Like Rats In A Cage
How close are we (humans) to behaving like rats in a crowded cage? If you put a couple of rats in a cage and they will get along pretty well. Start adding rats and tensions begin to build. Put enough rats in the cage and territorial battles will begin. Stuff enough rats in confined quarters with a lack of needed resources and the survival wars will begin.
Our presence in the world is beginning to stretch natural resources quite a bit. Cities are crowding millions of people into areas barely able to sustain them. People push, shove, shoot, and cut each other on a regular basis. Commuters become enraged and run others off the road or take shots at them. Pressure and more pressure to protect our space, however transient and small it may be.
You would like to say that the cream rises to the top but it is more that the strongest rise and survive, whether it is on the street or in the business world. The competition becomes extremely intense. Behavior changes as the competition for diminishing resources changes.
Wars over control of precious resources have been going on since the dawn of time. It could be ants, monkeys, lizards, or man fighting over that tiny little patch of earth. Each species needs a certain amount of space and resources to survive and as man has evolved and the species has multiplied, we have gained control over our domain by having the intellectual edge. The crowding has caused technology to evolve better ways of doing things so we can feed ourselves and live the way that we do.
We have also learned how to kill more efficiently so, for what we believe is a first for a species of this world, we can exterminate just about everything on the face of the earth. Heck of a way to control population.
The good side of the proliferation of man and his technology has been in the protected way in which we live. We are unlocking the secrets of life and of the unimaginably huge universe so maybe before we reach critical mass of population, we can harness other ways to provide for people.
Space travel would be very complex and time and resource consuming plus it wouldn't move enough people at once to make a dent in the world's
population so
we can rule out voyages to distant stars via spaceships for population control.
That narrows the population control options down to dumping birth control chemicals in the world's water supply, sterilizing children so only a select few can reproduce, starting a nuclear war, or attempt to have everyone stop having sex unless they are sterilized. Not a very good list.
Somewhere along the line Mother Nature might step in and do a bit of downsizing with some exotic virus or catastrophic natural calamity such as polarity shift of the poles, massive earthquakes, volcanic upheaval, or perhaps a rather large asteroid. Again, not a pleasant list to think about but not unheard of if you look at the record of life that has come before us.
The pressures of increased population will be addressed by a new type of science. We have eliminated space ships moving enough people to make a difference so we have to look elsewhere. We are finding ways to feed more people but that has diminishing returns. Aside from just slowing the birth rate, there must be an alternative and reasonable place to put the excess people.
Part of the problem with being a scientist is that you can only measure what your senses can perceive on some level. Most instruments are tools made to enhance what we physically sense is just over the next threshold. There is scientific method and a lot of maddening math in stretching our senses to see 15 billion light years into the universe or altering the DNA of corn for better yields.
Our sense is that the next leap in science will be taking what we usually perceive as the spiritual realm and finding a way to measure it as physical thing. Then we will begin to explore unlimited new worlds by finding a way to lift the veils of our reality between ourselves and all of the alternative universes. Once that rift is breached, people will be able to look for suitable worlds to settle. It is the next frontier.
Probably harder than the science itself will be convincing the scientific world that the realm that only some of us perceive is a real place that needs to be looked into. As it stands now, science doesn't care much for things like prophecy or ESP because of the elusiveness of the subject matter.
Will it happen in our time? What do you think?