From: Vanessa Novaeris (novaeris@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 11 2002 - 21:09:03 MST
Sorry it took me so long to reply. I really indulged in some masochism last
week - I got all domestic & decided to finish a quilt AND re-wallpaper my
bathroom :P I probably need to get out more…
Anyhow, I wanted to thank everyone who responded to my sour little rant on
overpopulation. Shortly after posting my question I heard something on NPR
about restricted family sizes in China, so then I read about China's
population policies & the UNFPA. My immediate reaction was: "How can they do
that!? They can't tell people how many children to have! That's sounds….
uh-oh, a lot like what I wrote in my email - doh!" I caught myself up! But I
feel much better about things now that I realize how totally stupid I was
being :P
But the feedback I got also really helped clear up some misconceptions I had
about population. John Grigg's link was incredibly helpful as a good
starting point for me (thanks!):
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/population.html
I found out that, unfortunately, many people are uninformed about this
issue. But I thought it was interesting how everyone's (false) perceptions
tend to be warped in the same way - like they all grumble the same
complaints & share the same attitudes about what they consider to be
population "problems." So then I started to think about what specific things
made me think there was a population problem to begin with - traffic,
housing, faulty civil engineering, old infrastructure, short sighted city
planning, and large-scale private & corporate developments that do not
consider (or care to consider) the overall congruity of the of their
structures with the surrounding areas. But the most basic thing (which
totally eluded me) is that many people actually choose to live & gather in
densely populated areas.
James Rogers wrote:
You don't have to get used to it, you've just chosen to locate yourself in
regions that have relatively dense populations. Part of this is standard
market mechanisms at work. Many of the most desirable places to live are
heavily populated, particularly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Nonetheless,
there are VAST tracts of usable land that are essentially uninhabited, even
in countries that are nominally highly developed. Quite frankly, in the
Western Hemisphere it seems that many undesirable places have huge
populations and many desirable places have less than a person per square
mile population density; there are many factors at play as to why people
concentrate where they do.
I think a lot of the concern about overpopulation is based largely on
perception. It isn't so much that we are over populated as it is that the
population is very poorly and/or unevenly distributed, due to a mixture of
historical, political, and economic reasons. There are still large regions
of the United States where one can drive a hundred kilometers between
houses, never mind towns, particularly west of the Rocky Mountains in the
Lower 48 and in Alaska. The same is true of most of Canada.
So I guess the answer is rather simple: if you don't like it, move! There
are plenty of other places to go. James Rogers' response was also an amazing
help - he summed up my particular problem so precisely, that it made me
think about how many other people shared this attitude and why.
So for me, this exchange triggered a lot of ideas about information &
education. I think most common (mis)conceptions about any issue spread so
quickly because people are relying only on the basic common "knowledge" they
receive from the outside world or society. This information usually tends to
be distorted by social & political forces or it can be warped by the source
trying to condense the general matter at hand into a bite-sized portion
which the average person can digest quickly & easily. I guess picking apart
my own immediate response made me think about where these ideas come from,
the sources of misinformation, how they're socially considered to be the
ultimate authorities on such issues. So then most ordinary people might not
know what the hell is really going on at all, but they might be the ones
making important decisions - kinda scary. Theres really so much involved
with this one so I won't babble on about it anymore right here.
I did have a point, so let me just stop my head from spinning - I guess its
just this: People commonly form opinions on issues about which they know
nothing (or very little). But I think that with an open & eager mind (along
with a credible source of information & some encouragement), even the most
uneducated individuals can attain substantial understanding of the general
issue at hand as well as the various perspectives from which it can be
evaluated. With time & effort, I think such people can, at the very least,
come to value the importance of being informed. I mean, if even *I* can do
it…perhaps there might be hope(?)
Anyhow, thank you all again
Vanessa
novaeris@hotmail.com
P.S> I also really appreciated Robert Bradbury's reply - I haven't checked
out that paper yet so you may be hearing from me soon on this again :P
thanks!
_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:12:56 MST