People
There are too many people. On Saturday due to 50,000 plus people going to watch 22 other people kick a ball around I couldn't get into a tube station, so had to walk home. I had to walk around people all the way, old, young, thin, fat, all of them. People everywhere. But I know we need these people. We need them to make food, to pull pints, to stop crime, to monitor the shipping lanes, to create adverts, to service heating systems, to referee snooker matches, to help ease the passage of other people into this world, to send people out of this world with dignity, and all the other things that we need to have done so the planet spin along through space. It's good, that we've found so many things for people to do.
In John Gray's Straw Dogs he makes the point that while advancements in agriculture, and subsequently industry, may have allowed us to support larger population, it didn't allow us to support these populations to a higher degree of happiness, or contentment. It merely meant once there existed the ability to make more food, we were able to 'create' more people to eat it. And so it goes.
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Friday 20 December 1661
18 hours ago
5 comments:
People are cool. Think of all those nice people you wouldn't meet if there weren't any people about.
Oh I know; I like meeting new people. They are fun and interesting. But there are a lot of people in the world. I mean, a lot.
John Gray, then, talks an absolute load of horseshit.
A couple of hundreds of years ago it took 90% of the population to try (often unsuccessfully) to feed 100% of the population. Now, thanks to advances in agriculture, it takes about 2% of the population to feed 100% of the population.
I can safely say that I'm vastly happier sitting in a warm office than I would be if I were outside digging up turnips.
Just repeating what he says (is a good book, highly thought provoking, and enjoyably polemically).
I don't think 100% are feed now though surely?
No, I know Dan.
100% in this country yeah. Give or take a few chavs babies.
Also, send me your address and I'll drop that middle-east book round sometime.
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