Population Stress Index, ranging from purple (extremely high) to white (moderate)
One of the hallmarks of the
recent US election campaign was the way in which the two parties
defined 'strength', which to most people seemed to mean protecting
Americans (and their valuables, more than their values). A surprising
number of Americans appear to see no great need for America to take a
leadership role in the world -- isolationism has a long tradition in
the US, dating back well before their reticence to take on their
allies' enemies in the two world wars. Most, it seems, are content to
own the world and let others run it, if it needs running at all --
there's a strong libertarian streak in America as well, at both ends of
the political spectrum.
Strength, then, comes down, for most, to looking after Americans and
American interests. No Kennedys or Clintons needed for that. To
conservative Republicans, 'strength' would seem to mean taking action:
Launching pre-emptive wars, passing harsh new laws to prevent anyone
swarthy from getting in, clamping down on gays and women and liberals
and other un-American-thinking minorities because someone has to be to blame for everything that's going wrong and it sure as hell isn't us.
We can always disguise our homophobia, gynophobia and xenophobia by
saying these threatening groups 'don't share American values'.
To more liberal Democrats, 'strength' would seem to mean something very
different -- taking responsibility, not taking action. Kerry's war
experience and Bush's draft dodging in Vietnam matter to them, because
Bush's behaviour reflects an unwillingness to take responsibility. But
to Republicans, that's an unaffordable political luxury -- who cares if
he takes responsibility (the churches that now dominate Republican
thinking believe, remember, that you can always be forgiven for
irresponsible acts if you confess), as long as he takes action. After
9/11, they didn't care if it was al Qaeda or Saddam or the Taliban or anyone else that attacked and threatened them -- they just wanted Bush to do something. The UN sought to work with America to act responsibly
(most of the core members of the UN have long liberal traditions) in
response to the attack. Bush, and most Americans, would have none of
this -- any action, no matter how irresponsible, was better than no
action. No action, or cautious, considered action, would 'embolden the
enemy', it would be a sign of weakness.
Attacking Saddam, who hated and feared the Islamic fundamentalists who
actually perpetrated the attacks on America, was a sign of strength,
resolve, and made Bush a man of action in the minds of conservative
Americans.
Realizing how important 'action as strength' was perceived by the
American majority, Kerry ended up compromising his own positions and
talking almost as hawkishly as Bush on Iraq, but by then it was too
late. Kerry had spent most of the campaign talking (quite rightly)
about Bush's irresponsible behaviour -- in Iraq, in mismanaging the
economy, in dropping the ball on health care and education and the
environment. But most Americans didn't care -- the conservative credo,
steeped in most of America's religions, is that your only
responsibility is to yourself and your family, and if people are unable
to look after themselves and their families, then fuck 'em, it's not
the government's job to be responsible for them. The job of government,
to conservatives, is to be responsive, not responsible.
It's interesting that these two words with such different meanings and consequences, have the same root.
What does this lack of responsibility (beyond the immediate family) say
about America and our times? This 'every family for itself' ethos is
common in third-world countries whose religions originated in the
Middle East. It is exemplified by weak or non-existent social security
nets, staggering disparity between the rich and poor, and rampant crime
rates. The US is behaving more and more like this every day. It is
precisely the malaise of stress and fear that Edward Hall describes in The Hidden Dimension
-- the aggressive-psychopathic behaviour of a population in
psychological crisis. In nature this is a rare phenomenon, a
last-resort, adrenaline-driven breakdown in social order and demeanor
wrought in situations of catastrophic overcrowding to quickly cull
numbers to bring population back into ecological balance.
But while the Middle East is vastly overpopulated relative to available
resources, and has the highest population growth rate in the world,
America isn't overcrowded, is it?
It all depends how you look at it. The aggressive-psychopathic
behaviour that Hall describes, natures 'emergency brake', tends to be
very humane -- not only does it only kick in when less violent
rebalancing mechanisms have failed, but it tends to anticipate
the inevitability of catastrophic overcrowding, and begin gradually,
rather than waiting for that catastrophe to occur and then kick in
belatedly. The adrenaline surges that are evident in the chemistry of
all population- and resource-stressed creatures start slowly and
increase until they work.
The map I show above (from this earlier post)
attempted to diagram what I've called the Population Stress Index
(population per arable hectare of land times annual population growth
rate) -- what I think could be a surrogate for the degree of
adrenaline-surge that produces aggressive and psychopathic behaviour.
In the same post I included a map by Matthew White showing death rates
from violence by country that showed almost an exact correlation with
the Population Stress Index.
It could be argued that in countries with a high Population Stress
Index, the consequence of the resultant adrenaline-induced
aggressive-psychopathic behaviour is a shift from a propensity for
responsibility (taking care of, and nurturing, the entire community and
ecosystem) to a propensity for action without concern for the
consequences i.e. irresponsible, unduly violent, psychopathic action.
The only problem with this theory is that the Population Stress Index
for the US is only moderately high, not significantly higher than that
of the liberal European nations, Canada and Australia.
But what this map does not take into account is that not all people on
Earth make an equal demand on the planet's resources. We live in a
world where, at least in the West, much human consumption of food, oil
and other resources is imported, not produced domestically. If you were
to replace 'population per arable hectare' with the 'footprint per habitable hectare', and replace 'annual population growth rate' with the 'footprint
growth rate', I think you'd see a picture that more accurately reflects
the true population stress that each country is facing. While the US
population is growing quite quickly (due to immigration, and new
immigrants' propensity to have larger families), its footprint, already
the largest in the world, is also growing at an astonishing rate (four
times the rate of its population). So while the US could well have a
population of one billion by the end of this century, its consumption of land and resources could be the equivalent of what four
billion Americans, at today's per-capita consumption level, would
consume. That would (and will, barring some drastic changes) mean no
room for wilderness, no room for outdoor agriculture, no room for open
space of any kind -- just ocean-to-ocean suburban sprawl.
And while that's almost unimaginable, it's not at all inconceivable to
me that Americans are feeling the stress of this in their bones, that
they instinctively, subconsciously, 'know' that they are facing the end
of open space, the end of oil, the end of an economy of waste and
exploitation of the third world, an end to everything they know and
love. They don't know it in their heads,
but their adrenaline is rising, fast. Just like the mice in the
catastrophically overcrowded laboratory, they are fearful, stressed
out, screaming at their alpha males to do something.
Screw responsibility, we've got to attack someone, kill, steal, take.
Time for irrational, anti-social, insane behaviour. Time for a dynasty
of Bushes. Time to start eating our young.
Europeans, more by good luck and learning from grim failures than any
advantages of character, have discovered that by taking responsibility,
and reducing both population growth and footprint growth to
substantially zero, they can manage the ghastly population stress that
produced the plague, centuries of brutal wars, horrendous famines and
unimaginable deprivation on that continent. Whether it is too late for
the US to learn that lesson and start to take responsibility for the
misery, suffering and collapse it is now causing worldwide, is a matter
of opinion. Earlier this month, by a margin of 51% to 48%, Americans
told the world it was.
(it will take me a while
to find the time to pull together the Footprint Stress Index data and
make the map, but I'll post it when it's done)
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
