Rumination on Population
If you often feel that just too much is going on in the world, consider this:
A lot of people have tried to calculate the total number of humans that have lived. It's difficult, because you have to rely on a lot of estimates of early human activity, and it depends on your definition of "human." But in general, the number that they come up with is somewhere in the ballpark of 100 billion. That's how many people there have ever been.
If we restrict that count to history, to people who have lived since the invention of writing or other reliable ways of recording information, it's less, but not as much as you might think. For most of human existence, there were only a relative few handfuls of us, spread across the globe eking out a living. Once we started to dominate and domesticate our environments, we expanded and developed civilization, and with it writing. Without a doubt the vast majority of humans born came after these advents.
Now, 100 billion people is a lot, but compared with the 8 billion currently alive, it's not that big. If we assume there have been 100 billion people, 8% of them exist at this moment. Out of the thousands of years of human history, almost a tenth of it has happened within the last lifetime.
The population in 1900 (again, estimated) was probably slightly less than 2 billion. In 1950, it was only around 2.5 billion. in those handful of generations, humanity has almost quadrupled. Not only have our numbers increased, but everything associated with them: artworks, literature, cultural events, historical events, political ideas, all have increased proportionately. As a result, currently living humans have far more stuff to contend with, on every level of society, if they interact with the world on any level beyond their immediate surroundings.
So yes, there is too much going on. The world is fundamentally different than it was, not only because of technological and social and climatological changes, but simply because of the density of humans and their activities on the planet.
In response to this overwhelming cacophony, many people are necessarily limiting their input, but are doing so somewhat carelessly. Instead of filtering out information they don't need, they're filtering out information they don't like. This has, as is now widely known, resulted in the creation of echo chambers where people can only access information they agree with, regardless of its value or truth. I should stress that all groups of people are experiencing this, not just the ones you don't like.
I think we need to shrink the world. I also think it's going to happen, one way or another, and we should deliberately seek the most peaceful method possible. The virological events of the past few months have demonstrated this. But when we limit our contact with the rest of the world, it's important to remember that the rest of the world doesn't go away, and its activity can still affect you.
A lot of people have tried to calculate the total number of humans that have lived. It's difficult, because you have to rely on a lot of estimates of early human activity, and it depends on your definition of "human." But in general, the number that they come up with is somewhere in the ballpark of 100 billion. That's how many people there have ever been.
If we restrict that count to history, to people who have lived since the invention of writing or other reliable ways of recording information, it's less, but not as much as you might think. For most of human existence, there were only a relative few handfuls of us, spread across the globe eking out a living. Once we started to dominate and domesticate our environments, we expanded and developed civilization, and with it writing. Without a doubt the vast majority of humans born came after these advents.
Now, 100 billion people is a lot, but compared with the 8 billion currently alive, it's not that big. If we assume there have been 100 billion people, 8% of them exist at this moment. Out of the thousands of years of human history, almost a tenth of it has happened within the last lifetime.
The population in 1900 (again, estimated) was probably slightly less than 2 billion. In 1950, it was only around 2.5 billion. in those handful of generations, humanity has almost quadrupled. Not only have our numbers increased, but everything associated with them: artworks, literature, cultural events, historical events, political ideas, all have increased proportionately. As a result, currently living humans have far more stuff to contend with, on every level of society, if they interact with the world on any level beyond their immediate surroundings.
So yes, there is too much going on. The world is fundamentally different than it was, not only because of technological and social and climatological changes, but simply because of the density of humans and their activities on the planet.
In response to this overwhelming cacophony, many people are necessarily limiting their input, but are doing so somewhat carelessly. Instead of filtering out information they don't need, they're filtering out information they don't like. This has, as is now widely known, resulted in the creation of echo chambers where people can only access information they agree with, regardless of its value or truth. I should stress that all groups of people are experiencing this, not just the ones you don't like.
I think we need to shrink the world. I also think it's going to happen, one way or another, and we should deliberately seek the most peaceful method possible. The virological events of the past few months have demonstrated this. But when we limit our contact with the rest of the world, it's important to remember that the rest of the world doesn't go away, and its activity can still affect you.