World population if there had never been wars throughout history and today?

I thought, I pretty much expressed your views in my response above! When I mentioned Darwinism, I essentially harped on the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, which are but what you had to say there as in the widening gap between the poor and affluent. Most wars on earth were executed in the name of religion. There shouldn't be any doubt. The peasants seethe against the extortion of the upper class who in turn blame their fates on God!

Oh you did express the same mimpi, I was just crapping on I guess. Call it a bad habit if you will..... Or we can maybe ponder on the "great minds think alike" angle? Either/or is fine by me.

Nature has unquestionably played a majority role in "culling" the human species throughout our existence. The main difference being though, that the earth's activities are naturally cyclical as you have said, yet our own collective actions are very unnatural in parallel. Increased population means further pressure on resource availability and therefore increased scarcity, poverty and famine. An onset of these issues does of course raise incidences of disease. Greed will also reign supreme as the rich fight tooth and nail to amass all they can and take survival of the fittest to an indescribably evil level. Then the gap between the rich and poor widens even further and so forth. It's a negative domino effect to say the least! And how can war not arise from any of this? (And religion hasn't even come into it yet!) But for the sake of the discussion, we will assume that even with ALL of these points AND religion, war is an unknown entity that will never surface. In this case, I agree with you wholeheartedly that other factors will contribute significantly to keep our numbers controlled somewhat.

I am sure there would be many more great minds in the world, but on the flip side, the level of poverty and lack of resources would increase exponentially as well. I can't help but think that nature would kick in and work towards decreasing our numbers anyway. And you are right in saying that overpopulation etc is an infrequently discussed or acted upon issue. At least not to the levels it SHOULD be acknowledged. We are just not forward thinking enough and we will suffer as a result you would think.

Just read a great editorial about it in the November 2007 Analog (I'm a wee bit behind the times). It's a sensitive issue. Many people really don't believe it's a problem and many others don't want to be guilty of going around and telling people how many children they should have (a la China). One would hope that if economic conditions around the world improve, people would voluntarily have fewer children. But even if that were to happen, I suspect it will get far worse long before it gets better.

People tend to get all caught up in their own realities and never really consider the collective results of their actions or the longer term future effects. It is only when we are affected personally that we seem to stand up and take notice. What is troubling most of all, is that statistically, it's the people that can LEAST afford to have large families etc that are having them! There are so many factors that contribute to this scenario too. Lack of education, the belief of strength in numbers, the welfare structures in some countries that incentify people to have more kids..... It's endless really. China has sought a resolution in the past, but the issue is in policing a policy like this. If we can't even educate the masses, then how can we possibly monitor something like this effectively? Especially in third world countries. In many cases, children born in these regions are persona non grata and don't even formally exist! We will pay the ultimate price, no question.

But in today's context will a world war retain a balance on the poluation ? It's only going to be anhilation all the way.

If wae are talking another World War and also consider the types of weaponry available today, something like this may just solve population once and for all there will be none of us left!

I agree that nature would probably create a balance even without deaths caused by warfare. Call it survival of the fittest, greed or any other term I guess, but it is what it is and as long as we are free thinking, religiously motivated, capitalistic and many other things, we will be plagued by bloodshed for eternity. Take all of that out of the equation, and massive overpopulation would undoubtedly cause disease, famine and God knows what else and our numbers would STILL suffer. It's a catch 22 really.

He gave us so many tools.Choices.Brain power,the sixth sense,to know the bad from the good.It is up to us and entirely our responsibility to home those tools to our advantage or disaster.

I couldn't agree more bala. We are just as much our own worse enemies as we are our own potential saviours.

Ain't free will a wonderful thing bala! God created man in his image and gave us the tools to live our lives the right way; yet we are consumed as a collective people by the complete opposite of his intentions. God created the earth and all that is on it, we will be the ones to ultimately destroy each other as a living part of it. And the earth will continue on without us. The disasters have been rightfully called "natural" by you and are the result of the earth's ecosystem doing it's thing. Our own actions are as unnatural as you can get! How can we possibly expect to exist for eternity when we as a people do everything we possibly can to go against the flow?

Double the fun, Mable?

oh sorry,james,it was not done on purpose,seems to be a mylot glitch??i thought,i was riya,from where did this mable spring up???

No problem riya! I saw you mention Mable (Or Mabel) as a pet name in another discussion, so thought I would have some fun with it!

Yes they do in many cases. My question is very much flawed in that sense because taking war out of the equation and having population figures rise, will ultimately lead us all back to war again anyways! As for other perks of war, it's a multi-trillion dollar industry! If many countries spent even a fraction of what they spend on defence on more humanitarian causes, the world may be an entirely different place altogether.

Very treu RYBD. It's a catch 22 on so many levels. Population explosion in turn generates an environment of scarcity and a stronger force of those exploiting power and exercising greed to control and take advantage of the weak and hungry. Nations will never be happy with what they have and will always want more; faiths and political agendas will run even more rampant the more people there are in this world and this too will lead to disagreements and war at every turn. We are in essence our own worst enemies and arguably way past the point of no return when it comes to finding balance and equality between us all. There will always be some force at play that will contribute to the decimation of our species and I believe it's pretty much guaranteed that our time as a species will come to an end sooner than we all may think. The earth will then continue on it's merry way without us!

That's an interesting point riya. You are probably right that we would find ourselves self-regulating our numbers even without deaths from war etc. Maybe through disease, I don't know. As for the fertility rates, it is not something I was consciously aware of, no; but now that you have mentioned this aspect as well, I can't help but feel it is our own doing that has caused this. More than likely because of the air pollution we cause, artificial additives in food and many other things.