Vibiant

I am speaking from  a position of some knowledge here, having read some 40 years of the comic, but I don’t feel the same level of attachment to Superman as I do to the rest of the pantheon of superheros.  Unlike so many others, Superman is an outsider, who came here to, for all intents and purposes, to interfere with the rest of us mere mortals.  It’s just our luck that he’s fighting for truth and justice.  [The American Wayalways seemed too insular to me.]  Really, to compare the philosophy of the films, the only difference between Superman and Independence Day is perspective.  We have been invaded, where in terms of relative empowerment, we are the ants, and he is the kid with the magnifying glass.  What chance happening will turn that glass upon us? 

I don’t stop travelling, and I don’t stop making photocollages.  This one is from Upstate New York, near, but not in, the Finger Lakes Region, a smallish state park, Letchworth State Park.  A smallish river, suddenly tumbles into an incredible gorge, underneath the highest train tresle still in use east of the Mississippi, I believe, .  There are three warterfalls, and a very fine restaurant.  This is the thkird of the falls, the smallest, but one of the prettiest.

 

Many problems could be solved with a relief from the density.  The population density, that is.  As it stands, there are right around 6.6 billion people on this planet right now.  Since that means there are pollution problems from all the excrement and dangerously depleteing resources, and even just simple things like how many factories are there just making toothpaste for the lot of us, much of these and so many other problems could be solved if there were fewer human beings around.  As much as I hate to admit it, one of the first thoughts I had after hearing that the Gates Foundation was getting a fresh infusion of cash from  Warren Buffett, was that controlling simple diseases woukld mean that the population would be dying off even more slowly than it is now.  Now, so there are no misunderstandings, I like and support the Gates Foundation, I mean, better late than never, eh, Bill?  and that much of that disease prevention does not so much prevent dying so much as prevent suffering, since many kids who get malaria, for example, survive it.  I’m all for reducing suffering.  But if there are too many people around, then there will be no stoppage of that suffering.  The “population bomb” that they were talking about in the 50’s will come true, except instead of running out of food, we’ll run out of land to live on , potable water, electricity, and financial means for the bottom 80% of the population., making the world one vast slum, every square kilometer of land covered with Rio de Janero.  IT could be stopped through family planning, though it would take a govenrment like China’s to enforce it, a very poor trad off, or Ia vast reactive, instead of proactive, population control measure, namely, erradication.  I’m thinking something along the lines of 16% of the population needs to be eliminated, any fewer and it would be ineffective, any more and there would be a whole new set of logistical problems.  That would ring up to be about 1.04 billion, evenly distributed across the planet.  This isn’t eugenics, the people would be randomly selected, so the ethnic breakdown would be the same afterward.  Your number comes up, you are euthanized, incinerated, , or perhaps depolymerized, either way, your remains won’t hurt the environment, and your resultant chemical components are recycled or stored, Co2 from the incineration process  pumped into salt beds deep underground to store the carbon, the light crude and the minerals from the depolymerization would be a welcome source for those who remained alive after the culling. 

All in all, your odds of surviving are quite good.  One in 6 chance of dying, like getting through major surgery. I would take those odds.  It would be worth it to me to know that the rest of you would be better off.  Would a Nambian dirt farmer, or Warren Buffett, for that matter, think the same?  Probably not.  Ideally, some kind of deus ex machina-type of event, like a comet hit, or alien attack, would be the best solution to organizing the mechanics of such a thing, but those are very messy events, and lack the necessary precision and eco-friendliness. 

Like most  large solutions to large problems, this is not perfect, but if it can motivate someone to think about population and consumption, then I’ve done my job for the night.