The future of oil was: What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 2028

wrote, in part:

Intelligence is defined as an organism's ability to process information in an effective manner so as to enhance its survival.

Even dinosaurs posessed some degree of intelligence. When we speak of finding "intelligent life" on another planet, however, we are thinking in terms of beings like ourselves; beings that have language and technology.

Humans very definitely are intelligent (clever) even though, in the mbutt, we seem very obviously not intelligent (wise). If we can change the name of Brontosaurus to Apatosaurus, perhaps it's time to change the name of Homo sapiens to, say, Homo solers.

But I wonder how fair it is to blame the human predicament on deficiencies of individual human beings. Each of us is born into a world not of his own making, as has been noted, and thus we encounter limitations on what we can do in order to survive.

It may also be noted, in case some generalizations in what follows may seem to be incomplete, that in this world, most of our politicians, soldiers, policemen, and even our persons are men, not women.

If we look at the beasts of the field and forest, we find they use their own poor strength and their own poor cleverness to achieve the basic ends of survival: to avoid being eaten, or otherwise avoid danger; to find food and water and obtain them; and to mate.

Intelligent or not, we are life. As living creatures, it is not at all surprising that we use our powers, great as they have become, first and foremost to the same ends. To protect ourselves from dangers, to provide ourselves with food and comforts, and to enhance our social status and to find mates.

What bars the whole human race from working together cooperatively to achieve these goals for all its members to a greater extent than is possible if effort is wasted, and misery caused, by war?

Let us begin by asking a slightly different question. What had barred the human race from doing so during its past career? Perhaps today we are able to start behaving sensibly; to answer that question, though, we need to see what obstacles we will have to overcome. Because they may be more fundamental than *merely* the legacies of past hatreds and conflicts.

If we take either robins or squirrels or almost any other animal, we will find that natural events, such as forest fires caused by lightning, or an increase in the number of predators, can kill unusually large numbers of that animal in a given year. Since this happens every now and then, and robins and squirrels have been around for thousands of years, why are their present numbers not vanishingly small?

Because they have enough children, when living normally, so that their numbers would, absent harmful events that prevent some of them from growing to maturity and having children, increase.

When circumstances are favorable, human numbers also tend to increase over time. At a given level of technology, a certain expanse of land can support one number of humans at one level of comfort - and a greater number in less comfort with harder work.

Human beings are not quite so clever that, no sooner are they presented with a problem than they discover its solution. Thus, for example, although the disease AIDS has been around for more than a decade, with many people dying from it, a cure has not yet been found. Although human technological accomplishment is impressive, at any one time, our abilities are not unlimited, even if our eventual future is unlimited.

Over time, the human race changed.

First, a small band of hunters in Africa, more clever than our immediate chimpanzee ancestors, doing a bit better.

Then many bands of very clever hunters, doing quite well, but having to go farther afield in search of game. On foot we went. To every part of Africa. Across the Sinai peninsula to every part of Eurasia. Across the Bering Strait, which was an isthmus instead for a while, all the way to Patagonia. On rafts and canoes to Indonesia, Australia, and the scattered islands of the Pacific.

Along the way, many hunting bands found themselves in the situation that every place around them was taken. But our primitive ancestors were not just hunters; they were hunters and gatherers - or the men were hunters, and the women gatherers. And the women had picked up a few tricks over all these years. They knew what seeds were for, and so a little gardening might improve the gathering to make up for a bit of slack in the hunting.

And thus were civilization and agriculture born. And those who invested work in their crops defended their lands against the hunters next door who were not quite so clever, and who were also squeezed for food. And their numbers waxed, until growing food was sixteen hours of back-breaking labor every day, in a society ruled by a mighty emperor whose word was law and who built impressive monuments that created employment for future generations of archaeologists.

And peasant farmers working sixteen hours a day at stoop labor to get barely enough to eat are not particularly susceptible to the blandishments of the politically correct, who tell them it is wrong to grab arable land from less technologically advanced people who still live by hunting and gathering. Particularly if they are foolish enough to commit provocations that provide an excuse, as often happens.

And so it was, from the growth of Egypt to the colonization of the New World.

Enough for everybody? The way to achieve that would be to rigidly control population growth - only after new technologies are developed and in place that allow a larger human population to be supported in comfort is the population allowed to increase to that level.

This has to be achieved in the face of human loveual urges, ethnic and religious rivalries, and the desire of women to have babies.

I have many suggestions for achieving this as gently and justly as possible - but what should be obvious is that it will be *difficult* to achieve, and will require either cooperation or compulsion across ethnocultural, and hence national, lines.

John Savard Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 140,000 groups Unlimited download