In this edition of What We Need I want to address what all life needs. We humans have that in common with other animal life. Naturalists describe that as: food, water, space, shelter. It’s telling how we’ve abstracted this.
The need for food used to be satisfied with hunting and gathering. Then agriculture was developed, which led to labor, division of labor, trade, the creation of value and ways to resolve disagreements in all of that. That made it possible to have more humans around than we need and more conflict, both of which will bring about our downfall.
Water used to be freely available on the landscape. That was before we shat in it, bottled it and sold it.
Well, we’ve filled up all the space. That can’t be good. The other animals are complaining, “what about us?”.
Shelter? Well, we all need it, but we don’t all get it. Someone’s going to get a $US 500 million dollar home. Many people get a cardboard box, if they’re organized and got there before Amazon.
Clearly, we need to reduce the human population if we’re going to relieve pressure on the web of life. It’s very easily done: have one child per couple that wants a child. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. A species that can’t decide whether stripes on clothing should be vertical or horizontal doesn’t fill me with a lot of optimism.