by

John Wright

External Influence in Controlling World Population

Talk about grandiose ideas! How could anyone in the USA (or elsewhere) even begin to think that we could have any influence regarding global population? Tribal behaviors are as strong now as ever they were in human history. No one trusts anyone when it comes to limiting population. All people know intrinsically that sheer numbers result in succession, existence and dominance. This timeless fact supercedes all others in relevance. To be blunt, that understanding is the basis for the stance of the Catholic Church regarding birth control.

Well, it isn’t only the Catholics. Our fear and distrust regarding our demise is seen clearly in our utter unwillingness to even consider birth control. The only examples we see of real birth control are those shown by the semi-wealthy intelligent people among us, who fear the future and so do not reproduce. Isn’t that a tough pill to swallow!

Okay, enough for simple-ass human inadequacies. We are too reproductive throughout our history. We overwhelm our environment wherever we live. We suffer immensely as a result. And we do not trust each other at any level. What to do? My, oh my, what to do?

You really don’t want to hear or read what I have to say. Humans are inherently inadequate. We do not need many humans. We need to grow beyond what we are and leave Humanity in the dust behind us. We are not perfect and we are not created in the image of any god! We are a stepping stone to a better existence, and that is that!

Hmmm … I suppose that betrays my own inadequacies, doesn’t it? Maybe you start to get the general idea. To throw in the towel is truly dumb, and to fail to progress is also truly dumb. The third and largest dumb is to keep making ever more of us. The answer to the challenge about us influencing global population is to be found in genetic engineering, not in nuclear warheads. Organized religion offers us nothing of value regarding our future as a species. History has very little to offer in the way of advice for carving our future out of the cosmos. We are it, fella. And it is our job to make the future happen in a useful way.

I am immediately depressed thinking about our inadequacies and our dismal performance. Might we "rise to the occasion?" Do we have a choice? No. Let us continue our reproductive idiocy and we will destroy our Mother Earth. We will either learn to evolve or we will die. All of us.

So it is that the role of the USA is to teach and to research, such that Humanity can grow beyond our present limitations instead of die. Now that isn’t very hard to understand, is it? Mark that in your to do list as the prime imperative. Then, think about what we have to do to realize that goal. When you arrive at your conclusions you will have the answers to the challenge of the title of this article subpart.

Population composition is a powerful determinant of success. On one hand, limited genetic pools have proven to be very limiting, both culturally and genetically. On the other hand, notable limitations in some races make silly the notion that we can expand population or change population composition without serious consequences. Above all, any race that shows too high a population rate combined with limited abilities is dangerous to the progression of any society.

To grasp these facts and to realize the harm that can be done in a few generations is critical. We suffer from two conceptual problems. The first is our failure to accept that gradual change in declining abilities and declining living standards leads to ultimate failure. We are that way because we see only a short distance beyond the tips of our noses. The second problem is that no organization of consequence has promoted the real goal of Humanity, which is to be ever more knowledgeable and capable in pursuit of the future.

Immigration is simply a process that happens when life somewhere is so bad that geographic change is the only solution. Migration to better places is natural only in that context, for if we are contented we tend to stay where we are. When, however, we reproduce to excess relative to the fruits of the environment in which we live, quality of life declines severely, and the only hope is to emigrate. Unfortunately, the cultural behaviors that led to excessive reproduction are carried with those who emigrate.

The result is obvious. Simply look at Miami today, or the population composition changes in California. Look at Johannesburg, South Africa. The changes are not good. If allowed to continue, the quality of life in these and other places will decline to eventually become as bad as that in the locations of origin of the immigrants.

Tight immigration control is simply a process to keep a society from being destroyed. Switzerland is a good example. What we are experiencing in the USA now has been destructive for the past fifty years and will become ever more highly destructive if we do not halt immigration. We already see the population composition impact of those who reproduce to excess and who also have limited abilities, such that we use almost all of them as virtual slaves. One price we pay is the destruction of our social institutions related to entitlements, like medical care and education and unemployment compensation … need I continue? Another price is the gradual but certain decline of our physical infrastructure, for inadequate tax and other income generation leads to slums, poor roads, failed water supplies, crime and health problems.

To promote tight immigration control now is inadequate. We have already unleashed a disaster within our borders that will have at least as much negative consequence as our ancestors’ stupidity in introducing slavery. We are still paying for their greed. Literally the only humane way to contain the problem is by forced limiting of reproduction. I spoke of that necessity in my book, Destiny, and I am once again trying to get your attention so that you might lend your political support to enacting that needed legislation.

Yes, we do have to stop the immigration problem cold, at our borders. Beyond that, we have to stop excessive reproduction behaviors within our borders. That means one for one replacement for each of us, banking of genetic materials to compensate potential tragedies, and then forced sterilization. Remember, we do not need more of us like we are today … we need to evolve to become a better species.

Let me begin with a few very simple truths. First, the future belongs to the intelligent, learned and ambitious people, not to the ignorant or the stupid (unable to learn) or the lazy. That simple truism hasn’t changed since the beginning of human history. The issue then is how to assure that all students receive opportunity commensurate with the combination of their genetic ability (raw intelligence/marked strong aptitudes) and motivation.

Some human endeavors like sports still favor brawn, which is okay, but in general the progression of society has favored intelligence over brawn, and will continue to do so. Few jobs outside of professional sports require brawn today. We have created machines to eliminate almost all manual human labor. We do, however, have some jobs for athletically talented people, as in the military.

The process of taking our ignorant newborn children and developing them into productive adults is as important now as ever. Perhaps our most difficult problem is finding jobs for those who, developed to maximum potential, are not really essential anywhere in the working world. The USA has done a respectable job creating and modifying jobs to meet the needs of nonessential people and for that we should be proud.

The difficulty we have with technological progression is that ever fewer people in our society, as a percentage of the total number of people, can learn what there is to be learned and thus be potentially contributive and competent. This problem has resulted in many complications, for on one hand we modify the variety and difficulty of the jobs we do have to accommodate limitations while on the other hand we limit income to that commensurate with actual contribution, yielding an ever larger population with a lowered and ever lower standard of living.

One of the more ugly examples of where this process leads can be found in the lives of illegal immigrants, who work for pitiful wages and are little more than part time slaves to the more wealthy people. This reality is not fair because these people suffer from lack of decent housing, food and general societal opportunities, in part due to their chronic poverty and inability to compete for better paying jobs.

For those who are not illegal immigrants, life is not much better as they find themselves working two jobs just to survive economically. That also is slavery.

I feel like I am talking around the central subject rather than stating the primary ugly truth and getting on with the job of improving our educational opportunities. The ugly truth is that we need ever fewer people with limited ability, and we have to change our society to stop their growth in numbers. What we need but do not yet have is the skill to use genetic engineering to bring all of us up to levels of intelligence that we would recognize as very high today. In the interim it is essential and humane to provide education and jobs for those with limited abilities and also curtail their population growth.

With the above backdrop, we can now move forward. Education must be free to all citizens at all levels of education, provided they are competent and highly motivated at each level. Schools must specialize in curriculum to meet the abilities and interests of the attending students, and that means segregation by level of intelligence and established competence as well as by area of educational endeavor. It also means a more complex and definitive set of degree programs with tested levels of competence along the way as part of the degree designation, with achieved detailed levels of competence shown on the diploma(s) graphically. Of course this means national testing. No other method would provide quantitative, and therefore reliable, results.

Education is a joint responsibility of government and business, with checks and balances provided by elected citizen committees. Each group must have highly defined and non-overlapping responsibilities and privileges. All education costs must be paid by the federal government from general tax revenues.

Higher education will have variable cost based on geographic location and quality of the college or university. Entrance will be based solely on academic performance, with the better schools getting the better students.

In no event will any school be privately funded, for in each area there will be segregation of students based on academic performance, so there will be no need to seek a better school. Students will be bused to the school appropriate to them.

It is an expected and natural consequence that the more capable and motivated people will always tend to amass wealth and power beyond that of the average or typical person. This has been true since the beginning of recorded history. When warriors were needed, the strong prevailed. When medical cures were needed or opportunities to exploit natural resources, the intelligent prevailed. Most important, the intelligent easily caused the less intelligent to become slaves or indentured servants of one variety or another.

That these wealth and power differences would exist and be relatively constant throughout history is no surprise. We had no effective means to make people equal in ability. We still don’t, though we are tantalizingly close to being able to do so. Similarly, and for the same reason, genetic engineering, we are on the threshold of eliminating physical weaknesses and genetic abnormalities that, to be blunt, have served no useful purpose in the progression of our species or in the pitiful lives of the affected individuals.

We have, however, an interim situation that is most alarming. Those who have had the benefit of health and higher intelligence have difficulty seeing the remainder of the human race as deserving of anything good. We have too long a history of using the lesser people in low pay and low respect jobs. In short, there is an unstated and sorry reality that the more capable do not consider the "other" people to be representative of anything respectable. For that reason, the less capable are treated as a subspecies.

Well, in terms of effectivity, they are a subspecies. I can see no valid reason why the weak would be provided fruits of intelligent progress when they did not in any important way contribute to its creation … Hmmm … that statement was a bit over the top, wasn’t it? Most of us have some humanitarian component to our personalities that causes us to, at the very least, pity the weak and attempt to provide for them beyond their contribution, for we realize that any one of us might have been born into that unfortunate circumstance.

The problem that I am addressing in this article is that of loss of noblesse oblige and loss of any sense of fairness, kindness or rationality regarding the crap shoot of birth has affected our wealthy and powerful far too much. They are behaving as total and complete bastards relative to the less capable. It is time to do two things … 1) Do not let the weak overreproduce, and 2) Do everything possible to promote research, development and implementation of genetic engineering so that the weak of today become strong and highly intelligent. This is so simple I become angry having to promote the idea … give all people intelligence and health and we will be one super capable species and accelerate our growth!

As I indicated above, our powerful people are not behaving in kind or considerate ways towards the less fortunate. Many of the powerful are doing all they can to delay or stop the use of genetic engineering. They use the infantile argument that has always appealed to the ignorant, that of their "god" not approving of fiddling with his creations. The powerful do not want to change the world order in which they thrive while the weak suffer.

There are many reasons why the powerful would believe and act as they do, and one of those reasons is easy to understand and appreciate. Liberal efforts to share the largesse of society with the less fortunate have done nothing but increase the population of the weak. In itself, that reality is enough to make willy-nilly liberalism stupid. It is no wonder the powerful and wealthy fear doing anything that will increase herd size beyond what the powerful and wealthy need, for overwhelming natural resources in supporting large populations is seen as a disaster by anyone truly intelligent and considerate of our future. Some powerful and wealthy people lack that value system and are thus extremely destructive to our future.

All the cliches about corruption from wealth and power are basically true for most individuals, with a few notable exceptions through history. Today, the combination of amassed personal wealth and especially amassed corporate wealth, along with high taxes, make the lives of the less fortunate even worse than they would otherwise be. There is no practical pursuit of any area of life that has been taken over by the corporations or the various governments. The less fortunate now have no means to develop even when the rare person of intelligence is born into a poor environment, for that person will surely leave. Life, yes, of a sort. Liberty, no. Pursuit of happiness … just a dusty idea on some old parchment.

Amassing power and wealth would not be a bad thing if the combination were used to generate the force needed to lift Humanity by its bootstraps to a higher form of existence. It is the absence of that use and direction of power and wealth that proves the amassing to be wrong, for through it the weak suffer without any gross positive change for Humanity. War is but one example. Corporate offshoring to exploit poor people elsewhere strictly for profit gain for the wealthy is the big-ticket item at this moment in history. Ask a Mexican in Matamoros how General Motors has improved his life, and you will learn the ugliness of corporate exploitation of the poor.

What all this means is that power and wealth must be removed in large measure from those who possess them now, for they are impeding our development, as individuals, corporations and governments. And lest I forget, wealth amassed by religious groups is also subject to reduction, for they steal from the truly ignorant by promising bright futures for the obedient, after death. It is no different than a lottery except that the lottery does have the occasional winner, who has simply collected part of the money the poor contributors couldn’t afford to waste but did. The religious groups are worse by far in promoting mass psychosis as an answer to unfortunate circumstances of birth. Unfortunately, there are enough truly well intentioned people within some of those religious groups that the mass negative effect on our progress is not seen clearly.

I do not advocate assaulting the Pharaoh’s grain towers to feed the hungry immediately. What I do advocate is a stepwise distribution of wealth and power that occurs first in principle, through law, and then actively across twenty to fifty years in a restructuring of global and national economics into a highly distributed power environment. This is to be accompanied by fewer laws and less punitive and more productive legal and financial behaviors by our governments. Individuals simply do not need a net worth in excess of five million dollars to enjoy the fruits of our society. Stripping all individuals of wealth in excess of that amount is required to stop the process of uncontrolled greed and subsequent power hunger behaviors.

Corporations must no longer have the legal status of a "person." As corporations do not die like individuals, there is nothing in place to periodically return amassed assets to society in any form. Bad but efficient practices can go on in perpetuity. Selfish use of assets to promote only further wealth acquisition is guaranteed. Thus, there has to be means to unwind and then limit the power, wealth and perpetuity of the corporation, by forcing it to participate financially outside its own domain in areas that grow the ordinary people, but in knowledge, not in number, and their environment.

I leave you with the recommendation to reread the part of Destiny about Responsibilities of Businesses, and in particular the description of the pig analogy. Success too often has led to self-serving laziness, lack of creativity and on the whole a long and unnecessary delay in creating improvements through change. This happens to individuals, corporations and governments when their vision (fundamental purpose for growth) dies.

A Strategic Plan for Using the Fruits of Genetic Engineering (to be continued)