This is just a depressing little rant I'm afraid The tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan were of course an insane disaster, just to see a whole city washed away and destroyed, and then that the destruction of their power plant caused a nuclear meltdown and has made a populated part of Japan's north island uninhabitable for a century The response from the rest of the world was very heartening, there have been countless benefit campaigns and I've seen about 20 benefit albums for the victims. So far so good, people coming together from all over the world in the face of such a massive tragedy, their traditional enemies Korea and China contributed a massive proportion of the work and their resources that was needed for the cleanup. And these are countries who still have a bad feeling towards Japan during normality because of their failure to compensate victims or even admit the extent of their crimes during the Hirohito empire from the end of the 19th century until their defeat by America in 1945 Very heartening BUT This summer Somalia had one of it's worst famines ever, millions are still dying from starvation. The famine was caused by the weather but the reason that it has been such a massive human tragedy is because the people who are dying were barely surviving anyway. It has been in the news that they are in the middle of one of the country's worst famines ever, Somalia is of course famous for being one of the worst places in Africa, someone like Robert Mugabe would be a step up for them because since the collapse of the government in the 90s they have been in a state of civil war Even when there is no famine they are still a bunch of poor Africans with no food So why no benefit albums for the Somalians? Why didn't this capture the public imagination? It just isn't shocking a famine in Africa, Bob Geldof did that 30 years ago, it's the problem of charity manifested absolutely, starving Africans are pretty boring, everyone was shocked in the 1980s by Kevin Carter pictures of children dying and being eaten by flies and vultures so by now it's retro The rich countries are just choosing to be 'sympathetic' and 'caring about who they like. it misses the point Japan is the 3rd richest country in the world, behind the USA and China and they have been for a long itme I just mean that it's horrible how people are spending their money on Japan and not the poor, it says a lot about our society. Rich country has trouble we all feel sorry for them, poor country gets in trouble, not a big deal....
It's unfortunate that the world is overpopulated and can't sustain 6 billion humans at any decent quality of life. The more populated earth becomes the less valuable individual life is. Billions of people are not living, they are existing, an absolutely miserable existence. Call me hateful but I'll mourn the permanent loss of 100 square miles of good farm land before I mourn for 100 million suffering Africans living like animals. It sounds horrible but feeding these people is the worst thing you can do in the long run. Their quality of life will not increase, just their population. An endless circle of misery. It's like the sign down town, Don't feed the ducks, they will become dependent, overpopulate and suffer. It's time to think quality, not quantity.
i don't think there are too many people, just too many people to live in the way that we are living. We are still using 19th century models for cities and vehicles but they are out o1f date and yes, we have to many people for that model to be honest relaxxx i do find it pretty hateful what you implied about culling african babies, call me over sensitive....
Mass media are a good mirror to show how much a life is worth or worthless for them in different parts of the world. If there is a bomb exploding in the USA killing 20 or 30 Americans it will be all over the headlines, if 20 or 30 Libyans are killed by a NATO bomb in Libya, its less well covered in the mass media. Thats at least racist.
So feeding these people now so ten times as many suffer in the future is more kind and humane? Within the next 50 years or so oil and coal will no longer be a viable source of energy. It will be an economic disaster, beyond that our industrialized agriculture will collapse. Food processing and transportation systems will grind to a halt and our rich countries will suffer mass starvation on a scale never seen before. Feeding a few people now is not going to fix any of this reality. Billions will starve and die. We do poses the ability to control the amount of future suffering by controlling the population today. Africans and the like would be better served with sterilization/food clinics rather than these religious recruitment/anti birth control/food for Christ propaganda missions that they've been fed the past 40 years.
Maintaining our dependence on fossil fuels for the next 50 years will absolutely create a catastrophe, people have been saying that for decades. Africans would be better served by the EU removing it's protectionist food tariffs and agricultural subsidies and the rest of the world paying them a fair price for their abundant natural resources rather than cutting deals with the dictators who have kept parts of the continent in chaos since the end of (direct) European occupation after world war II It isn't just some crazy ironic twist of fate that the majority of the worlds precious metals and stones come from Africa and yet it has so many of the poorest and most violent countries, it's because of that. I wasn't advocating charity, I think in the two examples I posted, the Somalian famine and the Japanese tsunami/meltdown then absolutely charities are useful because it releases surplus money and resources quickly without conditions and negotiations and so on to respond to an unpredictable natural disaster like crop failures or a massive Tsunami I also disagree with long term charity work because as you said it can often prolong people's suffering and can sometimes do more harm than good in the long term. As well as what you said about allowing people to have more babies etc some charities are poorly managed and corrupt and money is stolen or wasted by charity owners and local warlords, dictators It also invites a sense of complacency, people think that they are doing good by throwing a little bit of their spare money at the needy cause of their choice, it is a ridiculous situation. I read a really good article (can't remember where) about the WWF and how they have spent so much of their resources on animals that humans like such as Panda and Rhinos at the expense of many species of birds/insects/rodents etc that aren't as cute but are far more important to their eco-systems. It's the same thing as how everyone helped Japan but not Somalia because we like it better, we are actually reducing these tragedies into consumer choices which is the same line of thinking that created the mess I think that your idea is even worse personally, you are talking about it in terms of resources but if you really honestly think about it globally in terms of resources Somalians are probably some of the last people that you would want to cull. I bet that you could get rid of about 1000 middle class Americans in place of the Somalians. These are people who have grown up with nothing and expect nothing, they know how to survive on no food, build houses out of junk etc If you put them in an abandoned part of Detroit or somewhere I bet there would be enough resources for them just lying about to live better than they do currently at no cost to anyone. But of course you would never advocate killing 1000 middle class Americans because the world is running out of resources and we just can't afford to keep all of these people alive, because they are humans with hopes and dreams etc completely unlike the people on TV who you lack the imagination to empathise with or even picture as real people.
