Pandora's Seed: The Costs of Civilization
seedmagazine.com
seedmagazine.com
This kind of intellectual conservatism is tantamount to asking the whole world to stick their fingers in their ears and pretend that we would be better off as tribal hunter gathers.
It's a bunch of unsupportable nonsense designed to sell this guy's book.
A thought that has been swirling around my mind for a while that i'm reminded of again as I was reading. Technological innovation seems to be on an exponential curve, as well as consumption (and I believe population) the earth being what it is these rates by any sane persons measures cannot continue indefinitely. How does nature find a balance?
In technologically advanced societies, the birth rate tends to decline, often below the replacement rate. Check out birth rates for most of western Europe for example. Having many many children is not actually pleasant for most people and when they have modern medicine that reduces child mortality, they typically choose to have a small number of children. Cultures don't change instantaneously, so sometimes these changes take a generation or two, but they do seem to happen.