• gbuttersnaps@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If you read “Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity” as eugenics and genocide, I think you might be jumping the gun a bit based on personal biases. Population bottlenecks require you to be very careful about species-wide gene pools. In a population of 10,000, you don’t want Cletus reproducing with his first cousin.

    • Neato@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Pretty sure it was

      Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

      You can’t maintain a population like that without birth restrictions, slaughter, or restricting resources. And this is humanity we’re talking about. The ruling class/ethnicity will prioritize their own making genocide an all but certain outcome.

        • Neato@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          birth restrictions,

          I already covered that. Trying to keep people from reproducing on a national scale doesn’t work without draconian policing of people’s lives, sterilization, etc.

            • VivaceMoss@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I think you’re intentionally missing the point. Yeah, condoms are fine. The government mandating when you can and cannot use condoms in order to enforce an arbitrary population number is not as fine.

              • oldGregg@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                No, you’re being obtuse. The scenario is a post end of days revival from nothing. Why or how would the government practice sterilization or forced restriction of labor when there isn’t a continuation of current government at all? Its for rebuilding. Creating a new culture. One where you can prioritize education on our balance with nature and the importance to sustain balance.

                If your only solution to a problem is the government has to force people to comply, you aren’t really looking for solutions, you’re just trying to shut town the people who are.

          • oldGregg@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Sure, fuck it. Condoms are draconian. You’re not clearly worth the effort.

            • Neato@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              It’s not the mechanic and that you’re focusing on that tells me you aren’t reading. Choosing who gets to breed is a huge vector for abuse and genocide.

      • Michaelmitchell@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, but the other option is humanity grows to reach an industrial carrying capacity which would be horrific for the environment, and people. The average person would live at the poverty level of a medieval peasant in the polluted environment of industrial slums. There would also be mass famines every couple decades like back under the agricultural carrying capacity, but these would kill billions instead of hundreds of thousands. Mandatory birth control sucks but it beats the suffering caused by rampant population growth.

        • Neato@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Yes. This is what happens with human societies without technology. This also happens in animal populations. As we are seeing now, when a society reaches a certain level of technology and medical care that ensures a very high infant survival rate, population growth tapers off and can stagnate. That’s the way you prevent overpopulation.

          The idea we can restrict breeding when we’ve regressed in technology is just a way to ensure genocide through sterilization, killing infants, punishing parents, and the other ways we’ve seen humans try this very thing. It doesn’t work and leads to ethnic cleansing and terrible abuse by the elite classes. It’s like suggesting we use eugenics: it doesn’t work.

          • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            To be fair, the reason we haven’t overpopulated the shit out of the planet is because we lack the time and resources to raise kids. In the event that people had enough time and money to raise families, we’d probably cross replacement rates once more.

    • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m gonna have to go digging for the source, I’ll edit it once I find it. The creator of the guide stones wanted his identity protected but people found out who he was. Dudes real big into eugenics, it’s 100% telling people to do Eugenics and not at all concerned with population bottlenecks

      Edit: could’ve sworn I’d read an article about it but it was apparently this episode of last week tonight.

      TL;DW: it’s not 100% confirmed who the person that commissioned the guide stones is but it’s likely Dr. Herbert Kirsten, a man who was very outspoken in his support.for David Duke.

    • Chetzemoka@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The only way you get a “population bottleneck” of 500 million from our current 8 billion is genocide. Even the world population in 1980 when these were erected was 4.5 billion. Still would have required genocide.

      “Guiding reproduction” is definitely a euphemism for eugenics. Don’t be naive.

      • warling@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Or nuclear near-annihilation, which was a definite concern when these were erected. Or a pandemic.

        • ElleChaise@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          That’s the part everybody seems to be glossing over. These stones were supposed to be read by a burgeoning society post apocalypse, not our current world with 8 billion people. The non-existent world these stones speaks to would contain presumably less than the 500,000,000 people its author states is the maximum, and acts as a warning along the lines of ‘don’t destroy the Earth’s environment like we did, that’s what lead to our downfall, too many people’. Not to say that take is correct or not, just what I thought when reading about the stones the first time. Seems like environmentally political rhetoric to me.

        • Chetzemoka@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Imagine believing in a world where 90% of the human population is annihilated by some calamity, and the survivors have the psychological capacity to focus on anything other than basic survival and repopulation.

          Utopian fantasyland. Believing things like this requires deliberate ignorance of the nature of human beings and pretty much all of human history. It’s magical thinking

          • admiralteal@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Especially since these were put up in the 1980s.

            If it were 20-30 years earlier, you’d write it off as Cold War/MAD Nuclear doomerism combined with that very particular breed of American fascism that inspired the Strangelove/Fallout aesthetic. People believing they could put the “best and brightest” down in bunkers to recreate an even better world after the inevitable collapse, without all those “undesirable” cultural elements polluting things.

            But this was 1980. The Cold War was clearly ending. CFCs were still little-known as a global threat. The fossil fuel companies were still VERY effectively hiding the reality of climate change from the general public. The recession wasn’t clearly visible yet. There was no reason to be a doomer. That was a great time to be an optimist.

      • Montagge@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I’ll take nature over 7.5 billion people including myself. What we’ve done to this planet is shameful and never should have gotten to this point.

    • admiralteal@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Yeah that’s eugenics, guy. Eugenics loves dictating who can and cannot reproduce based on potential genetic factors passed to their offspring. Kind of the cornerstone.

      The guy who built the Guidestones was very likely a KKK fan. Doesn’t deserve much benefit of the doubt.

        • admiralteal@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Most incest involves rape. Prohibitions are sensible.

          Bans on breeding based on a belief of genetic inferiority of potential offspring is eugenics. Don’t do that.

          2 week old post, dude.

          • eltimablo@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Til demonstrable facts are merely “beliefs” now. I don’t care how old the post is, your idiocy is timeless.