Hi, Amarel.

Then it's a hard sell to claim that the removal of one of the worst scourges on humanity constitutes an environmental disaster. The primary driver of our population boom has been advancements in food production. That's also conducive to living healthily, productively, and peacefully in the world. Going from 2 billion to 7 billion people has certainly put a strain on our environment, but we are simultaneously better off than we ever have been before, so it isn't exactly a disaster.

I see your point.

I would suggest that the reason increased food production mattered so much is that common & often fatal diseases stopped reducing the population to be more in line with the food supply.

I do need to acknowledge that there is an obvious contradiction between the premise that a plague is beneficial, and my criterion of healthily, particularly given that I did not specify that when I say humans I mean the species, not all individuals.

I always start with the given that all individual people will die, therefore I assume that the death of any individuals of some particular cause (accident, murder, disease, starvation, etc.) is not intrinsically a problem, or at least not an avoidable one (but merely subject to delay, or not.) What I conclude should be the priority, then, is the development and continuance of the species, with the hope for optimum overall quality of life of the individuals alive at any one point, with a view to the overall quality of life of subsequent individuals.

An apt metaphor is the pruning of a tree. The sick, weak or excess branches are cut off to make room for more light, nutrients, and space for the remaining branches so that the tree as a whole (i.e. the human species) to continue in overall better health.

When well-meaning people eradicated smallpox in the wild, they eliminated an effective gardener who was continually pruning the human tree.

Much of the technological benefit is information based, which is to say it is not a scarce resource. More things are free now than ever before.

I am unconvinced that free actually exists. Somebody somewhere has to pay for it.

Moreover, access to the "free" things requires the recipients to do something, increasingly in ways that separate us from fresh air and sunshine, physical labor, and direct human contact. (We tend to work indoors, often sitting down in cubicles, and "socialize" online via computers and smart phones.)

Significantly, all three of these correlate VERY highly with clinical depression, which is virtually absent from the developing world, and is increasingly common in industrialized and technologized societies. Moreover, the most effective long-term treatments for depression are exercise, time outside during daylight hours, and face-to-face social contact.

"...and make it impossible to enjoy how beautiful the world is"

Honestly marcus, this is a personal problem.

Fair enough, but there are many indicators that it is an extraordinarily common personal problem.

Consider:

Home prices are lower in industrial areas and next to freeways.

More expensive neighborhoods tend to be less crowded and have more park land, plants, trees etc.

Studies indicate that personal well-being correlates highly with more open area that includes green spaces. (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2688343)

To be fair, a subsequent study found the correlation to be uncertain. (https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-017-4401-x)

+++++

As a general thing, it strikes me that the core of many human problems is our tendency toward anthropocentrism. I am not sure that this is avoidable, but its effects are certainly mitigable.

Obviously and unavoidably, we are all most interested in ourselves. The problem is that when this is multiplied by 7 billion, the effect on the rest of the planet is greater than when multiplied by 2 billion.

Nobody thinks mowing down the rain forests is a good idea. Nobody is in favor of the near extinction of the black rhino. Everybody is against water pollution. Nobody looks at freeways packed at rush hour with satisfaction or pride. We actually recognize the problems created by our growing numbers.

These problems are results of pressures stemming from the forces of enormous populations that magnify the short-sightedness of individuals by a factor of billions. The aggregate human-centered desires of 7 billion individuals are compounded through anthropocentric cultural vehicles (which are mutable, I grant you) to have a much greater effect than would happen were there fewer of us.

Our population centers are becoming enormous in this country. I watched Southern California go from mostly open space and even orange groves and other farmland to being almost complete urban sprawl from the Pacific Ocean to the desert, and from south of Tijuana to north of Bakersfield. What I watched happen in Southern California in the 70's and 80's, made rapid progress in Western Washington in the 90's and 2000's, and is currently happening in South Carolina.

The results of this urbanization is radically decreased populations of every sort of animal except insects, radically increased flooding, increased likelihood of human-caused wildfires, increased likelihood of landslides, etc., etc., etc..

Even Marxists (who routinely miss plain realities) are able to see that it is a problem that individuals cannot simply go out into the wilderness and start life independently of other economic systems, and they even recognize that some of the reason for this is that there are so many people that it is actually possible for ALL the land to be owned by some person, organization, institution, or nation.