Timothy Wilken
Dieoff is a ecological term. It refers to what happens to an animal population when that population exceeds the ability of its biosphere to support it—when a population runs out of food to eat, it dies off.
Many scientists predict that Humanity is facing its own dieoff. Our 6 billion and growing numbers are about to exceed the earth’s ability to feed us. When the dieoff comes many predict anarchy and “MAD MAX” scenarios where the only survivors are the adversary fittest. They claim that it won’t be an era of world cooperation. Every group which is strong enough to seize at least a slice of the pie will do so. Everybody will be looking out for himself, and no more. Arthur Noll, a frequent contributor to CommUnity of Minds disagrees. He writes:
“If we had world cooperation, there wouldn’t need to be a dieoff. If people would cooperate, this whole thing could be resolved, a lottery for only the healthy to reproduce, population rapidly reduced by natural attrition, an end to the waste of people trying to get rich at the expense of nature and each other, phase out mechanized agriculture, replace it with systems that are sustainable.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think this will happen. I think we can only have world cooperation after the technology drunk, “force everything to serve wants instead of needs” kind of minds have died out. People who live in cooperative groups,looking at everything, reproduction, food and shelter and entertainment, in terms of group energy efficiency, will be the only ones with the extreme efficiency necessary to survive.
“Some argue , that forcing people to behave is the best way, coercing them with food and guns, as if repeating this enough times would make it true. It isn’t true. Lets say you start off with the army of your dreams, to bring about what you want. Every battle you win, you have won less stuff to maintain your army, because after all, that is the theme here, falling amounts of resources available. A loss, of course, is the end. You have to feed this army, and keep it supplied with weapons, or you won’t keep it. It will finally dissolve. Armies depend on another, hidden army of people and fertile land to feed them, supply them. With falling supplies, falling fertility, these people will have to start to chose between feeding you and your soldiers and feeding themselves. They could die either way. If you have forced them in the past, their loyalty will not be great, they will chose to feed themselves. They might even chose to burn the food and say,no one eats it, as the Russians did to Napoleon. You become an enemy, when you force someone. And an enemy is prone to do things like that.
“Some have said in the past that hungry people will follow whatever rules,as long as they are fed. True, but armies don’t produce food. They don’t produce anything but destruction. They take things, and they can’t take if it doesn’t exist to be taken. Force as a way of life will fail, as energy to sustain it fails.
“Some have expressed concern about the environment. That we may destroy the Earth. I think all we may destroy is ourselves. There will be no irreplaceable damage to the environment, though some things may take thousands of years to put right. I agree that the elites must move to prevent more damage, but they are a different group of elites than most people think, they are not rich in money, but rich in brains. We sit as a village under a growing potential avalanche. I say, get out those who can hear, and trigger the thing, better to save those who can hear, rather than we all die. This thing can be turned with words, ideas, understanding of truth. “No army can stop an idea whose time has come.” “
I agree with Arthur. We humans can solve our problems, all we have to do is work together, but we had better start soon.