, out of breathability.

pk's point all long has been that there are no political solutions to these problems. One can talk Nazis into killing Jews, but not likely into tightening their chastity belt.

We sterilize mosquitoes. We castrate niggers. Why don't we try a population politically self-restrained at two-fifty? Politics. Human nature.

Hey: everything's gotta die. How else can anything better develop?