On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 12:32:22 PM UTC-8, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 3/03/2015 9:42 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet Brooklyn1 wrote:

[...interesting stuff...]

What you had to say was both interesting and relevant IMO. I agree with
you about trees. I'm always propagating trees of some sort or other.
And even if we just restricted the planting of trees to urban areas
because they are so good for shade and lowering the temperatures in the
city deserts, then I'd still see the value in what you have to say.
But we certainly need far more trees on this planet. We could get rid
of at least 50% of the population and we'd still have too many humans.

Copy that. Seen the estimates for the next century or so? Food riots. Powerful eat, vulnerable don't.

The fastest growing segments of the world population are the poor, the minorities, those in totalitarian societies. What these have in common are inadequate, unreliable or NO access to planned parenthood. Behind this factor lurks the millennial denigration of females by males. A very large element in rendering females powerless to control their fertility has, of course, been religious dogma, used to support males' right to dominate females by invoking "divine" authority and by blaming females for their own sexual urges.

However, most of these factors over the last few centuries in the West have operated, as above suggested, to the detriment of the "wretched of the earth".
Prosperous (largely secular or non-observant) societies have had no problem limiting their families, religious dogma or not.

Do we have time to educate the ignorant masses? And will education enable them to become prosperous enough to demand to share power with their former masters -- "religious" and political -- to raise the masses world-wide to where they can control their fertility?

One can only hope that for the sake of future generations, people in the US will concentrate less on the next electronic toy and more on how to defang Our Corporate Masters and their Fundamentalist lackeys in Congress.

As a card-carrying space freak, I still think exporting our current values to Mars or other Earth-like planets might not be such a good idea. Much easier to restore our original"garden of eden" right here on Earth.

Nobody said it better than Benjamin Franklin: "We must all hang together or we will surely hang separately!"


HB