Something just occurred to me that might explain what's wrong with so many people -- and I'm not saying this to make fun of them or call them names, either. I think it's true
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There's also a positive feedback loop involved, in that people under chronic stress tend to have more and more babies, an ancient, instinctive reaction of living creatures to try to ensure the continuation of their genes no matter what happens to them. This is just as true of people as any other creature; and in the last 100 years, which have been full of chronic stress for everyone, the global human population has increased by a factor of 10. But more people means more crowding and fewer resources to go around for everyone, and that means more wars over territory and resources, more terrorism, more stress of every kind. Worse, our medical and other scientific advances mean that per capita, more babies and mothers survive childbirth, more children live to at least age 10 or so, more people live long enough to reproduce, and more elderly people live long lives during which they consume resources and take up space like everyone else, and that means that the rate of population increase -- its acceleration -- itself is going up, as well. How long that increase will continue isn't clear; it depends on all kinds of factors, including, if it happens, settling other worlds in the Solar System, the outbreak of nuclear war, etc. But at the moment it seems to be exponential, which is frightening. So the stress feeds on increases in population size, as well, which in turn feeds on stress and factors related to it. (Which may be why there is an increase in violent crime against women and children -- such crimes may arise partly out of an unconscious, instinctive awareness that the reason for part of the endless stress is human reproduction, because of which perpetrators target the innocent manifestations of one of the causes of that stress. Which is no excuse for violent crime, but it may be part of the explanation for it.) I just hope and pray we start settling other worlds of the Solar System damned soon -- otherwise the world may not last much longer. Because human beings are constitutionally and genetically the crazy organisms who, for whatever reason, captured and tamed fire about 1.8 million years ago, something other creatures were too sensible to mess around with. And when populations of us are stressed, the nastier side of that talent comes screaming out of at least some members of those populations -- as witness pyromaniacs. And nuclear weapons . . .
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