Population Dynamics: Growth

     A debate at the forefront of the mind when looking over UN reports of disease, water usage, pollution, or news on the development of industrializing countries is the exponential increase in the human population which has caused concern in recent years due to the stress on natural resources and the toll that modern adaptations take both on the planet and on human interactions. The Industrial Revolution and its offspring are responsible for the enormous, exponential increase of Homo sapien sapien in the last two-hundred twenty-five years. As debated as the enlargement of humanity is, the format denouncing these changes has gone unchanged since the population explosion began..

     Thomas Malthus's 1798 essay, "An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the Future Improvement of Society with remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers," neatly summarizes the biological limitations of earth for the needs of an undefined number of people. Since the food supply tends to increase more slowly than human reproduction, it is left to the whims of nature on how to dispose of the excess individuals. This is achieved through war, famine, and disease. What Malthus did not predict was the great revolutions the food industry would undergo from 1798 to the modern day. Napoleon's France began the canning industry that allowed foods to be shipped incredible distances and stored for several months which allowed burgeoning populations to remain active through winter. Farming equipment and improved yields, especially in the grain baskets of Germany and America, provided the means to maintain the growth of Europe's populations.
     The last large-scale famine in Western countries was 1816, the Year Without a Summer. Because of spectacular innovations, trade, and preservation technology, exponential growth in Europe then the world has seen the human population double again and again within a single lifetime. As human numbers have increased, the means and minds to continue the increase in food supplies has expanded too.

 "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas ans I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; an many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," Said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843.

     Despite the worries of a continually enlarging population, growth trends have slowed from a global maximum of about a 20% increase in the 1960s to about five percent in the 2010s. The Green Revolution in Asia in the 1960s and 70s saved millions of lives and enabled several countries to feed their people without imports, notably China and India.
     As humans reproduce, our population continues to grow as it has for the past twenty decades. As that rate slows, Malthus could be proven correct as resources like oil and water strain trade relations and power structures. Resource management is a significant component of the fear mongering that has gone on since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Malthus predicted that Europe would descend into ravenous hordes, but the 1800s saw Europe dominate the world in every imaginable way - including population growth.
     It is not wrong to predict the problems of the future, but it is unhelpful to predict those problems and offer only despair and hopelessness as solutions. Charles Dickens exhibited the evidence of Britain's health and success in the 1843 short story "A Christmas Carol" where the streets of London have fresh fruits and edible delicacies available at modest prices even in the throes of winter. Even as Malthus's followers bemoaned the dismal possibilities of the future, Britain outproduced its needs. Therefore, let us look toward the years ahead with a eye for innovation and a heart full of hope instead of the useless dismality of the doomsday Malthusians.


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Agatha Tyche

Incomprehensible Loss

     This will be an uncharacteristically personal post. The original topic changed multiple times and delayed this entry for several weeks. Recent contact with one of my history mentors elicited a strong, angry, depressed response. The final motivation that initiated the following sentiments was finalized by the proximity of ISIS to Palmyra, Syria and the vast, famed ruins south of that city. Palmyra is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that has been a major city since before Roman occupation in the first century. With the threat to this beautifully preserved city, the world hopelessly holds its breath with ISIS's destructive intent clearly exhibited through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Even after deliberate destruction, the ruined ruins will be an impressive site and will continue to be a travel destination in the years to come.
     In short, history is fragile. Geological history is hard to unravel because of the sheer scope of time and size. Biological history requires careful genealogical histories of migration and breeding which can be confirmed through genotype mapping. Social history is the most sensitive and delicate to preserve and interpret. People's lives are powerful, but decipherable impacts can be nearly invisible given time and change.

     Egypt is famous because of the volume of historic artifacts that have remained four thousand years after the heights of power. The pyramids were the tallest man-made structures in the world for longer than people have lived in most cities. The Egyptians left a mark on the people they conquered and on the people that conquered them because of the total domination of the Nile Valley.
     Other cultures were able to build immense stone structures that have endured for millenia. The Roman Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, and the Mayan city Teotihuacan all testify to the strength of people at different times. Historians see these remains as historical landmarks and seek out their meaning, purpose, and history.
     The most selfish, antagonist people to live are not those that study and preserve materials of the past but those that intentionally destroy what can never be repaired, recovered, or rebuilt. ISIS destroys ancient artifacts because they are "idolatrous" to Islam's Allah. One of the biggest reasons to illegally keep world heritage artifacts in climate-controlled, guarded museum cases in Europe is because the countries those artifacts came from are the those with the most severe political turmoil and social unrest. Egypt is still experiencing political shifts years after the beginning of the Arab Spring. Greece's financial situation recently forced the withdraw of a decades-long attempt to reclaim the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum of Nature History. The Mediterranean region of the Middle East has suffered constant warfare, terrorism, and religious tension for the past seventy years with an unpredictable schedule of conflict and bombings. Regardless of the legality of European collections of ancient artifacts, they are carefully preserved and studied to reveal the past to the future.

"Not to know what happened before we were born is to remain perpetually a child. For what is the worth of human life if it is not woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history." -Cicero

     History is a resource that cannot be manufactured. If fortunate, it can be restored, but through the renewal process, it loses part of its significance. The Middle East is a superlative in several categories from oil production to historic ruins to manufactured political boundaries by European empires. Importantly, the extreme, fringe Islamic views that have  gained a small minority of support because of its blame-centered, antagonistic beliefs have dramatically disturbed millions of peoples, billions of dollars, natural resources, trade routes, and the incomprehensible demolition of "blasphemous and idolatrous" antiquities.
     ISIS seeks to restore the greatness of past Islamic Caliphates that dominated the Near East, Northern Africa, and parts of Europe for centuries. Their zeal and enthusiasm should be commended as well as their demonstrated effectiveness. They should, however, seek to follow more of their ancestors' footsteps who respected their conquered people's lives and religions as well as the enormous significant context of the region while remaining true to their Islamic heritage.
     Perhaps ISIS will one day be contained or destroyed. Perhaps they will successfully establish a long-term Islamic government that extends beyond the modern boundaries of Middle Eastern nations. Regardless of their future, for the sake of mankind, may they stop the pointless obliteration that thousands of people have worked millenia to avoid.

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Agatha Tyche