• Home
  • Blog EN
  • Blog DE
  • 4M
  • Homegrown
  • About
  • Home
  • Blog EN
  • Blog DE
  • 4M
  • Homegrown
  • About
The Future of Work & Education

OverPOPULATION, TECHNOLOGY AND THE DECLINE OF DEMOCRACY

1/7/2022

Comments

 
Picture
Isaac Asimov's bathroom metaphor is famous and as Aldous Huxley once said: A fact doesn't disappear by ignoring it. Western nation states however pretend that population growth does not impact the democratic model while it slowly declines right before our eyes.

Donald Trump's presidency and the attack on democratic institutions like the one on the US Capitol last year, a dictator-like regime in Austria from 2017-2021 under the youngest ever chancellor Sebastian Kurz and two successors since then seem like manifestations of what Ken Wilber once called aperspectival madness. In fact these events follow the laws of nature and show that we need a new form of governance.

The grand master of the exponential function, Al Bartlett, wrote a short and readable article about the connection between the democratic decline, techological advancement and population growth which quotes Asimov in lucid manner.

Bill Moyers: "What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species
if this population growth continues at its present rate?"

Isaac Asimov: "It will be completely destroyed. I like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor: If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, Then both have freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want, Stay as long as you want, for whatever you need. And everyone believes in Freedom of the Bathroom; It should be right there in the Constitution.

But if you have twenty people in the apartment and two bathrooms, Then no matter how much every person Believes in Freedom of the Bathroom, there's no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, You have to bang on the door, 'Aren't you through yet?' And so on."

Asimov continues with what could be one of the most profound observations of the 20th Century: "In the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation; Human dignity cannot survive [overpopulation]; Convenience and decency cannot survive [overpopulation]; As you put more and more people into the world, The value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies,
The more people there are, the less one individual matters."
democracyoverpopulation.pdf
File Size: 128 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Read this and you will understand why the threat to democracy does not originate in authoritarian China, but in our elites' unwillingness to reform democratic decision making. China's own overpopulation problem can teach the democratic West that another form of governance - if not a totalitarian - is inevitable - no matter whether we praise China's absolutism or work on more humane alternatives.

Writing a blog on the future of work on education, I should mention that this condition extends to labor markets and education systems: the more people there are the more unequal and unfair the frame conditions will be.

We have two routes which we can take from here:

One leads to the decimation of population through war and disease and is in the interest of the small number of people who own the majority of wealth and assets on this planet.

The second route leads to a new form of sharing and education in which finite resources and the need to allocate them fairly are precondition for genuine growth and the true unfolding of human potential.

Peter Drucker forsaw already many years ago that "if the 21st century will show one thing, then it is the futility of politics." We have chosen route one already a few times. How about taking a different turn this time?
Picture
Comments

    Archives

    January 2023
    October 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016

    Categories

    All
    AI
    Alienation
    Anthropocence
    Artisanship
    Automation
    Basic Income
    Brotherhood
    Capitalism
    Circular Economy
    Cities
    Compassion
    Compulsive Hoarding
    Consumerism
    Countryside
    CSR
    Education
    German Elections
    Gratitude
    Human Development
    Identity
    Information
    Language
    Learning
    Materialism
    Meditation
    Metamorphosis
    Migration
    Mindful Consumption
    Parenting
    Purpose
    Purpose And Midlife Crisis
    School
    Transformation
    Travel Industry
    Wildness
    Work
    World Order

© 2015