Becoming your own predator

Unfortunately, that is what is happening. Men kill each other cyclically at a rate that far exceeds what all tigers and sharks do. World War I killed 9 million people, and the Second 62 million.

Despite the suffering of such conflicts, they are far from having decisive action on population growth. The number of deaths is, at worst, only a very small percentage of the world’s population, around 2 per cent. The return of peace and more normal living conditions, on the contrary, seems to favour births, as was the case with the baby boom which began in France in 1942.

In other words, wars must not be relied on to solve the demographic problem. Or we should see a bloody and widespread conflict as never happened. It is true that the 150 passengers of the Medusa raft ended up killing and eating, to the point that there were only 10 survivors. The demographic adjustment to available resources could involve the same balance of power in a terminal conflict…

It is better to take immediate action to prevent the disaster. Man has, unlike the animal, a conceptual intelligence that allows him to represent situations in advance and avoid mistakes that would make him his own victim. It is up to us to do what is necessary to adapt our reproductive instincts to the limits of the biosphere.

Except that it requires a deeper knowledge of the mysteries of human sexuality…