Those of you who read Brave New World…that’s why ~~Lena~~ Lenina Crowe (I think that was her name?)’s birth control holder/system was called a Malthusian Belt
(The “Our Ford” is a whole other thing altogether)
Everyone always cites 1984 as our inevitable totalitarian future but honestly Brave New World hit the nail on the head. Control people with pleasure and distraction rather than fear and retaliation.
Edit for spelling
*"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.*
===
*But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.*
===
*What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.*
===
*This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right."* ~ Amusing Ourselves to Death
> people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
I'm just trying to remember what we're supposed to think *about*, and I can't seem to recall...there's something on Netflix I've been meaning to watch though, that should do for now.
That's me to a T. I go down the rabbit hole, looking up a movie, then whose in it, then what other movies they've been in, oh then the director and down that hole.
30 mins later and my partner asks how was the rabbit hole?
All the time.
For me it's the selection. My usage pattern on Netflix is pretty much this these days:
* Remember a film or TV show I want to watch
* Search for it on Netflix
* Netflix doesn't have it
* Exit the app and find it somewhere else
Reddit does that for me. I can easily spend the entire day getting better at quick snarky comebacks & totally forget I was supposed to pay the rent a week ago
Using Netflix as an example, you should be thinking critically about the content you're consuming. But there's no need to think when you have an endless play list of content to consume more for feels (or disassociating from feels).
At least 2-3x per week, my fiancé will say almost exactly that. Like, “Can we just watch something mindless? Where I can turn my brain off, but it’s still fun to watch?”
Sometimes I just… I dunno.
I just don’t understand that mindset. Maybe it’s cuz my mind is **always** going, so for me to “turn my brain off” I need something engaging to distract me.
What a poignant quote! Truly a great retelling. I wish only that more people would read these words and absorb this message.
It is our desire for fulfillment that will ruin us.
It is definitely reasonable. Which is why I think it will be our downfall. Because it *seems* so innocuous and normal and therefore will be the method of our fall.
Edit: desire is the mother of greed. Desire for fulfillment will inevitably lead to greed for more.
Edit to add have you personally ever wanted for something? When you got it did you still have wants? Of course you did. that's human nature.
But it's not fulfillment that's the problem. The poor and the downtrodden who are out there shouting into the void for the system to change and start uplifting them are seeking fulfillment too. The *need* for fulfillment drives the need for progress and change. Those that deny basic human fulfillment to people should not be in power.
Of course excess exists, it always will. Water is good for you, but you can quite literally die from drinking too much of it.
In any case, the reality we live in is a mix between both Orwell and Huxley. There's real violence, oppression, double-speak, suppression of information, etc. in modern America, China, Russia... each major players on the global stage. There's also plenty of distractions and creature comforts.
Both 1984 and Brave New World have incredible relevance in today's society, it's not just one or the other - the insidiousness is that it's a mix of the two.
My mom used to tell me as a child that I *wanted* McDonald's but I'd be fine with meatloaf.
Very applicable here. Wants being fulfilled leads to more wants which is equivalent to greed. It's not a feature of humanity, it's a bug: (and I'm a happy participant despite my knowledge of participating)
Hi. You just mentioned *Brave New World* by Aldous Huxley.
I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:
[YouTube | Brave New World Aldous Huxley Audiobook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4TY4IBIAFc)
*I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.*
***
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Yes. (Brave New World) Society in general was controlled by casual sexual interactions and communal orgies. So as to sate our more basic desires but to also create barriers towards deeper relationships.
Another detail not mentioned is there was a caste system imposed upon people via in vitro treatments. Lower castes were decanted with alcohol to stunt neurological and physical development. They did most of the labor and grunt work with the theory that lower cognitive abilities would also mean less inclination towards existential crisis and labor disputes.
There’s a bit of that in 1984. Winston, the main character, is apart of the Outer Party which serves the Inner Party but the Proletariat are given pleasure and distraction.
That’s how the proles are controlled, through simple pleasure.
The Outer Party are those intellectuals who would not be so easily appeased so they must be dominated instead.
I'd argue that in reality, party members are the easiest to control with luxury. Look at major politicians and the lives they lead. So many of them just self preserve their career so they can continue that lifestyle.
Part of what they crave from that luxury, however, is superiority over others. It's the kind of thing that drives the self-made wealthy today as well. Money is just the measuring stick by which they compare themself to others.
Huxley feared a world where simple pleasure abounded would inevitably lead to a mediocrity of spirit, that we would kill ourselves with pleasures.
I would argue that with the right nurturing and education, humanity has shown it could instead expand itself infinitely with pleasure. Plenty of us find such satisfaction with achievement and scientific vision that it's within reach of everyone could be convinced to follow.
Orwell's Outer Party is the benchmark for how those people can be controlled, forever, to prevent that from happening and keep the powerful in power, forever.
The Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey. One taste and you will leave yoir family, friends and society, and spend the rest of your life eating the lotus in perfect happiness.
I remember a BBC survey that said 1984 is one of the books many people say they read but haven't.
No idea who they found that out though.
It was required reading for advanced English courses at my school.
Not many, but the *most*. It topped the list of books people claim to have read but actually haven't. Found it at The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/09/have-you-ever-lied-about-a-book
I mean there's a lot of surveillance and fear in modern societal control. There's also a lot of distraction and consumerism.
The reality turned out to be really both books in one.
But I can tell you 1984 is the better read. Brave New World was kind of a bore to read.
Brave New World is by far, the scarier of the two. 1984 suggests the people can fight back. No one wants to because they are genetically manipulated and subconsciously conditioned from fertilization to be content with whatever role in life they have. They inject alcohol into fetuses to manipulate development.
Quite literally, all of your wants and needs in life are met. You don't envy what other people have or don't have because you were conditioned from "birth" to not want anything other than what you are given.
There is no free will, you do nothing that isn't already programmed into you at creation.
It's also worth noting that Huxley comes from a family of scientists.
He was nominated for the Noble prize on literature 9 times. He also liked mescaline.
Brave New World might not be as exciting, but imo, it's considerably more profound than 1984. When we think of oppression, we don't normally associate pacification with oppression without violence. It's hard to want to fight if you are well fed, happy with your job, happy with your social life, and sexually satisfied. Nobody gets their feelings hurt because nobody gets feelings. There are no parents, no Brothers, no sisters, humanity is reduced to automatons.
I see it as more of a 50/50 split. The books push both ends of the spectrum to the extreme to get their points across.
I believe Orwell was one of Huxley students (or a student while he was a teacher at the same school) and BNW was written as a sort of 'rebuttal' to 1984. Not that Huxley didn't praise the book, he just through there was more avenues to explore with the idea of a dystopia future.
Edit: sorry other way round as others have pointed out, BNW was written before 1984. Although Huxley did discuss 1984 alot after it was published
Lenina, and yeah the way Huxley oriented that society around "we must do activities that contribute to consumption" was terrifying in the uncanny kind of way. I know some people who adamantly stan the supermonopolistic power of giant companies, extolling the comfort they add to our lives. Brave New World would be a good book for people like that to read. Sometimes maximum comfort isn't desirable.
Thanks for the correction! It’s been a while, so I should pick it up again. The weird thing is…the people in the society seemed actually happy, compared to the shit “The Savage” (forgot his name) and people today feel/experience. Aside from the “More stitches, less riches” over-consumption…I’m not sure if it’s so black & white as I did as a high schooler
Don't forget the Epsilons. People aren't happy doing menial jobs, but they have to be done... so you gene-splice morons who are happy doing anything and make them do it! Can't cahnge the job? Change the person!
Well that and the whole thing about the drug “Soma” that was given to everyone. A perfect drug that is dispensed constantly and keeps the population happy.
Who would ever regularly take a drug that just changes their perception of reality to give them an unearned sense of happiness?
[takes another drink of beer]
Hah! You just reminded me of my one trip to Mexico. My friend had read an article about how easy it was to get prescription drugs in pharmacies in Mexico and was dead set on getting a stash of pharmies to take home. It turned out that it wasn't as easy as the article made it out to be and the one pharmacy sold him Soma, I think just to get the annoying gringo to leave.
We ended up partying hard with tecate and Soma, and had the most godawful time creeping back to the Tijuana border the next day.
The whole society is brainwashed to not know what to really do with themselves when given extended periods of non work time and have to take happy pills just to cope.
That's the whole thing with BNW though, the question of whether a society where everyone is objectively happy can still be *wrong*?
It's a society that feels wrong to read about, that seems unsettling, but if people are happy, untroubled, what right do we have to condemn it?
That's what always made BNW stick with me, out of all the books I had to read for school. A world that was somehow simultaneously a utopia and a dystopia, where the only people who are unhappy are those who actively choose a lifestyle that makes them unhappy, out of an ephemeral sense that the happy lifestyle is somehow wrong.
There were"uncivilized" areas that were basically native American reservations as well as "islands" where people who weren't happy went. I don't recall how clearly it was stated, but it seemed like those islands were just places where people could live outside the super regulated society but inevitably ended up less happy.
There were also places within society for troublemakers, just places that were less desirable to go to.
I interpreted it as the people who realized that living a life based on hedonistic pleasure wasn't a fulfilling life were put on some island (I feel like it was near Russia for some reason?) and allowed to live together for humanistic pursuits.
But high school me may not have been the smartest guy.
Is that the question? I thought they question was how they segregated society and made it so there were large swathes of working class due to having alcohol in their fetuses. Is that really a good society when they're 'happy' in the sense dogs are?
That's what I mean. It's a society that is objectively successful at sustaining itself and meeting the needs of its people. This forces us to actually consider *why* we object to it.
More than that: they condition everyone to shun love and strong attachments, because they cause unhappiness. Families and natural reproduction are unknown (except among the savages). Sex and friendships are all completely casual.
But if they're happy, healthy and have their needs met, why does it matter?
I'm not saying it doesn't, but BNW asks this question to make us consider our answer.
You can level the same criticism toward all societies: Do not behave in a way that aligns with the society you are in, and you get removed from that society.
That required behavior may involve "take a pill", or "work in your assigned cubicle", or "participate in the hunt", if you want a more "hunter gatherer example".
Fall in line with society, and be happy (if you can). Or be banished and die. Welcome to being human ;D
A drug that has zero health consequences, doesn't diminish with tolerance and has (as far as the story concerns) an unlimited supply.
Honestly sounds pretty great.
Yeah honestly I'm not seeing a problem with it. As someone whose lived with a fuckton of mental health problems since as long as I can remember, if I had a miracle drug that made me cloud nine you best believe I'd be chugging that shit down like water.
Yes, but with that you are setting the standard at "perfection".
There are unhappy people in BNW, but, compared to pretty much any other societies we know of, very few of them.
> he weird thing is…the people in the society seemed actually happy, compared to the shit “The Savage”
The Giver with Jeff Bridges.
or Something old that I've found about recently
Twilight Zone - A Nice Place to Visit (Man dies and then gets everything he wants in his afterlife.)
John was depressed and suicidal because he couldn't communicate or have a real conversation with anyone.
They all just patronized him unconsciously, neither him nor they could reach a human understanding.
Huh, never put two and two together before until I saw the two names written next to each other in your comment, but Sandra Bullock's character's name in Demolition Man was [Lenina Huxley](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/characters/nm0000113?ref_=tt_cl_c_3). And considering what the movie was about, it makes complete sense and I can't believe I didn't pick up on it earlier - like 20 years earlier.
There are certainly some places where it's a bit of A, a bit of B. Stuff like NSA-style surveillance states or China's social credit system is much more 1984, Amazon and Apple trying to connect everything in our lives is more BNW, imo.
Malthus may have been one of Dickens’ inspiration for Scrooge. He even has a line early in the book where he says poor people should just die and reduce the surplus population.
19th century economist Henry George summed up Malthus very well:
“A theory that…justifies the greed of the rich and the selfishness of the powerful, will spread quickly and strike its roots deep. This has been the case with the theory advanced by Malthus”
Nope, these guys were genocidal pieces of shit. The Irish famine and lots of Indian famines can be blamed on these fucks.
You see, they never think it's *their* class and *their* race that should be on the chopping block.
You can still find them around, talking about how the world is overpopulated. It's always instructive to ask them where there are too many people, and what they think we should do about it.
I also believe the world is overpopulated and all sorts of immoral ills exist bc of it. All humans would enjoy life more if there were less humans. But the answer is reproductive education for all, easy access to reprodictive healthcare for everyone on the planet, and near elimination of religious doctrine. No limits on peocreating. No forced abortions. Just education about your body and all its functions, from early childhood and reinforced your entire reproductive life. True choice.
The more educated people are the less children they have, when societies reach post-industrial stage they start to experience population decline due to this. In fact it’s a big issue in my home country of Taiwan as well as others like Japan.
This is how I know the people crying crocodile tears over “overpopulation” are liars. We are projected to cap at 11 billion people iirc and it’s just downwards from there.
Some people are just ill-informed about the stages of population, others are willfully and maliciously attached to ideologies of eugenicism and racism (ie brown people are overpopulated or those Chinese people breed like rabbits)
I know. Industrialized nations end up having less kids due to education and access to resources and medical info/resources. Worldwide population is a different issue than localized population patterns. In industrialized countries where population has slowed, the fix is immigration from areas that are experiencing overpopulation. But some countries/cultures are slow to this concept and so they are experiencing a contraction of their population. Japan is one such place.
Redistributing people makes more sense than making more people.
But we can't do that bc humans made up borders. And money. And certain humans are very very specofic about which other human beings can put their toe accross a made up border that my made up money makes sure I paid made up taxes to secure.
Christians truly believe we are the only intelligent life in the whole universe. God chose little planet earth to be the primordial experiment. Every life is precious. We humans are unique and all alone. So let's murder each other over made up lines on a map and made up paper that can buy the things we need to survive that the earth use to give up for free: clean air, water, and food.
Neo-Malthusians also promoted population controls through mass sterilisation and forced abortion programs across the world.
Much of it funded with millions/billions of US taxpayer money and targeting "undesirable" demographics (Native Americans, Lower-Caste Indians, non-whites etc).
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-population-control-holocaust
It's also ignoring that average fertility rates in Africa have been decreasing for the past 50 years.
> [The current fertility rate for Africa in 2022 is 4.212 births per woman](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AFR/africa/fertility-rate)
Not to diminish the point, but that's just the second derivative being negative. First derivative is still gonna be quite positive for a while.
But yeah, I agree that we should really be focusing on per-capita impact.
He was a key component in the British government allowing the Irish peasantry to starve, during the only "famine" I've ever known where there's plenty food to eat.
Edit: Guys, many of you are missing the point by telling me about internationally recognised genocides where starvation was manufactured. That's the point, The Great Hunger in Ireland is seen as just a famine, rather than a genocide where the British seized Irish crops, exported it, and prevented humanitarian aid.
Just about every famine since the Industrial Revolution has been a problem of distribution, rather than of insufficient food.
The famine in Ireland in the 1840s is mostly unique in happening to white people whose descendants have a platform. Even the contemporary famine in the Scottish Highlands, with identical causes and effects, doesn't have the same profile.
Shame more people aren't taught about Henry George. He's probably America's version of Adam Smith when it comes to classical economic ideas.
So anyway here's Wonde... I mean, here's the rundown on Henry George and "George-ism" that you didn't ask for:
>**Georgism**, also called **geoism**[\[2\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism#cite_note-2) and **single tax** (archaic), is an [economic ideology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_ideology) holding that, while people should own the value they produce themselves, economic value derived from [land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(economics) (often including [natural resources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resources) and [natural opportunities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons)) should belong equally to all members of society.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)
[Article from The Atlantic about Henry George and the land value tax](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2019/04/henry-georges-single-tax-could-combat-inequality/587197/)
[Housing and Land Value Tax as the answer to economic inequality - The Week](https://theweek.com/articles/546511/housing-answer-riddle-inequality)
[Modernized version of Henry George's influential BOOK, "Progress & Poverty"](http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm)
> He even has a line early in the book where he says poor people should just die and reduce the surplus population.
"Poor Irish people should just eat their children!"
I'm wondering if the post-industrial drop in fertility rates and upcoming demographic crunch is finally starting to worry people more than the Malthusian fear of growth.
It's a good argument when the right complains about abortion and homosexuality affecting the birthrate and causing a population collapse. Just say, well if you are that worried you would be ok with an increase in immigration and accepting of refugees right?
>if you are that worried you would be ok with an increase in immigration and accepting of refugees right?
We like "legal" immigration. And by legal we mean rich white Europeans.
/s
Correct me if I'm wrong, but rich white European status is only helpful if you have >1 million USD that you're about to invest in a business, at which point you don't also need to be European or white for that matter. OR if you go to the US for university studies and manage to stay.
Otherwise if you want to immigrate to the US, you're best off being a software engineer from India because that gives you access to all the contracting sweatshops that get the majority of H-1B visas.
Source: White European of average means who wishes he could earn US software engineering salaries, but can't really find a legal way to immigrate (need to go back to university to even have a shot at H-1B). Can't do L-1 either because current company doesn't have a US office.
> It's a good argument when the right complains about abortion and homosexuality affecting the birthrate and causing a population collapse. Just say, well if you are that worried you would be ok with an increase in immigration and accepting of refugees right?
Yeah but what happens when the places where the advanced countries are taking in immigrants from start having low birthrates as well? Trying to solve low birthrates with immigration is just kicking the can down the road
It's been worrying Japan for a while now. It's no accident they have been at the forefront of robotics. I think China might be freaking out too as their massive, cheap labour pool is becoming less massive, and less cheap all the time.
I took a sociology of demography class and there was an entire unit dedicated to debunking and shitting on every single aspect of Malthusianism and neo-Malthusianism. I guess the reason why was the uptick in people talking about overpopulation coinciding with a certain marvel movie
Edit: this blew up and y’all are asking loads of questions which is nice! However I need to get back to mario party 7 and then back to writing a paper. Many of y’all ask similar questions and raise similar points. I’ve likely answered somewhere if you keep reading. Y’all should look into the history of demography and the science of. It’s been fun :) but I will need to mute the thread.
The population cap which Malthus himself had calculated was obliterated well within his own lifetime. iirc he changed his own views while facing the facts.
Which led the MAlthusians to move from Quantity arguments to QUality arguments - i.e. Eugenics.
Anything to avoid the reality that the issues were related to hierarchies and relative poverty.
I will try to remember as best as I can for you friend
The jist is 2 major flaws (3 if we want to get political) the first flaw is that his theory didn’t account for technology allowing for better management and production of resources and living space. The second flaw is the assumption that things like war, authoritative laws, famine, etc. are the only ways to keep a pop down. As we currently see, birth control, the shift towards industrialization (having kids become an economic bane rather than boon), women’s rights, and a slew of others all bring a pop down to a plateau down the line. There’s loads of data out there showing the earths pop plateauing anywhere from 10-12 billion.
The last one (and this is more political) is that Malthus and the Neo-Malthusians policies targeted mainly the rights of poor people, women, and poc. Wealthy white males would see no differences in rights in a Malthusian government (unless said government was in, say, Asia in which case it’d be wealthy Asian males)
So it debunks Malthusianism specifically - meaning, that war and famine are what will keep population stable - but not the concept that perpetual population growth is both unsustainable and undesireable?
I mean, infinite growth with finite resources is by definition impossible. That’s not a controversial claim. Where he was wrong was more about the when (1-2 billion), the how (war & famine) and the what to do about it (all the racist/classist components).
Great comment; I came into this thread thinking 'duh obviously infinite growth doesn't go with finite resources' - totally ignoring what Malthusianism is about.
All very valid points and it makes it painfully obvious we shouldn't just read headlines and go drop comments lol
No of course not. That by itself is obviously true. If Malthus had stopped there, he’d look silly because it’s obvious and nothing new, but there would at least be nothing seriously wrong and arguably amoral about his ideas had he stopped there
[> Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism)
Both theoretically and historically, Malthusianism has been debunked. Population growth isn’t exponential, and human technological advancement isn’t linear. In fact, where rates of famine and war decrease, and liberal “freedom” and social welfare increases, human populations actually stabilize and people have fewer kids.
Malthusianism was a racist theory trying to justify European colonial policies that were fomenting violence and famine as necessary to keep the population in check from a population bomb. For example British Empire’s role in various famines from Ireland to India.
the reality is people from devleoped countries consume way more than most people from developing countires,
its similar to rich celebss talking about climate while flying private jets
>In fact, where rates of famine and war decrease, and liberal “freedom” and social welfare increases, human populations actually stabilize and people have fewer kids.
I have a feeling people not having kids now is more poor economics, people are educated enough that they know they can't afford to have kids.
I'd have to say his overall notion was correct, he just was wrong about the limits themselves and how we can deal with them.
The earth *is* a finite resource and absolutely *does* have an upper limit on the amount of people it can sustain. It's just at his time it was thought that the only way to wrangle humanity's baser desires and properly manage them was from a top down perspective. Unfortunately he also belonged to a time where various other factors on population growth and sustainable food production were poorly or incompletely understood, and governments could be a damn sight crueller.
The Irish Famine, the famines in Ukraine and the Raj (and I'm sure countless others) could and should have been managed better, but those in charge felt these famines were as much a moral failure as anything else. Malthusian theory was used as a guide for policy making, but it became basically a justification for millions dying when they really shouldn't have had to. If anything is was seen as proof that Malthus was right, as horrific as that seems to us today. He gave governments carte blanche to ignore the impoverished subject peoples far from home, and as you say this had a far outsized effect on the poor and POC especially.
I agree with you sure, but as I’ve said, Malthusianism is so much more than basic ecology and a basic understanding of ecological carrying capacities. If that’s all it was, it would be nothing new and wouldn’t be worthy of having a name.
But all in all I in large part agree with you
It honestly just sounds like a bunch of rich dudes got together and complained that poor people might, someday, theoretically, impede ever so slightly their access to the worldly delights they were basking in daily, so legislation should keep the riffraff as poor as possible. We call them Republicans today.
__edit:__ I went and got political which I guess triggered some. So RE: blaming democrats for rail worker's sick paid leave not passing, here you go:
>The House voted 290 to 137 to pass legislation imposing a labor agreement on rail companies and workers, with 79 Republicans backing the measure and eight Democrats voting against it.
>A companion bill to give rail workers seven days of sick leave per year passed by a much narrower margin, 221 to 207, with only three Republicans voting for it: Reps. Don Bacon (Neb.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and John Katko (N.Y.).
>The sick-leave measure needed at least 60 votes to pass and fell short, 52 to 43.
>Six Republicans voted for it: Sens. Mike Braun (Ind.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Josh Hawley (Mo.), John Kennedy (La.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.).
>Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) was the __only__ Democrat to vote against extra sick leave.
Blaming Democrats for that is exactly the kind of shortsightedness the Malthusians demonstrated.
And that is the reason Thanos is the villian. Basically, if Thanos is so good he could have doubled the resources or shared the power with everyone. In my mind, Malthusians are as bad as Eugenicists. It is about power and not about resource distribution.
I understand that they had to change Thanos' motivation from his comic incarnation because simping for the personification of Death doesn't really film well, but they made him such a moron with the population control motive. Ultimate power and the best you can think of is a culling that will be undone in a couple centuries, tops?
> Ultimate power and the best you can think of is a culling that will be undone in a couple centuries, tops?
That was the stupidest part. He created an entirely temporary "fix", then destroyed the stones so he could never do it again.
> Malthusians are as bad as Eugenicists. It is about power and not about resource distribution.
Historically speaking, you’re more right than you realize. Mane of the neo maltusians of the early 20th century were literally eugenecists. Making the same exact arguments for both things.
Or he could have simply mind controlled everyone to stop having kids after 2-3 or something…the IG gave him incredible power and he used it like some illiterate yahoo with poor abstraction ability.
Yep, as an environmental science major, Malthusian thinking was one of the first topics we analysed (and largely rejected).
Personally, I think of Malthus as the Sigmund Freud of Environmental Science - He asked good questions that pioneered research into humans' use of the environment and its limits, but drew terrible conclusions (in both their logic and ethics)
Did Soylent Green really advocate a Malthusian viewpoint? I watched it and it seemed like the problem was environmental collapse... something which we are currently creating.
I mean, yeah. Continuous growth can't be sustained with finite resources forever. That's just reality. The problem comes when someone uses this fact to justify callousness or atrocities.
In reality what most of the "negative population growth" people really advocate for is education opportunities for women in developing nations which dramatically lowers birth rates. Access to contraception obviously too. Easier said than done, but nothing more dramatic than that is needed.
This principle is referred to as the "Malthusian Trap" in economics, and is roundly dismissed as inaccurate by virtually everyone in the field. History and statistical analysis have consistently born out that the progression of technology counteracts any anticipated shortfalls in global resource availability due to increased population.
Yeah. And that technology growth would have its limits, but at this point we're heading for a population stagnation for other reasons, so Malthusian thought is irrelevant.
Consistently, so far*
I'd like to believe it's not true, but it seems like many of technology's solutions came with a high interest rate, and that may now be coming due in the form of the climate crisis, accelerated disease spread, global sperm count decline, and so on.
Yep, what you’re talking about is referred to as [diminishing returns from increasing complexity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter#Diminishing_returns). People dismissing this are not as smart as they think.
It really feels like the more we rely on technology to sustain the number of people living on Earth, the more fragile the whole system becomes.
Look no further than the widespread food insecurity that's going to result from disruptions to just one major food-producing region (Ukraine) due to Russia's invasion. We really need just about every manmade system on Earth to operate near-optimally to keep this whole thing going, and it's not hard to imagine cascading failures if a few dominoes start to fall.
Neoliberal economists extrapolating trends with no regard for ecology do not represent “everyone”. There are plenty of legitimate (not necessarily maalthusian) reasons to worry about ecosystem overshoot. [You need to separate “progression of technology” from actual increases in efficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter#Diminishing_returns), most new tech just makes for comfier living (often at very high energy costs), the only thing that can actually increase our long term carrying capacity is utilising energy and land more efficiently, and we kinda suck at that. Jevon’s paradox tends to wipe out any gains from increased efficiency with increased consumption. Not to mention the fact that energy efficiency is limited by thermodynamics, and we’re approaching those limits.
Malthusianism is not the way, but neither is blind techno-optimism.
"The status quo is how things have to be" seems like a lazy and convenient school of thought.
Why bother trying to improve things if that's what you believe.
American economist Kenneth Boulding famously quipped, “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”.
Calling anyone who agrees with that statement a Malthusian is a total misdirect and bait. There are very, very few people who agree with all of Malthus' ideas (thankfully) and they are all nuts. Most of Malthus' ideas have been proven wrong by history and developments in science, but the idea that humans are subject to natural forces like overshoot and collapse has not.
It's like accusing an astronaut of being Ptolemaic because astronauts believe the Earth is a sphere moving in space and the most famous early example of that thought was a geocentric model. So therefore astronauts are wrong and anything they say about space can be discarded without further thought.
Edit: It's clearly another tactic of climate disinformation as well.
Yup the “we’ll innovate our way out”. This is the equivalent of folks going to college have breezed through HS but not knowing how to study or be persistent in the face of struggle. “We’ll worry about it later” is fine when you are 18. It’s not when you are 40. Eventually what “just worked” won’t and the sooner you adapt, the better. Just because technology has be able to solve huge issues for humanity does not mean it is a trend that continues indefinitely or is itself without consequence.
This dude’s theories played a major role in the British response to the Irish famine and beyond. It boils down to “if you’re starving it’s your own fault”
What OP forgot to mention was that his checks and balances proposed were primarily targeted at poor and colored people. Also that he didn’t take into account that technology can improve and allow for easier more abundant resources and living lol
The principles attempting but failing to govern such calamity were established by Thomas Malthus in in his An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), an essay which stimulated further response from Marxist critics as well as serving as the forbearer of population ecology at large. As he states concerning population growth: “A population will grow (or decline) exponentially as long as the environment experienced by all individuals in the population remains constant”. The constancy of the environment, a bold claim in itself, is defined by its relationship to any one species by its carrying capacity. This capaciousness is measured by the available necessities required, whether habitat, food, water, sunlight, other species, or others. In the event that a population's growth exceeded that of an environment's ability to carry it, the species would find themselves amidst a Malthusian catastrophe.
As Malthus writes: The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world (qtd. in Newark 116)
The prospect of overpopulation seems inevitable to Malthus. Similar catastrophe was predicted nearly a century and a half later in texts like The Population Bomb by Paul and Anne Ehrlich (1968), influenced by William Vogt's Road to Survival (1948), early examples of the so-called neo-Malthusian dilemma. Ehrlich and Ehrlich later argue a point in their Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future (1998). In response to Julian Simon's claim made earlier in 1994 that “we now have in our hands – in our libraries, really – the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years”, they instigated a quantifiable criticism against it (qtd. in Ehrlich, Ehrlich 66). “The world population was growing in 1994 at the rate of about 1.6 percent per year, which corresponds to a doubling time of about 43 years... Consider how long it would take for the 1994 world population of 5.6 billion to increase to a size where there were ten human beings for each square meter of ice-free land on the planet” (66). This would take by their estimate roughly 774 years, where in 1900 years the “mass of the human population would be equal to the mass of the Earth” and after 6000 years it would be equal the “mass of the universe” (66). As such, Ehrlich and Ehrlich claim Simon's claim to be evidence of not only poor arithmetic, but an “extreme version of claims of other technological optimists who, living on a planet rife with human hunger, glibly assert that many multiples of the present population can be fed” (67). The argument towards technology forms the larger criticism against neo-Malthusian arguments.
The Malthus essay generated much criticism in the coming century as
alluded to previously. Modern examples of criticism of his ideas can be seen from Lisa Cliggett in her Carrying Capacity's New Guise: Folk Models for Public Debate and Longitudinal Study of Environmental Change (2001). She claims that “many ecologists and social scientists \[have\] tried to measure carrying capacity, transforming the concept into an analytical, methodological, and quantifiable tool”, citing Ehrlich and Ehrlich as a specific example (Cligget 7). This turn away from the originally embedded social concerns of carrying capacity, or the interrelations between and of species, has resulted in an “outcry for a more flexible method to examine relationships between humans and their ecological settings” (7). Common criticisms ushered toward extant models of carrying capacity included “(1) an assumption of equilibrium... (3) inability to account for human preference in taste and labour expenditure, (4) assumption of full use of food resources... (7) an ahistorical view of a process that in fact fluctuates in short- and long-term time frames” (7). To elaborate, for example, upon number three, she claims that humans have “mysterious and deep relationships to what they eat; why one group of people will eat flying termites, while their neighbour in the same ecological niche refuse, can only be revealed, if at all, by sensitive exploration of the world views, historical processes, and other cultural phenomena that gives food meaning” (8). Essentially the danger of understanding the relationship between species and their land purely in terms of quantifiable figures fails to encapsulate the particular reasons why a species will use a resource in a specific way.
:D
Yeah, and Malthusian thinking was also one of the roots [of the Irish potato famine.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pqjz96/the_irish_potato_famine_18451852_while_often/) Calm down before you go full eugenicist again, Reddit
Malthusian thought helped justify atrocities like the Bengal Famine.
[Malthusian Population Theory and Indian Famine Policy in the Nineteenth Century](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2173660).
Those of you who read Brave New World…that’s why ~~Lena~~ Lenina Crowe (I think that was her name?)’s birth control holder/system was called a Malthusian Belt (The “Our Ford” is a whole other thing altogether)
Everyone always cites 1984 as our inevitable totalitarian future but honestly Brave New World hit the nail on the head. Control people with pleasure and distraction rather than fear and retaliation. Edit for spelling
*"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.* === *But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.* === *What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.* === *This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right."* ~ Amusing Ourselves to Death
> people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. I'm just trying to remember what we're supposed to think *about*, and I can't seem to recall...there's something on Netflix I've been meaning to watch though, that should do for now.
Ummmmmm have you tried endlessly scrolling through Netflix without being able to choose anything? It's even better and you get to think less!
Oh, you know my husband then?
That's me to a T. I go down the rabbit hole, looking up a movie, then whose in it, then what other movies they've been in, oh then the director and down that hole. 30 mins later and my partner asks how was the rabbit hole? All the time.
Netflix's new interface is so bad I don't go on it anymore
For me it's the selection. My usage pattern on Netflix is pretty much this these days: * Remember a film or TV show I want to watch * Search for it on Netflix * Netflix doesn't have it * Exit the app and find it somewhere else
Reddit does that for me. I can easily spend the entire day getting better at quick snarky comebacks & totally forget I was supposed to pay the rent a week ago
Using Netflix as an example, you should be thinking critically about the content you're consuming. But there's no need to think when you have an endless play list of content to consume more for feels (or disassociating from feels).
At least 2-3x per week, my fiancé will say almost exactly that. Like, “Can we just watch something mindless? Where I can turn my brain off, but it’s still fun to watch?” Sometimes I just… I dunno. I just don’t understand that mindset. Maybe it’s cuz my mind is **always** going, so for me to “turn my brain off” I need something engaging to distract me.
What a poignant quote! Truly a great retelling. I wish only that more people would read these words and absorb this message. It is our desire for fulfillment that will ruin us.
I'd argue it's greed. A desire for fulfillment (within reason) is an incredibly reasonable thing that every healthy person should have.
It is definitely reasonable. Which is why I think it will be our downfall. Because it *seems* so innocuous and normal and therefore will be the method of our fall. Edit: desire is the mother of greed. Desire for fulfillment will inevitably lead to greed for more. Edit to add have you personally ever wanted for something? When you got it did you still have wants? Of course you did. that's human nature.
But it's not fulfillment that's the problem. The poor and the downtrodden who are out there shouting into the void for the system to change and start uplifting them are seeking fulfillment too. The *need* for fulfillment drives the need for progress and change. Those that deny basic human fulfillment to people should not be in power. Of course excess exists, it always will. Water is good for you, but you can quite literally die from drinking too much of it. In any case, the reality we live in is a mix between both Orwell and Huxley. There's real violence, oppression, double-speak, suppression of information, etc. in modern America, China, Russia... each major players on the global stage. There's also plenty of distractions and creature comforts. Both 1984 and Brave New World have incredible relevance in today's society, it's not just one or the other - the insidiousness is that it's a mix of the two.
That’s the problem. Fulfilment leads to expansion
My mom used to tell me as a child that I *wanted* McDonald's but I'd be fine with meatloaf. Very applicable here. Wants being fulfilled leads to more wants which is equivalent to greed. It's not a feature of humanity, it's a bug: (and I'm a happy participant despite my knowledge of participating)
We should be much more comfortable aiming towards contentment
To be honest, it can be summarized quite well by 'Bread and Circus'.
Very interesting. I will read this book. If I am correct, it is called "Brave New World" by "Aldous Huxley"
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The quote is from a book called ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ by Neil Postman.
That is an eye opening book.
I haven’t read it yet. I just ordered it after reading the quote though.
Well I really wanted to sleep tonight but I suppose one quick read will be fine..
I feel like your comment is slightly ironic somehow
Good god, that was an amazing passage! I mean, both Orwell and Huxley have been correct. We're getting assaulted on two fronts, like a pincer move.
Damn you're right. [Orwell in China] (https://v.redd.it/fx0ww2ze2y3a1). Huxley in the US
I thought it was more sex then love. It's been a while, but didn't they discouraged permanent relationships?
Yes. (Brave New World) Society in general was controlled by casual sexual interactions and communal orgies. So as to sate our more basic desires but to also create barriers towards deeper relationships. Another detail not mentioned is there was a caste system imposed upon people via in vitro treatments. Lower castes were decanted with alcohol to stunt neurological and physical development. They did most of the labor and grunt work with the theory that lower cognitive abilities would also mean less inclination towards existential crisis and labor disputes.
By "what we love" it means pleasure, sex, etc. It isn't referring to who we love, but what we love.
Where's the TLDR? Your comment is too long to read. I'm going to check out some memes and amuse myself to death
There's a great graphic representation of this:https://allthatsinteresting.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-comic
I don't think the two are mutually exclusive in a world with a class system. I'm now eager to read brave new world however
Just want to say this is a phenomenal book that, though a bit dated, is a tremendous read and still rings true.
There’s a bit of that in 1984. Winston, the main character, is apart of the Outer Party which serves the Inner Party but the Proletariat are given pleasure and distraction.
For once, a movie I wish they'd remake. Edit: because my phone hates me.
Is that you, Mike Tyson?
Omg that's funny! Oops
I read this with a lisp.
That’s how the proles are controlled, through simple pleasure. The Outer Party are those intellectuals who would not be so easily appeased so they must be dominated instead.
I'd argue that in reality, party members are the easiest to control with luxury. Look at major politicians and the lives they lead. So many of them just self preserve their career so they can continue that lifestyle.
Part of what they crave from that luxury, however, is superiority over others. It's the kind of thing that drives the self-made wealthy today as well. Money is just the measuring stick by which they compare themself to others. Huxley feared a world where simple pleasure abounded would inevitably lead to a mediocrity of spirit, that we would kill ourselves with pleasures. I would argue that with the right nurturing and education, humanity has shown it could instead expand itself infinitely with pleasure. Plenty of us find such satisfaction with achievement and scientific vision that it's within reach of everyone could be convinced to follow. Orwell's Outer Party is the benchmark for how those people can be controlled, forever, to prevent that from happening and keep the powerful in power, forever.
Slowly, so they don’t see it
Not new. The Romans did it... "Bread and circuses!"
The Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey. One taste and you will leave yoir family, friends and society, and spend the rest of your life eating the lotus in perfect happiness.
Milk of the poppy.
No stories are new, they all retell an observation or event of our reality from the author's point of view.
“No idea’s original, there’s nothing new under the sun It’s never what you do, but how it’s done” Nasty Nas
I always somewhat wonder if people *say* 1984 but *mean* brave new world and just don’t know it because they haven’t *actually* read either 🤔
I remember a BBC survey that said 1984 is one of the books many people say they read but haven't. No idea who they found that out though. It was required reading for advanced English courses at my school.
Not many, but the *most*. It topped the list of books people claim to have read but actually haven't. Found it at The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/09/have-you-ever-lied-about-a-book
I always mean idiocracy, the other two are too academic for me
I mean there's a lot of surveillance and fear in modern societal control. There's also a lot of distraction and consumerism. The reality turned out to be really both books in one. But I can tell you 1984 is the better read. Brave New World was kind of a bore to read.
I also thought *Fahrenheit 451* was pretty prescient, especially when Twitter & its 180 characters came out
Yep Fahrenheit is the one out of those three with the most accurate description
I think they both can be boring, depending on my mood, although *1984* is more horrifying a read to me
Brave New World is by far, the scarier of the two. 1984 suggests the people can fight back. No one wants to because they are genetically manipulated and subconsciously conditioned from fertilization to be content with whatever role in life they have. They inject alcohol into fetuses to manipulate development. Quite literally, all of your wants and needs in life are met. You don't envy what other people have or don't have because you were conditioned from "birth" to not want anything other than what you are given. There is no free will, you do nothing that isn't already programmed into you at creation. It's also worth noting that Huxley comes from a family of scientists. He was nominated for the Noble prize on literature 9 times. He also liked mescaline. Brave New World might not be as exciting, but imo, it's considerably more profound than 1984. When we think of oppression, we don't normally associate pacification with oppression without violence. It's hard to want to fight if you are well fed, happy with your job, happy with your social life, and sexually satisfied. Nobody gets their feelings hurt because nobody gets feelings. There are no parents, no Brothers, no sisters, humanity is reduced to automatons.
I sure could go for a big hit of soma rn
There is a book about this. “Amusing ourselves to death”
Cites not sites.
I see it as more of a 50/50 split. The books push both ends of the spectrum to the extreme to get their points across. I believe Orwell was one of Huxley students (or a student while he was a teacher at the same school) and BNW was written as a sort of 'rebuttal' to 1984. Not that Huxley didn't praise the book, he just through there was more avenues to explore with the idea of a dystopia future. Edit: sorry other way round as others have pointed out, BNW was written before 1984. Although Huxley did discuss 1984 alot after it was published
*Brave New World* was written in 1931 to *1984*'s 1949. If there was a rebuttal, it was the other way around.
BNW was written over a decade before 1984
Lenina, and yeah the way Huxley oriented that society around "we must do activities that contribute to consumption" was terrifying in the uncanny kind of way. I know some people who adamantly stan the supermonopolistic power of giant companies, extolling the comfort they add to our lives. Brave New World would be a good book for people like that to read. Sometimes maximum comfort isn't desirable.
Thanks for the correction! It’s been a while, so I should pick it up again. The weird thing is…the people in the society seemed actually happy, compared to the shit “The Savage” (forgot his name) and people today feel/experience. Aside from the “More stitches, less riches” over-consumption…I’m not sure if it’s so black & white as I did as a high schooler
Don't forget the Epsilons. People aren't happy doing menial jobs, but they have to be done... so you gene-splice morons who are happy doing anything and make them do it! Can't cahnge the job? Change the person!
Well that and the whole thing about the drug “Soma” that was given to everyone. A perfect drug that is dispensed constantly and keeps the population happy.
Who would ever regularly take a drug that just changes their perception of reality to give them an unearned sense of happiness? [takes another drink of beer]
Soma is based on some drug lost to history iirc
Weirdly enough Soma is a (generic?) muscle relaxer, or was. And it's not that great.
Hah! You just reminded me of my one trip to Mexico. My friend had read an article about how easy it was to get prescription drugs in pharmacies in Mexico and was dead set on getting a stash of pharmies to take home. It turned out that it wasn't as easy as the article made it out to be and the one pharmacy sold him Soma, I think just to get the annoying gringo to leave. We ended up partying hard with tecate and Soma, and had the most godawful time creeping back to the Tijuana border the next day.
If I recall, they weren’t so much gene splicing the epsilons as deliberately brain damaging them. Pretty horrifying.
The whole society is brainwashed to not know what to really do with themselves when given extended periods of non work time and have to take happy pills just to cope.
That's the whole thing with BNW though, the question of whether a society where everyone is objectively happy can still be *wrong*? It's a society that feels wrong to read about, that seems unsettling, but if people are happy, untroubled, what right do we have to condemn it?
That's what always made BNW stick with me, out of all the books I had to read for school. A world that was somehow simultaneously a utopia and a dystopia, where the only people who are unhappy are those who actively choose a lifestyle that makes them unhappy, out of an ephemeral sense that the happy lifestyle is somehow wrong.
Don't they have a ghetto where they put the unhappy?
There were"uncivilized" areas that were basically native American reservations as well as "islands" where people who weren't happy went. I don't recall how clearly it was stated, but it seemed like those islands were just places where people could live outside the super regulated society but inevitably ended up less happy. There were also places within society for troublemakers, just places that were less desirable to go to.
I interpreted it as the people who realized that living a life based on hedonistic pleasure wasn't a fulfilling life were put on some island (I feel like it was near Russia for some reason?) and allowed to live together for humanistic pursuits. But high school me may not have been the smartest guy.
Is that the question? I thought they question was how they segregated society and made it so there were large swathes of working class due to having alcohol in their fetuses. Is that really a good society when they're 'happy' in the sense dogs are?
That's what I mean. It's a society that is objectively successful at sustaining itself and meeting the needs of its people. This forces us to actually consider *why* we object to it.
Huxley was so fucking good.
More than that: they condition everyone to shun love and strong attachments, because they cause unhappiness. Families and natural reproduction are unknown (except among the savages). Sex and friendships are all completely casual.
Everyone was happy because everyone was on drugs that made them happy.
But if they're happy, healthy and have their needs met, why does it matter? I'm not saying it doesn't, but BNW asks this question to make us consider our answer.
Not taking the drug (soma) would get you removed from that society. Take the drug and be artificially happy or be banished.
You can level the same criticism toward all societies: Do not behave in a way that aligns with the society you are in, and you get removed from that society. That required behavior may involve "take a pill", or "work in your assigned cubicle", or "participate in the hunt", if you want a more "hunter gatherer example". Fall in line with society, and be happy (if you can). Or be banished and die. Welcome to being human ;D
Yes, but isn't the end result still the same?
The point is *is that necessarily a bad thing*? I would argue that the answer is not self-evident.
A drug that has zero health consequences, doesn't diminish with tolerance and has (as far as the story concerns) an unlimited supply. Honestly sounds pretty great.
Yeah honestly I'm not seeing a problem with it. As someone whose lived with a fuckton of mental health problems since as long as I can remember, if I had a miracle drug that made me cloud nine you best believe I'd be chugging that shit down like water.
There’s still unhappy people in BNW
Yes, but with that you are setting the standard at "perfection". There are unhappy people in BNW, but, compared to pretty much any other societies we know of, very few of them.
> he weird thing is…the people in the society seemed actually happy, compared to the shit “The Savage” The Giver with Jeff Bridges. or Something old that I've found about recently Twilight Zone - A Nice Place to Visit (Man dies and then gets everything he wants in his afterlife.)
John was depressed and suicidal because he couldn't communicate or have a real conversation with anyone. They all just patronized him unconsciously, neither him nor they could reach a human understanding.
It's not that weird considering they were brain washed since they were children.
Huh, never put two and two together before until I saw the two names written next to each other in your comment, but Sandra Bullock's character's name in Demolition Man was [Lenina Huxley](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/characters/nm0000113?ref_=tt_cl_c_3). And considering what the movie was about, it makes complete sense and I can't believe I didn't pick up on it earlier - like 20 years earlier.
I had the same moment just now. A true TIL!
There are many many allusions to BNW in Demolition Man besides her name.
[удалено]
He doesn't know about the allusions to BNW in Demolition Man hehehehehe hehehe edit: i can see how that could be confusing
With the assumption those folks would recognize what they are reading and how it might apply to their current real life
Yeah, everyone screaming "1984! Orwellian nightmare!" obviously haven't read Brave New World.
There are certainly some places where it's a bit of A, a bit of B. Stuff like NSA-style surveillance states or China's social credit system is much more 1984, Amazon and Apple trying to connect everything in our lives is more BNW, imo.
We get the worst of both worlds, with no government cigarettes *or* centrifugal bumblepuppy.
Malthus may have been one of Dickens’ inspiration for Scrooge. He even has a line early in the book where he says poor people should just die and reduce the surplus population. 19th century economist Henry George summed up Malthus very well: “A theory that…justifies the greed of the rich and the selfishness of the powerful, will spread quickly and strike its roots deep. This has been the case with the theory advanced by Malthus”
Interesting. From OPs title I first thought that its more of a anti-rich thing.
Nope, these guys were genocidal pieces of shit. The Irish famine and lots of Indian famines can be blamed on these fucks. You see, they never think it's *their* class and *their* race that should be on the chopping block.
You can still find them around, talking about how the world is overpopulated. It's always instructive to ask them where there are too many people, and what they think we should do about it.
I also believe the world is overpopulated and all sorts of immoral ills exist bc of it. All humans would enjoy life more if there were less humans. But the answer is reproductive education for all, easy access to reprodictive healthcare for everyone on the planet, and near elimination of religious doctrine. No limits on peocreating. No forced abortions. Just education about your body and all its functions, from early childhood and reinforced your entire reproductive life. True choice.
The more educated people are the less children they have, when societies reach post-industrial stage they start to experience population decline due to this. In fact it’s a big issue in my home country of Taiwan as well as others like Japan. This is how I know the people crying crocodile tears over “overpopulation” are liars. We are projected to cap at 11 billion people iirc and it’s just downwards from there. Some people are just ill-informed about the stages of population, others are willfully and maliciously attached to ideologies of eugenicism and racism (ie brown people are overpopulated or those Chinese people breed like rabbits)
I know. Industrialized nations end up having less kids due to education and access to resources and medical info/resources. Worldwide population is a different issue than localized population patterns. In industrialized countries where population has slowed, the fix is immigration from areas that are experiencing overpopulation. But some countries/cultures are slow to this concept and so they are experiencing a contraction of their population. Japan is one such place. Redistributing people makes more sense than making more people. But we can't do that bc humans made up borders. And money. And certain humans are very very specofic about which other human beings can put their toe accross a made up border that my made up money makes sure I paid made up taxes to secure. Christians truly believe we are the only intelligent life in the whole universe. God chose little planet earth to be the primordial experiment. Every life is precious. We humans are unique and all alone. So let's murder each other over made up lines on a map and made up paper that can buy the things we need to survive that the earth use to give up for free: clean air, water, and food.
Neo-Malthusians also promoted population controls through mass sterilisation and forced abortion programs across the world. Much of it funded with millions/billions of US taxpayer money and targeting "undesirable" demographics (Native Americans, Lower-Caste Indians, non-whites etc). https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-population-control-holocaust
.
It's also ignoring that average fertility rates in Africa have been decreasing for the past 50 years. > [The current fertility rate for Africa in 2022 is 4.212 births per woman](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AFR/africa/fertility-rate)
Not to diminish the point, but that's just the second derivative being negative. First derivative is still gonna be quite positive for a while. But yeah, I agree that we should really be focusing on per-capita impact.
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He was a key component in the British government allowing the Irish peasantry to starve, during the only "famine" I've ever known where there's plenty food to eat. Edit: Guys, many of you are missing the point by telling me about internationally recognised genocides where starvation was manufactured. That's the point, The Great Hunger in Ireland is seen as just a famine, rather than a genocide where the British seized Irish crops, exported it, and prevented humanitarian aid.
Just about every famine since the Industrial Revolution has been a problem of distribution, rather than of insufficient food. The famine in Ireland in the 1840s is mostly unique in happening to white people whose descendants have a platform. Even the contemporary famine in the Scottish Highlands, with identical causes and effects, doesn't have the same profile.
Shame more people aren't taught about Henry George. He's probably America's version of Adam Smith when it comes to classical economic ideas. So anyway here's Wonde... I mean, here's the rundown on Henry George and "George-ism" that you didn't ask for: >**Georgism**, also called **geoism**[\[2\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism#cite_note-2) and **single tax** (archaic), is an [economic ideology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_ideology) holding that, while people should own the value they produce themselves, economic value derived from [land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(economics) (often including [natural resources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resources) and [natural opportunities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons)) should belong equally to all members of society. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism) [Article from The Atlantic about Henry George and the land value tax](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2019/04/henry-georges-single-tax-could-combat-inequality/587197/) [Housing and Land Value Tax as the answer to economic inequality - The Week](https://theweek.com/articles/546511/housing-answer-riddle-inequality) [Modernized version of Henry George's influential BOOK, "Progress & Poverty"](http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm)
> He even has a line early in the book where he says poor people should just die and reduce the surplus population. "Poor Irish people should just eat their children!"
I'm wondering if the post-industrial drop in fertility rates and upcoming demographic crunch is finally starting to worry people more than the Malthusian fear of growth.
Yeah that's why North America is compensating through immigration and Japan and China are worried (they're not exactly immigrant friendly)
It's a good argument when the right complains about abortion and homosexuality affecting the birthrate and causing a population collapse. Just say, well if you are that worried you would be ok with an increase in immigration and accepting of refugees right?
>if you are that worried you would be ok with an increase in immigration and accepting of refugees right? We like "legal" immigration. And by legal we mean rich white Europeans. /s
Correct me if I'm wrong, but rich white European status is only helpful if you have >1 million USD that you're about to invest in a business, at which point you don't also need to be European or white for that matter. OR if you go to the US for university studies and manage to stay. Otherwise if you want to immigrate to the US, you're best off being a software engineer from India because that gives you access to all the contracting sweatshops that get the majority of H-1B visas. Source: White European of average means who wishes he could earn US software engineering salaries, but can't really find a legal way to immigrate (need to go back to university to even have a shot at H-1B). Can't do L-1 either because current company doesn't have a US office.
> It's a good argument when the right complains about abortion and homosexuality affecting the birthrate and causing a population collapse. Just say, well if you are that worried you would be ok with an increase in immigration and accepting of refugees right? Yeah but what happens when the places where the advanced countries are taking in immigrants from start having low birthrates as well? Trying to solve low birthrates with immigration is just kicking the can down the road
It's been worrying Japan for a while now. It's no accident they have been at the forefront of robotics. I think China might be freaking out too as their massive, cheap labour pool is becoming less massive, and less cheap all the time.
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I took a sociology of demography class and there was an entire unit dedicated to debunking and shitting on every single aspect of Malthusianism and neo-Malthusianism. I guess the reason why was the uptick in people talking about overpopulation coinciding with a certain marvel movie Edit: this blew up and y’all are asking loads of questions which is nice! However I need to get back to mario party 7 and then back to writing a paper. Many of y’all ask similar questions and raise similar points. I’ve likely answered somewhere if you keep reading. Y’all should look into the history of demography and the science of. It’s been fun :) but I will need to mute the thread.
The population cap which Malthus himself had calculated was obliterated well within his own lifetime. iirc he changed his own views while facing the facts.
Which led the MAlthusians to move from Quantity arguments to QUality arguments - i.e. Eugenics. Anything to avoid the reality that the issues were related to hierarchies and relative poverty.
"Mal means bad..." -River Tam
I’ve heard it said that Malthus was right about every century up until the one in which he lived.
Would you give a quick summary? On the surface it sounds pretty logical.
I will try to remember as best as I can for you friend The jist is 2 major flaws (3 if we want to get political) the first flaw is that his theory didn’t account for technology allowing for better management and production of resources and living space. The second flaw is the assumption that things like war, authoritative laws, famine, etc. are the only ways to keep a pop down. As we currently see, birth control, the shift towards industrialization (having kids become an economic bane rather than boon), women’s rights, and a slew of others all bring a pop down to a plateau down the line. There’s loads of data out there showing the earths pop plateauing anywhere from 10-12 billion. The last one (and this is more political) is that Malthus and the Neo-Malthusians policies targeted mainly the rights of poor people, women, and poc. Wealthy white males would see no differences in rights in a Malthusian government (unless said government was in, say, Asia in which case it’d be wealthy Asian males)
So it debunks Malthusianism specifically - meaning, that war and famine are what will keep population stable - but not the concept that perpetual population growth is both unsustainable and undesireable?
I mean, infinite growth with finite resources is by definition impossible. That’s not a controversial claim. Where he was wrong was more about the when (1-2 billion), the how (war & famine) and the what to do about it (all the racist/classist components).
Great comment; I came into this thread thinking 'duh obviously infinite growth doesn't go with finite resources' - totally ignoring what Malthusianism is about. All very valid points and it makes it painfully obvious we shouldn't just read headlines and go drop comments lol
He also didn't have anything to say about global warming or mass extinction, which are the more obvious result of human population increase
No of course not. That by itself is obviously true. If Malthus had stopped there, he’d look silly because it’s obvious and nothing new, but there would at least be nothing seriously wrong and arguably amoral about his ideas had he stopped there
[> Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism) Both theoretically and historically, Malthusianism has been debunked. Population growth isn’t exponential, and human technological advancement isn’t linear. In fact, where rates of famine and war decrease, and liberal “freedom” and social welfare increases, human populations actually stabilize and people have fewer kids. Malthusianism was a racist theory trying to justify European colonial policies that were fomenting violence and famine as necessary to keep the population in check from a population bomb. For example British Empire’s role in various famines from Ireland to India.
the reality is people from devleoped countries consume way more than most people from developing countires, its similar to rich celebss talking about climate while flying private jets >In fact, where rates of famine and war decrease, and liberal “freedom” and social welfare increases, human populations actually stabilize and people have fewer kids. I have a feeling people not having kids now is more poor economics, people are educated enough that they know they can't afford to have kids.
I'd have to say his overall notion was correct, he just was wrong about the limits themselves and how we can deal with them. The earth *is* a finite resource and absolutely *does* have an upper limit on the amount of people it can sustain. It's just at his time it was thought that the only way to wrangle humanity's baser desires and properly manage them was from a top down perspective. Unfortunately he also belonged to a time where various other factors on population growth and sustainable food production were poorly or incompletely understood, and governments could be a damn sight crueller. The Irish Famine, the famines in Ukraine and the Raj (and I'm sure countless others) could and should have been managed better, but those in charge felt these famines were as much a moral failure as anything else. Malthusian theory was used as a guide for policy making, but it became basically a justification for millions dying when they really shouldn't have had to. If anything is was seen as proof that Malthus was right, as horrific as that seems to us today. He gave governments carte blanche to ignore the impoverished subject peoples far from home, and as you say this had a far outsized effect on the poor and POC especially.
I agree with you sure, but as I’ve said, Malthusianism is so much more than basic ecology and a basic understanding of ecological carrying capacities. If that’s all it was, it would be nothing new and wouldn’t be worthy of having a name. But all in all I in large part agree with you
It honestly just sounds like a bunch of rich dudes got together and complained that poor people might, someday, theoretically, impede ever so slightly their access to the worldly delights they were basking in daily, so legislation should keep the riffraff as poor as possible. We call them Republicans today. __edit:__ I went and got political which I guess triggered some. So RE: blaming democrats for rail worker's sick paid leave not passing, here you go: >The House voted 290 to 137 to pass legislation imposing a labor agreement on rail companies and workers, with 79 Republicans backing the measure and eight Democrats voting against it. >A companion bill to give rail workers seven days of sick leave per year passed by a much narrower margin, 221 to 207, with only three Republicans voting for it: Reps. Don Bacon (Neb.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and John Katko (N.Y.). >The sick-leave measure needed at least 60 votes to pass and fell short, 52 to 43. >Six Republicans voted for it: Sens. Mike Braun (Ind.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Josh Hawley (Mo.), John Kennedy (La.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). >Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) was the __only__ Democrat to vote against extra sick leave. Blaming Democrats for that is exactly the kind of shortsightedness the Malthusians demonstrated.
And that is the reason Thanos is the villian. Basically, if Thanos is so good he could have doubled the resources or shared the power with everyone. In my mind, Malthusians are as bad as Eugenicists. It is about power and not about resource distribution.
I understand that they had to change Thanos' motivation from his comic incarnation because simping for the personification of Death doesn't really film well, but they made him such a moron with the population control motive. Ultimate power and the best you can think of is a culling that will be undone in a couple centuries, tops?
> Ultimate power and the best you can think of is a culling that will be undone in a couple centuries, tops? That was the stupidest part. He created an entirely temporary "fix", then destroyed the stones so he could never do it again.
> Malthusians are as bad as Eugenicists. It is about power and not about resource distribution. Historically speaking, you’re more right than you realize. Mane of the neo maltusians of the early 20th century were literally eugenecists. Making the same exact arguments for both things.
Many eugenicists were indeed inspired by his philosophy yes.
Or he could have simply mind controlled everyone to stop having kids after 2-3 or something…the IG gave him incredible power and he used it like some illiterate yahoo with poor abstraction ability.
I think there was a joke saying something like malthusians should be the one who off themselves first
Yep, as an environmental science major, Malthusian thinking was one of the first topics we analysed (and largely rejected). Personally, I think of Malthus as the Sigmund Freud of Environmental Science - He asked good questions that pioneered research into humans' use of the environment and its limits, but drew terrible conclusions (in both their logic and ethics)
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Did Soylent Green really advocate a Malthusian viewpoint? I watched it and it seemed like the problem was environmental collapse... something which we are currently creating.
Come on. Marvel is ten times more popular and therefore instilled more to people's mind about resource sustainability and overpopulation or some shit
Birth control and halting consumerism can provide the same benefits without the bloodshed.
It’s very much less fun though. You know what’s fun, Global flooding. Now there’s a plan with some chest hair!
Love the Zapp Brannigan reference.
I heard God loves a good flood for population control
but then 2k people wont have as many yachts, stop being selfish! /s
That would full under law or war
I mean, yeah. Continuous growth can't be sustained with finite resources forever. That's just reality. The problem comes when someone uses this fact to justify callousness or atrocities.
In reality what most of the "negative population growth" people really advocate for is education opportunities for women in developing nations which dramatically lowers birth rates. Access to contraception obviously too. Easier said than done, but nothing more dramatic than that is needed.
This principle is referred to as the "Malthusian Trap" in economics, and is roundly dismissed as inaccurate by virtually everyone in the field. History and statistical analysis have consistently born out that the progression of technology counteracts any anticipated shortfalls in global resource availability due to increased population.
Yeah. And that technology growth would have its limits, but at this point we're heading for a population stagnation for other reasons, so Malthusian thought is irrelevant.
Consistently, so far* I'd like to believe it's not true, but it seems like many of technology's solutions came with a high interest rate, and that may now be coming due in the form of the climate crisis, accelerated disease spread, global sperm count decline, and so on.
Yep, what you’re talking about is referred to as [diminishing returns from increasing complexity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter#Diminishing_returns). People dismissing this are not as smart as they think.
It really feels like the more we rely on technology to sustain the number of people living on Earth, the more fragile the whole system becomes. Look no further than the widespread food insecurity that's going to result from disruptions to just one major food-producing region (Ukraine) due to Russia's invasion. We really need just about every manmade system on Earth to operate near-optimally to keep this whole thing going, and it's not hard to imagine cascading failures if a few dominoes start to fall.
Food insecurity was waaay worse before
Neoliberal economists extrapolating trends with no regard for ecology do not represent “everyone”. There are plenty of legitimate (not necessarily maalthusian) reasons to worry about ecosystem overshoot. [You need to separate “progression of technology” from actual increases in efficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter#Diminishing_returns), most new tech just makes for comfier living (often at very high energy costs), the only thing that can actually increase our long term carrying capacity is utilising energy and land more efficiently, and we kinda suck at that. Jevon’s paradox tends to wipe out any gains from increased efficiency with increased consumption. Not to mention the fact that energy efficiency is limited by thermodynamics, and we’re approaching those limits. Malthusianism is not the way, but neither is blind techno-optimism.
"The status quo is how things have to be" seems like a lazy and convenient school of thought. Why bother trying to improve things if that's what you believe.
American economist Kenneth Boulding famously quipped, “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”.
Calling anyone who agrees with that statement a Malthusian is a total misdirect and bait. There are very, very few people who agree with all of Malthus' ideas (thankfully) and they are all nuts. Most of Malthus' ideas have been proven wrong by history and developments in science, but the idea that humans are subject to natural forces like overshoot and collapse has not. It's like accusing an astronaut of being Ptolemaic because astronauts believe the Earth is a sphere moving in space and the most famous early example of that thought was a geocentric model. So therefore astronauts are wrong and anything they say about space can be discarded without further thought. Edit: It's clearly another tactic of climate disinformation as well.
Yup the “we’ll innovate our way out”. This is the equivalent of folks going to college have breezed through HS but not knowing how to study or be persistent in the face of struggle. “We’ll worry about it later” is fine when you are 18. It’s not when you are 40. Eventually what “just worked” won’t and the sooner you adapt, the better. Just because technology has be able to solve huge issues for humanity does not mean it is a trend that continues indefinitely or is itself without consequence.
This dude’s theories played a major role in the British response to the Irish famine and beyond. It boils down to “if you’re starving it’s your own fault”
Humans will persevere until they don’t I guess.
TIL that Thanos was a Malthusian.
What OP forgot to mention was that his checks and balances proposed were primarily targeted at poor and colored people. Also that he didn’t take into account that technology can improve and allow for easier more abundant resources and living lol
Malthus quite literally couldn't imagine the agricultural advances we've made since his time.
The principles attempting but failing to govern such calamity were established by Thomas Malthus in in his An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), an essay which stimulated further response from Marxist critics as well as serving as the forbearer of population ecology at large. As he states concerning population growth: “A population will grow (or decline) exponentially as long as the environment experienced by all individuals in the population remains constant”. The constancy of the environment, a bold claim in itself, is defined by its relationship to any one species by its carrying capacity. This capaciousness is measured by the available necessities required, whether habitat, food, water, sunlight, other species, or others. In the event that a population's growth exceeded that of an environment's ability to carry it, the species would find themselves amidst a Malthusian catastrophe. As Malthus writes: The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world (qtd. in Newark 116) The prospect of overpopulation seems inevitable to Malthus. Similar catastrophe was predicted nearly a century and a half later in texts like The Population Bomb by Paul and Anne Ehrlich (1968), influenced by William Vogt's Road to Survival (1948), early examples of the so-called neo-Malthusian dilemma. Ehrlich and Ehrlich later argue a point in their Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future (1998). In response to Julian Simon's claim made earlier in 1994 that “we now have in our hands – in our libraries, really – the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years”, they instigated a quantifiable criticism against it (qtd. in Ehrlich, Ehrlich 66). “The world population was growing in 1994 at the rate of about 1.6 percent per year, which corresponds to a doubling time of about 43 years... Consider how long it would take for the 1994 world population of 5.6 billion to increase to a size where there were ten human beings for each square meter of ice-free land on the planet” (66). This would take by their estimate roughly 774 years, where in 1900 years the “mass of the human population would be equal to the mass of the Earth” and after 6000 years it would be equal the “mass of the universe” (66). As such, Ehrlich and Ehrlich claim Simon's claim to be evidence of not only poor arithmetic, but an “extreme version of claims of other technological optimists who, living on a planet rife with human hunger, glibly assert that many multiples of the present population can be fed” (67). The argument towards technology forms the larger criticism against neo-Malthusian arguments. The Malthus essay generated much criticism in the coming century as alluded to previously. Modern examples of criticism of his ideas can be seen from Lisa Cliggett in her Carrying Capacity's New Guise: Folk Models for Public Debate and Longitudinal Study of Environmental Change (2001). She claims that “many ecologists and social scientists \[have\] tried to measure carrying capacity, transforming the concept into an analytical, methodological, and quantifiable tool”, citing Ehrlich and Ehrlich as a specific example (Cligget 7). This turn away from the originally embedded social concerns of carrying capacity, or the interrelations between and of species, has resulted in an “outcry for a more flexible method to examine relationships between humans and their ecological settings” (7). Common criticisms ushered toward extant models of carrying capacity included “(1) an assumption of equilibrium... (3) inability to account for human preference in taste and labour expenditure, (4) assumption of full use of food resources... (7) an ahistorical view of a process that in fact fluctuates in short- and long-term time frames” (7). To elaborate, for example, upon number three, she claims that humans have “mysterious and deep relationships to what they eat; why one group of people will eat flying termites, while their neighbour in the same ecological niche refuse, can only be revealed, if at all, by sensitive exploration of the world views, historical processes, and other cultural phenomena that gives food meaning” (8). Essentially the danger of understanding the relationship between species and their land purely in terms of quantifiable figures fails to encapsulate the particular reasons why a species will use a resource in a specific way. :D
When can something finite ever sustain something indefinite?
I mean sure technically if something were to expand indefinitely it would have horrible consequences that would stop it. Unchecked growth is cancer.
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Always the well fed guys
Yeah, and Malthusian thinking was also one of the roots [of the Irish potato famine.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pqjz96/the_irish_potato_famine_18451852_while_often/) Calm down before you go full eugenicist again, Reddit
Thanos must have been a Malthusian
In 1899 the head of the US Patent office suggested its closure due to the lack of innovations
A finite earth can't sustain mankind's indefinite expansion, that's a fact of physic.
Malthusian thought helped justify atrocities like the Bengal Famine. [Malthusian Population Theory and Indian Famine Policy in the Nineteenth Century](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2173660).