May 22nd, 2007

I have two points I want to make about my last rant:

There is at least one logical trap you run into when you write something like, "Resources, which were already being drained irreplaceably fast, are becoming more and more demanded and, subsequently, less and less available." Or, at least, people around you might think that you have run into a logical trap. Here, in a nutshell, is what someone said to me about my rant: "If you want to depopulate the world, you should start with yourself." Ouch. That is not what I want at all, but any time you start down the path of "not enough resources" or "too many people", everybody who doesn't stop to listen to the argument jumps to the conclusion that I am advocating, somehow, population control. Well I'm not; I know that doesn't really solve anything and it creates problems globally, and it creates terrible horrors locally. That's quite enough of that. I don't think we should be depopulating the world, and I don't think we should be trying. It won't work.

And there is a knee-jerk reaction whenever you mention race, no matter how benignly or self-deferentially. So a sentence in my last rant caused a harsh response. I said, "... we friendly white people think that we can still wait our turn patiently for those resources (which seemed so abundant to us as we were growing up) and we figure that the rest of the world around us will do the same ... " and though I didn't mean to say it, I was told this: "White people are not the only friendly people around. That fringes on racism to think so. Sharing what we have is not a gesture of friendliness. It is a privilege." Oh brother. So let me set the record straight: Though I am far from a Cultural Groupie, that includes any culture or race, I also realise that just because I am white does not mean I am an asshole, and just because someone is not white, does not mean they are not an asshole. Get it? (The cynic in me wants to point out that people are dreadful everywhere from every modern culture; the problem is mechanization, not culture.)

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