Population
Well... I'm not particularly well-prepared for today topic. Really. In fact, I just read the news last week about Thailand's population growth rate may reach 'zero' by year 2015. The news made me think...gee...would the cause of human extinction be infertility?Y'know. I've heard so much from friends and acquaintances about how hard people get pregnant these days. Good friends of mine had tried for so many years to finally get pregnant. And I heard that it's harder for a couple in developed countries to have a baby.
Anyway, I checked the trends and forecasts from Wikipedia. Here they are:
Population in most places are expected to slow down eventually...for whatever reason it is. And the growth rate is constantly declining over the years, and they are expected to decline further.
[Thanks for statistics from Wikipedia.com]My hypothesis is that these people are too stressful, particularly because of work and /or competition. My crazy imagination is that, if world peace is achieved and there's no poverty, the world population will eventually come to a point of decline.
Maybe human won't kill each other to death with wars or nuclear.
Maybe human won't be eliminated from this world through a very serious and deadly disease.
Maybe the inability to reproduce is the thing...and we will become extinct no matter how.
And, maybe that's just the way how nature works.
[Note: A lot more on Doomsday argument from Wikipedia - a much richer and more thought out ideas]
{updated: August 1, 2006}
Yai, thanks for the comment na. I hope it's ok to put your comment here...
Premise #1: if world peace is achieved and
Premise #2: If there's no poverty
The conclusion was surely drawn from a very crazy imagination : )
I don't think it's the inability to reproduce per se...
I mean we're not genetically altered to be incompetent you know what I mean?
but it's the life-style choice or (not so much of a choice for some)
BUT the point is...
It all happened before (but dued to something else)
If we look at the number of the baby-boomers today, we'll see a pattern.
Onces the population goes down significantly, people will start to do something.
Some countries even paid you if you reproduced right?
love to talk more but gotta go out now...will come back to check your blog again later na.
And I like to add something, not really a response to Yai's comment, but rather another view I got from a Israeli biologist-turned-HighSchool-teacher (who got a PhD in some kind of myth-literature), whom I met on the plane from Chiang Mai. (wow...that's long!)
I told him about this crazy idea, and he said it is almost impossible. From history, when a civilization is in peace and prosperity, people just reproduce! Hmm...that makes sense. In that case...it's very unlikely that human population will gradually shrink to zero. What you (anybody) think?
posted by Bikku @ 2:33 AM
3 Comments:
Premise #1: if world peace is achieved and
Premise #2: If there's no poverty
The conclusion was surely drawn from a very crazy imagination : )
I don't think it's the inability to reproduce per se...
I mean we're not genetically altered to be incompetent you know what I mean?
but it's the life-style choice or (not so much of a choice for some)
BUT the point is...
It all happened before (but dued to something else)
If we look at the number of the baby-boomers today, we'll see a pattern.
Onces the population goes down significantly, people will start to do something.
Some countries even paid you if you reproduced right?
love to talk more but gotta go out now...will come back to check your blog again later na.
I'm back : ) No, I don't mind you.
I am honoured hahaha.
And wow, I wanna meet interesting people like that person you met on the plane too.
Well, I guess I was influenced also by MR. Krukrit Pramote's book, "huang ma han nop" and JR's study background that one major pupose of living organisms including human is to "pass on genes".
Sometimes I am not comfortable using the word "Purpose" but I think I am very comfortable now to say at least reproduction is one of the most important "Function" of ours.
I believe there will be a doomsday...
but I don't think it will occur from human's inability to mate.
The End. : )
very richful blog and talk between my sister and my friend. dee jing jing. I was thinking the same as P'Yai though... that I don't think human will eventually loose ability to mate. ;-)
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