Larry L English – Thoughts

In 1968, Paul and Anne Erlich published “The Population Bomb,” warning against overpopulation as a primary cause of both short-term and lasting degradation of the quality of life for all on the planet. Global population was then 3.5B (Billion) and annual growth was 2.1%. In a 2018 reaction to criticism of that and later publications, they expressed the wish that they had emphasized overconsumption and unequal distribution of wealth more than the size of human population. Still, population had more than doubled by then to 7.6B, while the rate of growth had shrunk to 1.1%. Additional estimates have been made, using the decreasing rate of growth. For example, at the close of 2022, global population stood at 8.0B with growth slowing to 0.8%, and an estimate of population in 2030 based on that decreasing growth rate is 8.55B at a rate of 0.8%.

Polarization close to 50-50 puts our government in a death spiral. Let’s recognize it and recover.

Factions within factions within one of just two parties, along with all-or-nothing approaches, divide us beyond governance to sheer pointless argument and abandons the long-utilized techniques of listening, compromise, and agreement.

No one is right, except in tiny pockets of discussion; expand those pockets and valid points on both sides begin to conflict, to point in different directions, to create argument.

No one can claim to speak truth in a world of uncertainty and incomplete information. We are all limited in our ability to recognize truth anywhere and to support our own notions of truth with undeniable evidence.

The road to sanity in government is unclear and has been unclear for a while. We are now seeing heavy-duty roadblocks that remarkably few recognize or are willing to clear, roadblocks made apparent by the four years of ‘populist’ government.  The Great American Experiment is on trial and is being attacked from all sides.

However painful it might be to anyone, politicians or academics or plain old citizens like me, start talking sense to those across whatever borders you imagine there to be, and do so with humility, since you do not know enough or have experienced enough to understand both points of view.