Frontiersman, September 2023

—Webster’s Universal Dictionary
of the English Language, 1910

—from Overpopulation and the Growth Obsession
http://bluepyramid.org/storey/archives/3026
U.S. Census Bureau, Current World Population
Current World Population
https://www.census.gov/popclock/world
Also See:
http://frontiersman.org.uk/Population/Curve.html

Survival Instinct
Sam Aurelius Milam III

In a natural environment, survival sets the standard for behavior. Animals take what they want without asking. Carnivores kill without hesitation or remorse. Lacking human intervention, there aren’t any charities or food banks. An animal that can’t survive on its own will die. Nature is a nice thing to see on a TV screen or through the window of a tour bus, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

We’re presently living at a time in the history of our species when survival is easy. It isn’t necessarily easy for individuals but it is easy for the species. Anybody who doubts that can look at the graph of human population growth for the past few centuries. Survival is so easy that, for now, we can afford all kinds of humanitarian things like feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and caring for the disabled. It all seems very civilized, but such “humanitarian” activities encourage population growth and genetic deterioration.

Early this year, the UN announced that the world population has exceeded 8 billion. In May of this year, a Professor for Environmental Politics at King’s College London reported that the world population is expected to reach 9 billion “in just a couple of years”. Presumably, that means by May of 2025. That suggests to me that it’s headed for 10 billion by May of 2026, 11 billion by November of 2026, and 12 billion by February of 2027. Obviously, that’s impossible but, since the entire socioeconomic system of the planet is a Ponzi scheme, it can’t function in a steady state. If it can’t keep growing, then it must crash. I don’t know how far the population will fall, or how bad things will get but, if there aren’t enough people to sustain our technology, then the surviving population could be reduced to lone wanderers and scattered groups of nomads, living as scavengers in what remains of the natural environment.

I’ve noted elsewhere in my work that prejudice seems to be inherent in our DNA. If it is, then there must be a reason why. The simplistic answer is that it was inherent in the DNA of our ancestors. Idealists today assume that we’ve risen above the animal nature of those ancestors. Various idealists have declared that prejudice is no longer an acceptable human attitude. Exercising that very same prejudice themselves, they condemn anybody who disagrees with them. In fact, their belief is only an unproved assumption. Whether or not it’s a good assumption might depend on why prejudice against variations of one kind or another was in our ancestors’ DNA in the first place.

For much of the time that our species has existed, survival has set the standard for human behavior. In our present state of easy survival, we can afford behaviors and attitudes that don’t have any survival value but, if my predictions are correct, then those easy conditions might end soon. Survival might again set the standard for human behavior. If that happens, will people revert to their animal nature? Consider how horribly we treat each other now, while survival of the species is easy. I expect that, if the population crashes as I’ve suggested, and the survivors are just trying to stay alive, then they’ll take what they want without asking and kill if necessary, probably without remorse. There won’t be any charities or food banks. People who can’t survive on their own will die. They won’t be watching nature on a TV screen or through the window of a tour bus. They’ll be living in it.

I don’t know if prejudice will be useful when things get tough, but there must be some reason why it was in the DNA of our ancestors. Maybe, living in a natural setting, they had a better chance of survival if they were prejudiced against strangers. Maybe they passed that behavior on to us. Prejudice seems harmful, now, but since it appears to be a part of our inherent nature, and seems to have been so for a long time, then maybe we should be grateful that we can’t legislate it away. Maybe it served our species reasonably well for the 1,995,000 years prior to the beginning of recent history. Maybe it will do so again. I don’t know. If the good times return, then maybe our descendants can try again to eliminate it.

Addiction
Sam Aurelius Milam III

Here’s something that I’ve noticed on the news lately. People who’re trying to cross a border into a different country, with only what they can carry, still have their cell phones. People who’re leaping out of the way, just ahead of an enemy bombardment, still have their cell phones. People who live in refugee camps, and depend on charity for everything, still have their cell phones. People who live on the street, and can’t afford to buy food, still have their cell phones. I even saw a woman in a destroyed town in northwest Syria, after the earthquake, claim that she could live without the power and the water, but not without her cell phone. That doesn’t seem like using a device that’s convenient. It seems to me like an addiction.

If somebody wants to test himself for cell phone addiction, then he can remove the battery and mail his cell phone to somebody far away, with a note requesting its return. If he has withdrawal symptoms while it’s gone, then he’s an addict. He needs to get some help

Prejudice Police
Sam Aurelius Milam III

I’ve been interested in the irrational prejudice thing for a long time, clear back to when men were condemned for having long hair. After years of commotion, I still don’t see a society in which irrational prejudice is being resolved. Instead, I see a society in which people are being compelled to behave contrary to their beliefs. Every noble cause that has ever resorted to forced compliance has become an authoritarian power structure, a police state of one kind or another. No matter how prejudiced people might be, a moralistic police state isn’t the way to solve the problem, yet today we’re establishing a new orthodoxy in which prejudice is a secular equivalent of sin. We’re establishing a new inquisition to enforce it and defining a new population of heretics, prejudiced people, to punish for noncompliance.

People who want to make things better would be well advised that they’ll probably do more good by example than by edict. If they want to end irrational prejudice, then I suggest that they should start with themselves.

Letters to the Editor
Dear Sam,

Hello. I pray this letter finds you well. Your Frontiersman, July ’23 had some interesting reads. The article “The Power of Human Fecundity”. You asked, “why are so many women having children?”, to me, the answer lies in a plight of the impoverished. You generally don’t see the rich having 10 plus kids, etc. What is the one thing a poor person can afford to do that’s fun? sex, sex, and more sex. It just appears that “safe sex” isn’t on the agenda.

Next, in your “letters to the editor”, and the letter about Rand’s opinions, sent in by Don Cormier, I tend to agree with you [page 3]. That a person’s instincts and intellect aren’t in any way connected. We are like animals ourselves and if you look into the driving force at our core. What we have is the desire to live, or the fear of death, whichever way you want to look at it. And the desire to have sex as much as possible. So we can procreate and leave our mark on this world.

Wherever you have time to philosophize, life has become too easy. It used to be outrun predators, catch something to eat, sex, sleep, repeat. A society’s downfall begins when life becomes easier, i.e. art, music, philosophy, etc. And, your story, “The Word” it’s a great intro to what could be a great novel. I really liked it.

Anyway, I hope the Georgia summers aren’t being too brutal with humidity.

Be well friend,

—S. H., a prisoner

My question about so many women having so many children was intended to be sarcastic. I answered it myself, right after I asked it.

After the scenario that I described in my story, The Word, there will be a few thousand years of accumulating myths and legends. Eventually, the descendants of the survivors will write The Book of Origins, in which they’ll present their distorted version of the fall from Paradise and the coming of the Darkness. If you view the past few thousand years of our own myths and legends as a forecast of the myths and legends that those fictional descendants will preserve, then I don’t need to write the novel. Just study our own myths and legends. Our past is the novel.

—editor

Dear Frontiersman:

Are you familiar with the “Cop City” disturbances in Atlanta? If you are, I would be very interested in hearing your interpretation of this on-going conflict.

—Sir Donald the Elusive

I recall hearing the controversy mentioned, but I’m not familiar with the details. My understanding is that it involves training cops and fire fighters in the same facility. That’s a bad idea because it might tend to turn the fire fighters into gestapo thugs, like the cops. As far as I can recall, my earliest writing about cops was in the late 1970s or the early 1980s, and included my satirical essay. It’s available in Pharos, in my collection of essays about money, taxes, and corporations.

—editor

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.

—Mahatma Gandhi

— Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor