Reigniting the Malthusian Dilemma
January 26th, 2007Recently I have been reading about Thomas Malthus who is responsible for a debate on population growth that has spanned the last 200 years. Malthus formulated an idea in 1798 whereby he reckoned that famine, war and plague although horrible atrocities were the only ways to curb the world’s massive population explosion. It has come to be known as the Malthusian Dilemma. The Malthusian Dilemma is the theory that a population grows at a geometric rate but food resources only grow at an arithmetic rate. What this ultimately means is that if the population continues to increase unconstrained we will eventually run out of food. Therefore famine, war or plague would actually lead to less stress on the world’s resources and lead to a better quality of life. Why the debate still rages on is because many social scientists oppose this idea believing we can get around this massive problem without the mayhem of war or famine.
Firstly I’d like to add that I neither support the idea put forward by Malthus nor do I oppose it. I will say that I adamantly do not agree with war in any situation as I have never believed nor will I ever believe that fighting is the way to solve problems. The Malthusian Dilemma is certainly an appropriate title for the theory as it is most definitely a dilemma in the worst possible way.
Looking back over history we can see that after wars and plague the general economy does pick up and the quality of life initially improves just like Malthus says. After the Black plague we saw an economic upturn since the population had severely decreased, there was less of a strain on the environment and a smaller reproductive populace.
Although it might seem unspiritual to dare talk about such matters we need to ask ourselves where we are headed. The world’s population about 50 years ago was approximately 2.5 billion people. Now we have over 6 billion and rising rapidly especially in places like Asia and Africa where their resources can no where near stretch to cover the growing population. I truly wonder how some of these nations will survive into the not too distant future. I don’t believe the answer is to stop giving aid to these poorer nations but as the world population continues to increase will there be enough to go around for even the economically sound and currently prosperous nations. To add fuel to the fire, let’s also consider that parts of the world are currently suffering the worst droughts in recorded history. It has certainly been mentioned on a number of occasions that water will be the next big resource under threat. When I was a kid growing up in Australia in the 1970’s and 80’s the idea of having to buy a bottle of water was unheard of. Today you can buy a bottle of water on almost every street corner. Bottled water is now a multi billion dollar industry.
I’m past wondering if we are heading into another Malthusian Dilemma in our present day, I’m pretty sure we are already knee deep in it but I can’t see a whole lot effectively being done about it. Perhaps there is nothing we can do, perhaps history is destined to keep repeating itself time and time again and we are powerless to stop it. While I was traveling in Cambodia last year I visited the ancient temple city of Angkor Wat which was once a sprawling metropolis of Kampuchea a thousand years ago. The complex of temples in the Cambodian jungle absolutely blew my mind, I had no idea before I went there that Angkor was once such a geographically vast city. I asked a local kid if he could speak English and did he know the history of Angkor and he said for 1 US dollar he’d not only tell me the history, he’d tell me in English so I could understand him. He told me that the original Kampucheans were huge, powerful people unlike the small statured Cambodians of today. Angkor was the “New York” of Kampuchea around a thousand years ago and continued this way for hundreds of years till finally everyone basically disappeared. I can tell you why they disappeared, their population far exceeded their available resources and they eventually all died out and killed eachother. The same thing happened to the Mayans in South America and the ancient Egyptians in the Middle East.
While most of us living in the “civilized” world wake up each day and take for granted we have a fridge full of food and water and know that if we run out we can just head to the local shop and restock, I wonder how much longer this will last. We are running out of oil, we have severely disrupted the ecology of our planet and are continuing to do so at an alarming rate. Temperatures are rising in some areas of the planet, in others it is falling. China has a one child only rule but still its population continues to grow. Thousands of Africans die each day but still Africa’s population is rising. The polar caps are melting which is dumping more and more fresh water into the ocean disrupting the crucial balance of salt water and the natural flow of the world’s delicate oceanic system.
In relation to our resources we are stretched to the limit and the collective consciousness is following this pattern leading to further chaos. When I first became interested in spirituality I learned that there is enough to go around and there always will be if we believe there is. I still believe this in essence but as a member of the collective consciousness I don’t see the global community following along with the idea that we live in an all abundant universe. It leads me to believe maybe the Mayans knew something we don’t when they predicted a mammoth change will occur in the year 2012 which represents the end of the well documented Mayan calendar. With what is considered to be the end of the Mayan calendar or long count cycle of 5,125 years I guess we won’t have to wait long to see what does actually happen at the end of 2012 as it’s only just over 5 years away.
In conclusion when trying to make sense of the biggest of real world issues I often consider that when Einstein discovered the law of relativity he basically explained that everything in the universe is made up of energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed. So how is this relevant to the topic I have just discussed? If everything is energy including us and our consciousness, when we die in this life, the energy of our consciousness must continue on in some way. Due to a belief in this idea I have long prescribed to the theory that when we die we will continue on in some way some where and therefore this life and every life before serves to teach us lessons by helping us move closer to a higher power, some may call if God or maybe it is just moving towards love and away from fear that is the primary goal of consciousness. Therefore if this life is just a big lesson maybe what we have done to this planet and eachother is just a monumental part of the collective lesson. Although I don’t believe in going to war and I’m no fan of famine or plague, by witnessing and being a part of these horrible events we not only learn about ourselves but we learn how to cope and look towards solutions that may eventually help us to move toward a higher realm of the collective consciousness.
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