not really, I don't like my meat processed and chemically treated. I hunt deer, squirrel, rabbit, I grow and hunt quail, ducks, geese, chickens, I also hunt alligator since it's open season year around here due to overpopulation.

I have a chest freezer in the utility room with Elk, Mule Deer, Venison, Lamb as I can. We save thousands of dollars a year on meat since I hunt and have taught my son and daughter to hunt. My daughter is 13 and has already killed her first deer last season. I've also taught them how to skin and clean from fish, fowl and large game, although they usually just watch and clean the buckets for the large game for now, they happily help me skin squirrels, rabbits, bullfrogs for frog legs, etc. It's just how we live and keep grocery prices really cheap, since I usually barter gator tail/venison at the farmers market for most fresh vegetables.

Weapons of choice, .308 / 30-30 / 12 gauge - my daughter and son primarily use 20 gauge as it has little to no kick and great spread for shooting fowl.

900lb Man is actually a superhero fighting against global overpopulation.

>And Japanese government officials wonder
> why Japan continues to have a decreasing birth rate...

imagine how quick world overpopulation could be controlled by a worldwide group decision among women alone... only women hold the power to save the Earth just 60 years... would make an interesting movie where 1 in 20 women over the next 60 years was allowed to have a single kid

OK, well men could band together too but I don't trust our achieving the level of discipline required as much in some situations

Putting someone in prison isn't harsh enough. There should be a zero tolerance policy with automatic death penalty, which would need to be carried out efficiently. No more prisoners sitting on death row for years. No more ridiculously expensive lethal injections. If someone commits a crime and there's sufficient evidence of their guilt, they are killed quickly (broken neck, slit throat, cattle spike into the head, etc) and cremated. Boom, no more overpopulated prisons and no more wasted taxpayer money on feeding and sheltering criminals who will likely break the law again as soon as they are released.

Enforcing the law is always the trickiest part, since we don't have constant surveillance of every citizen. Therefore, in the absence of surveillance, we have to rely on fear. There's a reason why people don't think twice about speeding, jaywalking or littering. Not only are they very unlikely to get caught, the penalty when they do get caught is negligible. If you gave the death penalty for the above crimes, I guarantee people would think twice before committing them.

As for Norway, they certainly do have a comfortable prison system. If I were to go on a shooting rampage, I would definitely do it in Norway because their prisons don't seem that bad. In fact, their prisons are probably nicer than the living conditions of most criminals. The point of punishment is to deter people from breaking the law in the first place, not make them happier and less likely to do so after the fact.

If I didn't know better, it almost looks like the world is dreadfully underpopulated...

Or rather, the world is overpopulated by SimCity raised "master global planners" and underpopulated by sovereign farming families.

Check out Joel Salatin. He's been doing this stuff for generations. He cycles livestock grazing in much the same way. But not just cattle, he brings in chickens, rabbits, etc on the same land different days of the week.

Whoa, whoa, whoa -- 20 seconds in and my mind is already blown... Only 93% of all human beings ever are currently dead? Think about how many generations of homo sapiens there have been, and consider that at any one time an individual is pretty lucky if they themself + generations of offspring currently living + generations of ancestors currently living is greater than or equal to 4.

Considering all that plus the 93% figure from this video, I have come to the conclusion that the only explanation is that we've gotten into the real business end of an exponential population growth curve and are currently massively, desperately overpopulated.

What your analysis is missing is any kind of cultural context. These things don't just happen in a vacuum, and nor are all ideas created equal. In many cases you are just trading one type of chain for another. Yes, mass media certainly has the ability to create and shape the prevailing social norms, and this can inspire counter cultural movements within a society. That's what happened in the 1960s with the sexual revolution, which is a root cause for the sexual immorality we see in society today. But it didn't just happen because people 'gained more knowledge', it happened because there was already a fundamental shift in the cultural ethos. An idea does not begin to grow unless its seed lands on fertile ground. The social mores of this nation were always decidedly Christian, but were steadily eroding by the beginning of the 20th century (for various reasons). The deeper truth is that people rejected traditional morality because they wanted to be free to indulge their carnal desires without restriction. Transcendent moral values were being replaced with moral relativism, fueled by the notion that man was a higher primate and had no moral responsibilities to a creator, leaving people free to invent whatever style of living pleased them. It was only the world wars that temporarily reversed this trend and brought the nation back together under the banner of an American moral imperative. But the foundation, weakened as it was by radical liberal ideology, was thoroughly rotten. America snapped back like a rubber band, bursting open the flood gates during the 60's, and changing the cultural landscape forever. Now traditional values are viewed as archaic, a throwback to a bygone era, and it is the "new" thing which is touted as "enlightenment".

Yet, this new thing is simply what is old in different packaging. The behavior of human beings today isn't noticeably different from anything that hasn't been tried in countless failed civilizations in the past. The song remains the same, despite the shiny new backdrops. Bible prophecy predicts that knowledge will increase in the last times, but it mentions nothing about wisdom. The human condition hasn't changed; men are ruled by their passions, and no matter how much knowledge they gain, the same mistakes are repeated endlessly. Look at the world today and tell me that isn't true. If humans are learning anything it is something they've always known and loved; rebellion. This is certainly the age of self-glorification, but history will tell you that is nothing new either. You're right in that "the church", ie, the catholic religion, tried to impose (a caricature of) Christian morality on the masses, with horrific results. That is a nightmare any decent person should be awoken from. However, as it pertains to describing the essential human condition, it was entirely correct. Sin is increasing in the world, not decreasing. Human nature is inherently sinful.

Everyone has a different way of describing the problem. Most look to place the blame and hand wave everything on to a particular condition. They say it's because of overpopulation. They say it's because of religion (an atheist favorite). They say it's because of ignorance. They say it's because (insert your favorite reason here). The reality is, it's because human beings are corrupt sinners, and always will be corrupt sinners until the end of time; that's why Jesus Christ came. He came to restore us to right relationship with our Creator. Don't place your faith and trust in man, because man cannot save himself, and all men are headed for a day of judgment. As scripture predicts, there will be a one world government headed by the antichrist, a seven year tribulation where all the world will become deluded and follow after the beast. Those who refuse to love the truth will believe the lie that the antichrist will be selling. At the end of the tribulation, Jesus Christ will return as the Lord and judge of all the earth. No amount of knowledge will prepare for you that day; only a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

>> ^Sagemind:

In the past era, we hit a communications Boom.

@ReverendTed
Many issues to address here, but first, some clarifications. My analogies (wonky as they are) were to point out the immorality of the “you’ve got to live with the consequences” stance, they were not about who’s harmed. But speaking of harm, it would be more ethical to let the two analogical characters “suck it up” than to demand of a woman she bring an unwanted pregnancy to term. In the first cases, there is only one victim, but in the latter there are two. When I say abortion is “punishment enough”, what I mean is that it is already a disagreeable outcome of mistake-making/poor-choice-making, while obliging a woman to give birth to (and raise) an unwanted child not only negatively affects the mother’s life, but that of the child as well; it is a disproportionate price to pay for the former and completely unfair for the latter. Hence, imo, abortion is by far the lesser of two “evils”.

Adoption instead of abortion is “a non-solution and worse” for several reasons. First, there are already more than enough children already alive who need parents, and you know very well that most people prefer making their own than adopting, so many of these will never have a family (not to mention the often inferior care-giving in foster homes and social centres). Now imagine that every abortion is replaced with a child given up for adoption; can you not see the horror? It’s that many more neglected lives, not to mention the overall problem of overpopulation.

I’m going to go on a slight tangent, but a relevant one. I have a certain amount of experience with humanitarian aid in Africa, and one thing that causes me no end of despair is the idiotic, selfish way much of it is performed. Leaving aside corruption, proselytization, etc., the “West” pours food and medicine into Africa with that whole “life is sacred” “feed the poor” mentality – good intentions of course – but with disastrous results because education and contraception (not to mention abortion) are almost always left out, even discouraged, with the support of the usual religious suspects (remember the pope on condoms causing aids?). The result is simple, and simply appalling: despite aid and funds increasing globally every year, starvation and child mortality continue to rise. Why? Because the people being barely maintained keep making kids who grow up to starve and die in turn, instead of focusing on the education of one or two children to get them out of the vicious cycle (there is another argument to be made about the education of women, but I’m ranting enough as is).

The point of this digression is to show that the non-pragmatic “all life is sacred” stance is terribly counter-productive, and the same holds for abortion (viz: on adoption above). As for lack of pragmatism, the same goes for your comment on abstinence:
I appreciate that "don't have sex if you can't accept being pregnant" is not a magical incantation that makes people not have sex, but it has to be a part of it, because no method of contraception is 100% effective, even if used correctly.
What you’re saying basically is “people shouldn’t have sex unless they’re ready for childbearing/-raising”, which is absurd when one considers human nature and human relations.

All of the above arguments weigh into the question of the “ball of cells” vs “human being/identity”. The “sacred life” stance is one of quantity over quality, and in the long run devalues human life altogether. To quote Isaac Asimov on overpopulation: “The more people there are the less one individual matters”. In the abortion debate, what we have is one side so intent on protecting the abstract “life” that they disregard the lives of the two individuals in question, namely the “individual who is” (the mother) and the “individual who might be” (the child). The former is already a human individual, with memories, relationships, a personality, etc. The latter is not. The abortion question takes into account the future quality of life not only of the mother but of the would-be child as well, something the anti-abortion stance does not. Abortion doesn’t end an individual’s life, it prevents a ball of cells from becoming one. Here is where the religious aspect is crucial, because while embryologists see a complex mass of cells with no capacity for cognition/sensation, superstitious people assign an individual “consciousness” or “soul” to it, thus making abortion feel like murder instead of like the removal of a tumour. The question of potential is an emotionally manipulative one that does not hold up to criticism, because as @packo sarcastically (and the Monty Python brilliantly ) point out, you can go a long ways up the stream of potential.

I like the first half of @gorillaman’s tomato analogy for that reason (the second half is hyperbolic absurdity), that it underlines what is important in the debate: the living “thing”’s capacity for sensation/cognition/interaction. If you grew up with a tumour on your body which giggled when you tickled it and cried when you hit it, you would probably think twice before getting rid of it. That does not mean I’m categorically against late-term abortions, but for me the scale seriously tips between the 20-25th weeks when the nervous system of the foetus centralises. Of course, it is preferable that should an abortion take place it would be before the foetal stage, for the sake of medical and psychological comfort, but unfortunately one cannot always know so soon that one is pregnant.

Congrats @ReverendTed!

I do not want to have children, not only for personal reasons but also because the world is overpopulated enough as is, and frankly, if I ever change my mind about having noisy shit-factories and nerve-wrackers I cannot be rid off (can you tell I grew up in a large family?), there are plenty of deserving children who did not choose to be born to irresponsible or now-dead parents and would need new ones. So yeah, if I change my mind, I'd adopt, but I do not in any way look down on people who responsibly choose to have children of their own, nor do I on those who decide to abort.

(edit: wanting to experience pregnancy is a very different, very selfish desire altogether)

^ More insane blathering from our local Repug tool. Good for a chuckle if you forget that this nutter actually believes this stupidity. Incredible how little it takes for some people to rail and vote against their own interests in the name of some cultish ideology. Gullibility, tunnel-vision, and the lack of common sense use to be culled from our species by lions and other predators. Now, these luddites multiply like rats and have become dead weight on humanity and progress. It's almost like Mother Nature's way of balancing out our decimation of the natural world. Humans overpopulate -> humans displace natural predators -> more low-intelligence, self-destructive idiots survive -> idiots infect gene pool -> raise more idiots -> vote for idiots -> humans destroy themselves -> predator population increases (if not already extinct).

Not one thing this kid said was true. I feel sorry for him. You can't pick your parents.

Wow, @gorillaman once again steps in with insane logic that doesn't have bearing on the real world.

I am very intrigued as to what his day to day life entails.

As for his assertions that the world is currently overpopulated and poor. That's bullshit. There's MORE than enough food and money for everyone ON THIS PLANET to live comfortably. The problem is with horrendously in-equal distribution of that food and money.

Really gorillaman, I am very intrigued as to how you function day to day in a society considering your comments here, and your past comments on how you think children should be raised. I've never seen you say anything that really belongs in a civil society.

>> ^gorillaman:

@KnivesOut
You couldn't be more wrong. We are poor and overpopulated, and we desperately need to correct that. Now is not the time to be keeping luxuries like pet underpeople.


I say we kill all the old people first. Anyone with dementia, or forget it, let's just save on social security. Once you can't work, you can fertilize the fields. I mean, really, old people, or human primate hybrids (man-gorillas if you will) they're all subhuman.

Like you said, wounded animals... the lot of them. I mean hell, if I couldn't get it up anymore, it would be common decency for you to put me out of my misery.

Then we should move on to the puppies. I mean, they're subhuman too right?

@KnivesOut

You couldn't be more wrong. We are poor and overpopulated, and we desperately need to correct that. Now is not the time to be keeping luxuries like pet underpeople.

very first video (I think) that I sifted was about this very topic -- the overpopulation of the past... also, the Hindus have a Sanskrit phrase, "vasudhaiva kutumbakam," which means the world is one single family.

All of Europe also has low birtrates.

Low birthrate is not the main issue as the total population is still growing due to people getting older. If you try to solve the 4-2-1 problem by having more kids, the total population will keep growing at a much stronger rate as we are still getting older and older. Which means you need more kids again, more people again and the issue just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

The issue is the amount of people in total is exploding. The solution should be sought in finding a balance. Not more kids, but the right amount of kids vs the amount we are growing older. That means getting less kids then we have today, even in Western countries. On top of that we need to look at the world, not just at isolated regions. Economic prosperity can help those regions find more sustainable birth rates as well. So us helping them economically will help us in the end not overpopulating this planet.