Welcome to Gaia! ::

Well, part of it, also, is just... the environment can only support so much. There are only so many animals, so much ground that's farmable... once we reach "carrying capacity," even if you KNOW how to farm or hunt... there won't be any place left to do it, or animals left to eat. Thus ensues mass starvation. The sad part is, there's really nothing we can do to prevent it that doesn't suck... like limiting families to one child only. XP Oh well. Eventually the poo is gonna hit the fan, and I sincerely hope that by then, I'll be long gone. =P

Makes me not want to have children.

I'd trade that. I don't want kids ever, and living for a good long time sounds like a plan. Just so long as the sex stays good and I keep some sort of youthfulness.

Being physically "aged" and living forever would suck.

Is there a female version of that?

And no, I think I'd like to keep my sexuality. It's very pleasant, except for the whole point of it being procreation. stressed

But still, it makes life interesting.

Anyways... thinking about it pragmatically, I don't want guaranteed immortality. I don't want to be impossible to kill. That would be utterly boring. But to just keep living until something causes my death other than old age ... that'd certainly be interesting.

And I'd probably take that kind of immortality it as a trade off for the ability to have kids, but only so long as I kept all of the "good parts" of my reproductive system.

If that makes sense.


See. Age happens when the DNA "frays" at the edges during regular mitosis, to use a simple analogy. If there was the option to prevent my DNA from fraying, then the effects of old age shouldn't happen as normal, and I'd essentially be immortal without getting physically "old."

Edit: And after a while I'd probably run out of eggs anyways, since I'm pretty sure I remember learning that each woman starts life with a limited number.

I'd say something about lemmings and cliffs, but that was a hoax anyways.

Anyways. War. Just some evidence that Humanity is very good at pruning itself.

When I was younger I used to mess around with the theory that homosexuality is another way for Nature to keep populations in check. Non-fertile pairs and whatnot.

China already does that. You're only allowed to have one child per family. The problem with this is, since China is very male oriented, female infants are "disposed" of in order to give the family a chance to have a son.

I still think that we should go back to the old Darwin theory, survival of the fittest. The old and ill can't keep up with the herd? Oh well, I guess the wolves will feed good tonight then eh? Personally, I would prefer to be eaten than kept alive just to live out a less than satisfactory life.

i'm currently not worried about the bird flu, although that may change if it starts looking more serious, by which i mean "easy to catch." you know what was a huge load of scaremongering crapola, though? west nile. boo hoo hoo hoo, 1 in 10 people WHO ACTUALLY GET IT will experience symptoms, and they'll mostly be flu-like. and not bird-flu-like, either - the regular aches and fever and feeling like crap. the only people for whom it was a big deal were the elderly and infirm and people with compromised immune systems. not to trivialize them, but then again EVERYTHING is more serious for people in those brackets, so again, west nile = not serious.

I don't think there should be panic about the bird flu over here in North America, especially in Canada or U.S.A., but the main point is that we have health standards and regulations that will naturally prevent such flu as that to occur here. In the areas where the bird flu have hit the most devatastively, the sanitation there is very poor, and it's because of very close contact between chicken and humans that the strain of flu have been changing. I doubt that there are humans here that sleep in areas filled with bird poop and such, unless I am highly mistaken, so the panic level shouldn't be that high as of here yet.

I worry about the whole population control issue sometimes, but then stuff like the whole issue with the bird flu happens and I quit worrying. Nature's looking after us and will kill of enough of us to keep us here a little longer. xp



As to what Rayi said about a woman on the government's payroll getting her tubes tied...my guyfriend had the same idea, vaguely, only his was that every baby should get their tubes tied as soon after birth as it was possible - that way, the only way to get pregnant would be artificial whatchamacallit (can't think of how to spell the word and too lazy to look it up), thereby eliminating most of the need for abortion and keeping those who can't afford to have ten kids from having them.
...I don't know if it'd work, but I suppose if the government got desperate enough it might. *shrug*