Birth Control: The world's population needs to be reduced in number don't you think?

Should there be global laws to stop the human population increasing and reduce it?

  • Yes

    Votes: 16 36.4%
  • No

    Votes: 17 38.6%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 11 25.0%

  • Total voters
    44
Gotta agree with ya Jen: the prevalent attitude to breastfeeding round here is Victorian. It's stupid the way we have sexualised the breast. Sure, breasts are sensual, but so are male nipples, yet blokes don't have that taboo about their tits. Go to "primitive" cultures and you'll find a far healthier attitude to bodies. Blah. Makes me mad.
 
Someone's gotta say it,we're all thinking it...
If it only takes the nerves of the nipples to stimulate the hypothalamus,thus reducing fertility,then sign me up!!i'll stimulate....
 
Thingymajig said:
Someone's gotta say it,we're all thinking it...
If it only takes the nerves of the nipples to stimulate the hypothalamus,thus reducing fertility,then sign me up!!i'll stimulate....

I think the nerves involved are related to the actually process of milking and not just touching, but I'm not quite sure.

By the way, sorry for turning this birth control thread into a nipple discussion, that wasn't my intention.
 
Some of us are trying to keep it at least straight-faced, Recon :Wink3: But the thread really is about population control and overpopulation, not birth control. Hey, a bit of nipple talk keeps us interested! What as it... oh yeh, Sex Sells!
 
Squagnut said:
Ignorance, both in the developed world and the 3rd world, is the biggest cause of these effects, and greed is probably the biggest cause of this ignorance.

Good point well made. (But what causes our ignorance and greed, I wonder...?) For whatever reasons, which I don't really want to go into, the distribution of wealth and resource on this planet is severely polarised. If we (the western world) waved magic wands and redistributed it all fairly (Resist the G8, anyone? - clicky clicky), I believe there would be plenty for all.

Despite this, the world's population is growing unsustainably and even with any such fair redistribution, there will come a point when we just don't have enough to go round. Either we do something about it, or nature will decide for us.

Overpopulation? No. Have a look, for example, at what President Mbeki is doing about AIDS in SA (i.e. nothing, he's a useless twat),

Yes and the WTO TRIPS agreement will bugger things up even more...

While I strongly feel we should, as a race, do everything possible to treat and prevent disease, for everyone equally, the "mammal" part of me can't help thinking that disease is nature's way of cutting back on populations.
 
Reconstructed said:
I think the nerves involved are related to the actually process of milking and not just touching, but I'm not quite sure.

By the way, sorry for turning this birth control thread into a nipple discussion, that wasn't my intention.


yeah, most men actually only stimulate the actual nipple...

A baby when it feeds takes the whole areola into to its mouth (skin surrounding nipple) and i think its thst that stimulates this hormone :Smile3:
 
Squagnut said:
Gotta agree with ya Jen: the prevalent attitude to breastfeeding round here is Victorian. It's stupid the way we have sexualised the breast. Sure, breasts are sensual, but so are male nipples, yet blokes don't have that taboo about their tits. Go to "primitive" cultures and you'll find a far healthier attitude to bodies. Blah. Makes me mad.

The thing is subconciously when a man looks at a women who may be busty, hes being told shes a good mate because shes equiped to feed his offspring...

its all the media hype of people like jordon that put this message accross that breasts are a sexual object...and then societys prudishness that makes breastfeeding somwhat dirty...

The benefits of breast feeding are amazing! its not just a milk, it can prevent disease, and help IQ...

I wish my introduction to breastfeeding was better :Smile3: but im glad i did it and ill do it again :Wink3:
 
I wouldn't blame Jordan, nor even necessarily the media. How come it's semi-taboo to expose your breasts? I don't think the media put that into our mindset, surely it's more to do with sexually repressive religious influences and Victorian hypocrites? The media - and pr0n industry - simply cash in on it.

But this is way off-topic, even if I do like the subject matter!
 
<Warning: Inane Gibber>
Population control ... who needs it? In 10 years time (I believe) there will be more people over retirement age than under it ... Thats a very top heavy setup ... When these people die (no disrespect meant .. but its inevitable isn't it?) our population will drop massively and will hit a, roughly, sustainable level. Its just the interim 30 to 40 years where everything goes to shit because there is less than half the people doing the work to support far too many ... oops .. didn't see that issue arising from decent healthcare now did we? :Wink3:
</Warning: Inane Gibber>
 
Goz said:
<Warning: Inane Gibber>
Population control ... who needs it? In 10 years time (I believe) there will be more people over retirement age than under it ... Thats a very top heavy setup ... When these people die (no disrespect meant .. but its inevitable isn't it?) our population will drop massively and will hit a, roughly, sustainable level. Its just the interim 30 to 40 years where everything goes to shit because there is less than half the people doing the work to support far too many ... oops .. didn't see that issue arising from decent healthcare now did we? :Wink3:
</Warning: Inane Gibber>

Yeah, everyone's freaking out about the "old-age pensioner crisis" but I've seen some other statistics that say it's a myth. After all, the average life-span has increased for years and never caused a blowout. The problem is more likely related to the governments resistance to paying out what's owed, and private pension companies being mismanaged (making risky cash investments). I can try to dig out some references if anyone's interested.

Meanwhile, lets start taking about breasts again. :Smile3:

(:eek: Sorry! I blame my British ancestry :Smile3: )
 
I have to say - this is a very interesting topic to debate!

- There are 2 views on the population issue :

  1. The opimistic viewpoint - our technologie will develop at a speed sufficient for our population to continue growing forever
  2. The other one [i can't rememeber if this one is ''malthusian''] - our population will reach a point beyond which it can no longer be supported . Lots of people will die because of famine, disease, war.... - and then we'll all be ok again.
Now, it seems to me... that with the latest research showing how climate change will affect productivity etc, and with the fact that healthcare is always getting better - we're gonna crash at some point, I'd say sooner rather than later.

There have even been suggestions that the levelling out process is already occuring in some places where the population is too large to be supported.

Also, the aging population - yeah it IS a problem, but I'd say economic problem mainly, in developped countries at least. I think the real problem's gonna start when less developed contries improve their healthcare sufficiently for them to have a similar life expectancy to us - because it'll take a while for their birth rates to drop, and then, population will become huge, and surely we're screwed?

Also, fact: 90% of the money spent on your healthcare is spent during the last year of your life.

[appologies for long post, but i find this topic really interesting]
 
SugarPixie said:
The other one [i can't rememeber if this one is ''malthusian'']

Malthus was a political economist who was concerned about, what he saw as, the decline of living conditions in nineteenth century England. He blamed this decline on three elements: The overproduction of young; the inability of resources to keep up with the rising human population; and the irresponsibility of the lower classes. To combat this, Malthus suggested the family size of the "lower class" ought to be regulated such that poor families do not produce more children than they can support.

Does this sound familiar?

He was said to have opined that the Irish potato famine was a tragedy, but only because the three million people it wiped out were "far too few to be effective."

According to Malthus, by now our standard of living should have dropped so far, we should be killing each other in the streets for a loaf of bread.

Hmmm...


As has been documented by the likes of Robert Anton Wilson, the fundamental error in Malthus' [and everyone else who espouses population control through a fear of overcrowding] theory, is that as time goes on we discover resources and methods of extracting them that were unknown to previous generations, as well as discovering more efficient ways of managing the resources we already have.
 
He was said to have opined that the Irish potato famine was a tragedy, but only because the three million people it wiped out were "far too few to be effective."
[tangent] The Irish potato famine is a myth. OK, the potato crop failed, but does anyone believe that the only thing Irish farmers produced was spuds? Spuds is what they paid to the English by way of taxes, and when the crop failed, the English took everything else - and that's what caused the famine. Malthus sounds like an early fan of eugenics. Ugh.[/tangent]
 
malthus sounds like a big fat prune

However, his predictions have a point whatever else he may have done - we will run out at some point.
 
SugarPixie said:
malthus sounds like a big fat prune

However, his predictions have a point whatever else he may have done - we will run out at some point.

No - his predictions have been shown to be basically erroneous.

We aren't killing each other in the streets over a loaf of bread - there is patently enough to go round.


People do go hungry around the world but this has nothing to do with overpopulation, and everything to do with basic human greed.

Problems of deprivation in the world cannot, as Malthus supposed, be blamed on the fecundity of the "lower classes" but on the naked avarice of those with more than enough already.

Malthus couldn't have been more wrong.

His predictions do not "have a point."
 
In Britain we throw away about £29bn worth of food each year, the bulk of it being down to supermarkets chucking perfectly good stuff that has passed its sell-by date.

And as for the patently (no pun intended) absurd notion of food patents, words, for a change, fail me, and I am tempted to sink to using a string of bile-laden expletives. Yep, basic human greed.
 
I don't think it is basic human greed...
I think it is conditioned human greed created by a circumstantial conspiracy of history and those who viewed themselves
as the ruling classes. Infact it has gone on so long, and is now so condoned by the media, to become something
to aspire to, that we treat it as natural, while actually I belief that the original or natural state of people is not one of
fear, greed etc, that is a product of circumstance. Circumstance which our culture/society treats as the way of things,
as being how things are, and even more insidiously as the product of civilisation.
Which it isn't, though it amazes how routinely stuck in the consensus reality people are, mistaking the map for the
landscape. Most often just not even thinking about what they are saying, merely issuing a verbatim stream of something
they have heard elsewhere. As a friend put it "acquired wisdom".
 
I think it is conditioned human greed created by a circumstantial conspiracy of history and those who viewed themselves as the ruling classes.
...merely issuing a verbatim stream of something they have heard elsewhere.
*ahem*

Don't want to get into nitpicking here, but what if anything, is basic human greed then? A lot of people have an innate desire for power and an equally innate ability to grab it, which are not necessarily borne of fear. Social hierarchy exists in just about all human cultures. That "consensus reality" is a very widespread phenomenon.
 
I am quite a proponent of the whole dominator/matriarchal culture hypothesis, as espoused by people like
Mr T. Mckenna amongst others.
I also am a student of Velikovsky, who along with other provides more tangible concerns for a psychosis in the
collective psyche, in our past.
I also strongly believe that consciousness is determined by the food, drugs, literally the stuff that not only do
we take in voluntarily, but also unwittingly. Who here knows that fluoride was used on German POW's to lower
their resistance to questioning. Not only that but it was found the best way to administer it to them was through
the water supply, so they didn't even know. Not to mention the results from the Manhattan Project on the effects
of fluroide on the general populace after an accidental spillage.
Hierarchies may exist, and I am not saying they don't, but the structure of a heirarchy can vary immensely, and
for good examples I refer you to the mondragon experiments in 1930's Spain, as well as the Khalihari bushmen. I also
recommend Wilhelm Reich's the Invasion of Complusory Sexual Morality for good reference to read as well.
And in parting merely because that is how things are, doesn't preclude it from being different in the future, evolution
being a mostly progressive force and whatnot.
 
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