I'm also very open to the idea that XYZ condition offers some advantages — Hanover

Take psychopathy. On the extreme end, you get arsonists, rapists, and bloody murderers who don't feel much. They are clearly a problem. Too bad we don't have effective treatment, let alone cure. On the mild end of psychopathy are highly effective slightly psychopathic executives who can make necessary decisions which affect other people's lives (like having to lay off 10,000 people on Christmas Eve to keep Waffle House International afloat) without losing their managerial effectiveness. Such people are not going to be popular, but if you sit at a desk where bucks stop, there are hard decisions you have to make to keep the company going, win the war, get the movie made, or for-essential-national-security-reasons keep the remaining Waffle Houses open.

I am not autistic. I am gay, visually impaired, old, and chronically depressed (like for 30 years). I'm happy to claim being gay and being old as "uniquely me". I would happily do without large visual deficiencies and chronic depression.

I am not a fan of transferring defects in development to "unique variations which should be celebrated". Severely hearing impaired people have developed a culture around sign language and their auditory isolation. That's great; more power to them! If someone doesn't want to avail themselves of an effective treatment for deafness (like a cochlear implant) that's OK by me, too--as long as deafness isn't set up as a norm which should not be treated, which doesn't have very significant implications.

I like being gay. It's a behavior and a condition which appears quite regularly in nature. Is homosexuality therefore normal and natural? predictable yes, normal... maybe not. Normal or not, it's a perfectly acceptable defect or variation, however one looks at it.

I'm also not a fan of ironing out all the wrinkles in human variability. Doing so might well eliminate musical prodigies, business geniuses, brilliant and productive writers, the rare very gifted inventor, etc, as well as eliminate problematic variations such as mental retardation, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and so on.

Were there therapies to resolve any number of significant conditions, maybe they should not be applied without informed consent to the subject). Autism, homosexuality, deafness, blindness, etc. are not advantages, but they aren't diseases, either. Major caution should be exercised in treating these conditions. Could I have given informed consent at age 6? No. 18? Maybe. 30? Either yes, or never.

Yes, all of the topics that are worth while and important are off the table.

What can work? — Baden

Alas, we do not have effective solutions for all problems! For example:

It isn't that I merely disagree with the right wing fundamentalist thinking of at least two of my siblings, I loathe and detest these views. Argue? Never speak to them? Criticize and berate them? No -- these approaches don't work. True believers are well-insulated from attack by their certainty in their beliefs. Plus, they're kin. Nothing I can do about that either. What we do, most of the time, is carefully avoid certain topics.

The guy sitting across the table from you, spouting incel garbage, is likely impervious to criticism, careful argument, attack, shame, brute-force attack, etc. He is encapsulated in a sick (and sickening) world view. You might be able to do no more than deny him an audience. Leave. Is that an effective response? Not really, but it may be all that one can do.

Apology accepted. In turn, I regret that I was relying on a very limited exposure to the content of incel chatter.

Fair enough,

St. Augustine also prayed to God to make him chaste -- but not yet. A similar statement was made by Martin Luther -- "sin boldly, but let your trust in Christ be stronger" (edited for brevity)

I read about the ethics of love in a book on situational ethics (by Fletcher?). Yes, if one decides to get out of the box, to drop the 10 commandments, the list of laws in the Pentateuch, or Hammurabi's code, and let love be one's guide, one pretty much has to think out of the box, at least to get one bearings.

The people like Dorothy Day whose life I find admirable and inspiring, may have been guided by simple Christian love, but they also dug deep into Christian tradition for more specific guidance, and found it.

Morality is typically defined as a collection of rules.
Moral realism says these rules have their source in something that transcends the human psyche.
The golden rule requires a person to look within, to their own love for themselves to find the right path.
Love replaces rules.

The golden rule is moral nihilism. — frank

The first 4 sentences are coherent. The last, 5th sentence, doesn't follow.

"Moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or morally wrong." I kind of doubt that is what Jesus (and other holy men) had in mind.

I can possibly see a bit of why you are reaching for moral nihilism. "Love" may seem like an altogether arbitrary and capricious rule to follow. It isn't.

"Love" in the Golden Rule means "love your neighbor in the same way, the same degree, you love yourself". Presumably, you want what is good for you, what is beneficial, pleasing, healthy etc. That's the substance of what love provides for your relationships with others. Or "behave toward others the way you would like them to behave toward you". Presumably, you like people to treat you well. So, do likewise to others. That isn't so mysterious, is it?

Those principles are not moral nihilism, because "love" is a positive value--not whatever we feel like doing upon checking within our beloved minds.

As I understand it, moral nihilism is an extremely subjective system of morality -- whatever you feel inside. Guidance by love has to meet a standard of normal self-caring. Clearly, someone who is sick in mind, hates themselves, and loathes their own existence, will probably be an all-around unpleasant person and not demonstrate much love.

Love, as a guiding principle, turns out to be a demanding master. Dorothy Day summarized the difficulty in the title of her autobiography -- A Harsh and Dreadful Love (that being the love that Christ bids us give 'the least of our brothers and sisters'. She began serving the very poor in the 'houses of hospitality' she established as part of the Catholic Worker movement, and found it to be immensely rewarding and at the same time very corrosive. The needs were so extreme, the resources always short, and many of the people they served were at their wit's end and pretty difficult to deal with. (She lived in the houses of hospitality -- it wasn't a 9 to 5 job.)

I don't either.

These are old tired points about the nature of truth and objective and subjective truth, based on perceived reference frames. — universeness

Isn't using "truth" the way you did also old and tired?

The truth is important to me, and my secular humanism needs no supernatural input to function. I find this functionality, to be very useful, based on my 99.999% conviction level that your god does not exist. — universeness

Is 'Truth' truth to everyone in the same way? If you have found a little, some, or all of 'the truth' have you found it not only for yourself, but for everybody else? I don't believe everyone has their own truth about the cosmos. But the truth in one person's circumstance may not be true in a different set of circumstances.

You believe that you know the truth that the god @Hanover claims does not exist. (It's probably considered rude in polite society to inform people that their deities do not exist. It's similar (in terms of etiquette) to informing dinner guests that after the revolution we'll take all their property away from them. It might be true, but not very polite.

Things are improving even more in places like the UK, where for the first time in recorded history, there are more brits who consider themselves non-religious, compared to the number who consider themselves religious. — universeness

Scholars of religion have noted that, while Europeans think they are the world's opinion leaders, on religious matters they are outliers.

I agree, but I think the reason why, is that they are under attack from a growing global secular humanist movement — universeness

How big an army does the secular humanist movement have?

Afaik, protestants do not believe in the trinity. — universeness

It's part of the Christian belief set. It's referenced in the creeds (apostles, nicene, etc.). Lutherans, for one group, Angligans/Episcopalians for another, invoke the trinity in liturgy and may make the sign of the cross (which of course came from Catholicism). A lot of Americans attend "low churches" where ritual and liturgy is de-emphasized.

well if he was a socialist — universeness

Jesus was not a socialist (which would be wildly anachronistic). What he was doing for the first 29 years or so nobody knows, but during his last few years he was busy proclaiming the Kingdom of God, and then becoming the sacrificial Lamb of God. His admonishments to turn the other cheek. love your enemies, and render unto Caesar what is Caesars were all in the context of his role. There isn't any other way to understand him that makes sense. Besides, very few public speakers were urging an aggressive in-the-emperor's-face revolt. The Jews were herring up against sharks. Their best practice was to avoid confrontation. Jesus wasn't preaching "best practice" of course. He expected an eminent judgement of mankind by God, and so did the early church who created and assembled the materials that went into the New Testament,

As it turned out, the Romans were, in fact, prepared to destroy the nation of Jews -- which they did between about 35 and 70 a.d. This caused the major Jewish diaspora out of the Israel and Judea, and the destruction of the Temple, producing 'the abomination of desolation' which persists 2000 years later.

Because I believe in the existence of God.
— Hanover

Which one? — universeness

You are being obtuse, there.

I am interested in people's actual belief systems, as they directly affect what they choose to act upon. — universeness

For me, the strongest push toward socialism and liberation causes came from my reading of the NT and OT. I still counted myself a believer when I was being pushed, and the pushing continued after I concluded I didn't believe any more. I used to say that Protestant Christianity was my operating system. (It's a metaphor.) Whether I still believed or not, I couldn't delete it.

For an atheist, you seem to have a rather larger stock of theological material than many believers.

I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but you spelled "evangelicals" as "evanhellicals. I like that. I'll use it.

Evanhellicals and fundamentalists (incestuously related but not exactly the same) are hell on wheels.

Fundamentalism is essentially a reaction to the biblical and scientific scholarship of the 19th century (continuing into the 20th, 21st) which dethroned inerrant literalism and pre-scientific understanding. It has, in the US particularly but not only here, become allied to Christian Nationalism and other fascistic elements. It isn't uniquely 'Christian' as the same thing is happening in Turkey (Islam) and India (Hindu) or even Burma (Bhuddist). There is a right-ward shift in several unrelated religions.

Clearly religion is a going business, but

"According to sociologists Ariela Keysar and Juhem Navarro-Rivera's review of numerous global studies on atheism, there are 450 to 500 million positive atheists and agnostics worldwide (7% of the world's population) with China alone accounting for 200 million of that demographic."

Oddly enough, China also has one of the world's largest Christian populations.

I am pretty sure the number of dis-believers, non-believers, and believers-in-name-only is a lot higher than 7%.

Where does trinitarian doctrine stand in Protestantis?

The Creeds (which many churches recite weekly) affirm the trinity. Liturgically minded Lutherans observe Trinity Sunday; the pastor may attempt an explanation, Or maybe find something else to talk about. Like sin and how they are against it. In many years of attending the Methodist Church there were few mentions of the trinity, except in the most formal rituals.

A lot of evanhellical crutches ignore it all the time, The Unitarians don't have to mention it.

"Being atheist means never having to say you're Lutheran." Name of a past long-running improv show in Minneapolis. The title was worth the show.

I read somewhere that children who learn tonal languages are at least somewhat more likely to have perfect pitch. Apparently there is cross over from learning the right (likely pretty subtle) pitch of a given word and learning to identify a given musical pitch.

True? False?

Knowledge/wisdom falling on deaf ears is considered "ignorance." — Benj96

You might want to add an intensifier to that, what the Jesuits call "invincible ignorance".

others downfall is their success — Benj96

"It's not enough that dogs succeed; cats must fail!"

For me society/social cohesion is born of and propagated by a permanent state of autocorrection. Re-evaluation and implementation of corrective measures to bring things back to balance. — Benj96

Yours is a healthy "philosophical" approach. Carry on.

I can and have condemned racists, sexists, nazis, fascists, terrorists, greedy capitalists, etc here and elsewhere. Honestly, I haven't given incels much thought till this thread came along, and everything everyone says about them (or that they say) qualifies them for my condemnation too.

When the object of social opprobrium cares about others' opinions, that approach may work. I can cite zero (or very very few) results from my condemnations. The Philosophy Forum, or left wing radical papers are something of an echo chamber themselves, in that the appeal is to a very narrow (and small) group. Hard core racists, christian nationalists, abusive sexists, incels, nazis, fascists, terrorists--the whole cart load of mixed nuts--are not reading you, me, us. They have their own echo chambers.

If condemnation has no significant effect, what does? I wish I knew. Don't we all?

Racism may have been lessened by laws limiting its expression. The same can be said for sexism, in a very qualified way. It seems to take decades of very gradual changing social norms to see major change. Material shifts tend to drive these gradual social changes.

Got to go.

The victims of thieves than the perpetrators of theft. The victims of violence and rape are deserving of more compassion then the perpetrators of violence and rape and the victims of online misogynistic abuse are deserving of more compassion than the perpetrators. — Baden

Of course the victims of crimes against persons deserve compassion--compassion in the form of concrete succor. No one has difficulty in expressing compassion for victims, nor should they. (Well, some people blame the victims and pile on blame.)

It is not the case that perpetrators of crimes deserve "more compassion" than victims and I didn't claim as much. Apparently you feel that they deserve no compassion at all. Quantifying compassion, mercy, and other such terms is difficult.

What does compassion mean when there are actually, physical offenders -- like murderers, rapists, wife beaters, child sexual exploiters who have actually done what incels talk about?

Compassion means

a) we avoid de-humanizing them.
b) we accord them protection under the law (fair criminal proceedings, etc.)
c) we don't grab the accused and lynch them--even if they do belong to the Klan or are verified incels.
d) we don't legally execute them (in most places, at least)
e) we don't lock them up for life without extenuating circumstances
f) we offer offenders (who carried out incel-type acts) therapy and rehabilitation (in many places)

There is no justice in locking an offender up for 20 years in a intensely anti-social institution (prison). until they are even crazier and less able to function in a normal citizen's role--and them discharge them, locked and loaded to be even more dangerous problem.

If we are not going to lock them up forever, then we had best either shoot them right away, or attempt to reform them through compassionate programs.

You don't get moral brownie points for a pseudo-Jesus act that pretends they are all the same. — Baden

Moral guidance from you? Hardly,

if all you are saying is we should always be compassionate for everyone regardless of what they've done or what they stand for then you really aren't saying anything but just effacing all moral distinction. — Baden

You are shallower than I thought you were.

and then specify you're talking about others more deserving of sympathy. — Baden

Are petty thieves more deserving of compassion than those who engage in grand theft? No. Is compassion and mercy something that can be casually granted by the individual without much effort, such that just any Tom, Dick, Mary, or Jane can emit compassion without inconvenience? No.

Further, compassion and mercy are not like "Get Out Of Jail" cards in Monopoly.

The standard definition of "compassion" is not as compelling as a more extended treatment: "sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.
"the victims should be treated with compassion"

Mercy is a component of compassion or forbearance (see forbearance sense 1) shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one's power. also : lenient or compassionate treatment. begged for mercy. : imprisonment rather than death imposed as penalty for first-degree murder. : a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion.

You said "we", not individuals. In normal parlance that is a generalised "we" that includes women and everyone else. — Baden

You are being pedantic. "We" is the plural form of one individual. If "we" must include all 8 billion people on earth, men and women alike, then so be it.

suggests you don't know what you're saying. I don't want to hound you but I think it's fair to ask what you're talking about. — Baden

One would think a linguist (you have been accused of being a linguist, I don't have any evidence either way) would have more facility reading.

A psychiatrist was asked if psychopaths (whom can be credited with some horrific crimes) should receive care. His response was that psychopaths suffer from very significant abnormalities and deserve compassionate care. Again, the offer of compassion and mercy does not include approval, any more than forgiving someone who attempted to murder oneself implies approval.

Announcing that what incels are saying is offensive to women (never mind most men) is boilerplate--a rote text, like the rote phrase, "incredibly racist" and a few dozen other expressions,

a) Compassion does not signify approval. b) An internet group is an abstraction which can not be the object of compassion--which is not to say it doesn't exist in some form--just like TPF can't be the object of compassion. c) Compassion is the province of individuals. "Women" as a group can not be compassionate; an individual woman can. Moderators, as a group, can not be compassionate. You, as one individual, whoever you are, can be.

I don't recollect advising women to be compassionate, or anything else.

Loneliness is an under-rated condition that affects a lot of people. I suspect that many instances of diagnosed depression are actually loneliness, alienation, anger, grief, being left out or left behind, being poor, debt-ridden (uncomfortably saddled by one's debts), unhappily employed, etc., particularly in comparison to one's peers.

One's peers may not be living lives of unparalleled satisfaction and happiness, but maybe they are successful enough to maintain a convincing veneer of comfort and joy.

Life sucks for everyone to some degree and in some ways; for some people it sucks a lot more. We can and should be compassionate towards them. That's one thing.

Social media operate through extremely active algorithms which seek clicks and amplify whatever click-pattern gets more clicks. Thus, one ends up getting a lot more offers to look at progressive sites, conservative sites, anarchist sites, dogs-and-cats-being-funny sites, renaissance music sites OR, if one clicks in this manner, crypto-fascist sites, incel sites, nazi sites, ISIS sites, Christian nationalist sites, white supremacy sites, and so on. That's another thing.

Why do social media operate in this way? Media users may provide YouTube, BlogSpot, Tumblr, FaceBook, et al with a lot of free content, but server farms, electricity providers, employees and shareholders have to be paid for. How do social media do that? Mostly through advertising. How much a site can get for an advertisement depends on eyeball volume.

Social media are not social service providers or healthy lifestyle engineers. They go where the wind blows.

The presence of a given type of content tends to validate the views of those landing on a preferred site, be they MAGA Republicans, incels, vegans, philosophical Georgia lawyers, or aged gay socialists. We all fit into someone's market niche, like it or not, click, click, click.

"Incels. Why is this online group becoming so popular?"

I'm wondering why the topic of incels, this legion of unattractive toads, is so popular a thread on TPF.

A weird reverso of Incelitry is B&D, where some mean actually require the abuse of a woman [or in gay S&M, another man] in order to achieve sexual satisfaction. BD/SM is not, in its more extreme manifestation, symbolic -- it involves actual bondage, whipping, beating, and so on. The numbers of people involved in this behavior are fairly large, given what is involved.

I hereby swear on a stack of Kinsey Reports that this information is entirely second hand.

From the perspective of a gay man long gone from the dating scene, it does seem like these (mostly young?) straight men have a bad case of self-loathing, which in itself is odd and surprising-- that straight white men would be filled with self-loathing--if that's what it is.

I arrived in the big city gay dating scene with absolutely no preparation, no great social skills, no great assets (looks, height, wealth, etc.) and some liabilities. Still, I managed to figure out how to operate in the 1970s milieu and found partners and mates. There were / are gay men who are self-destructive and self-loathing, alcoholics to boot, who seem similar to incels.

What, other than a tendency toward self-destructive and self-loathing behavior, is keeping these guys from succeeding at least at minimal levels? Are they as inept in their occupational lives as they are in their after-hours lives?

Are they just surprised to discover Thoreau's insight--most men lead lives of quiet desperation--actually applies to them? Or is their problem that their desperation just isn't quiet enough?

How many instances of violence by incels are there? How often does bitching and carping about their sad condition turn into assault and battery (or fatal van driving)?

's the year 2045, the world is for the most part matriarchal. — Benj96

2045? maybe 2145 or 2245. Given a severe social upheaval (do not under any circumstances hope for one) men and women could, perhaps, rearrange roles. Perhaps. Maybe. Possibly. ???

For a good time, read The Dispossessed. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia is a 1974 anarchist utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. It is one of a small number of books to win all three Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. (So, that's a strong recommendation!)

It's the "archy" as much as the "patri" or "matri". Actual egalitarian democratic socialism, with a diminution of stultifying sex roles would be pretty radical, if you want to establish a wild-eyed revolutionary goal.

Flipping from the alleged patriarchy to an imagined matriarchy would probably yield far fewer grand results than feminists expect, everything else being equal. Supposing that women are super social workers who know how to fix everything (men and women included) in a few years is a female chauvinist day dream. Female chauvinism is lame coming from women. As @T Clark put it, "from men it's pathetic."

Somehow, hatred and loathing don't sound all that enticing in a prospective date. — Vera Mont

Thanks, Vera; that's valuable intel for everyone in the dating scene. Romance will blossom.

Of course, hating and loathing the same thing can be quite attractive. I require prospects to hate and loathe Republicans.

maybe not all nations have officially approved it as a new term. Some nations have though. — Christoffer

Hey-this is America -- we have no national institute approving or disallowing new words. Here, it's the province of Free Enterprise -- most likely, some sub-operation of Google.

BTW, even corporate auto-correct systems do not start (or end) with an official list. Autocorrect is built by "scraping" the key-strokes of billions of people who are typing away. I type "incel"; autocorrect changes it to "Intel" or "inches" (in this local, present tense situation). I back up and change "Intel" or "inches" back to "incel". The systems that "scrape off information" from our activities on line sees how I dealt with its suggestion. After a few more million times that this happens, it will start accepting "incel" as an acceptable word.

The fact that "incel" is still an unacceptable word to autocorrect suggests to me that it actually isn't being used, detected, and corrected all that much.

"Scraping" data from our content is de regueur, even though it marks "regueur" as misspelled and wants to replace it with "regular".

So those without them need to nurture charisma to overcome the initial barrier. — Benj96

Benj's guide to developing irresistible CHARISMA in 21 days!


Try these techniques to build DYNAMITE CHARISMA!

Manage your nerves.
Pace your speech.
Talk about what you're passionate about
Listen with intent.
Practice eye contact.
Ask clarifying questions.
Demonstrate a genuine interest.
Express deep caring about asylum seekers.
Remember little details.
Keep things positive.
Practice empathy.
Ooze sincerity.

Right. I looked her in the eye, kept things positive, spoke at a pleasant pace, and talked about Marxism passionately. She was asleep in 3 minutes.

Women lacking respect for men is run-of-the-mill. When men do it, it's just pitiful. — T Clark

:100:

maybe create a healthier dating app that emphasises more the character of a person than their appearance. Many people would go for that. There's success and money to be made and a gap to be filled in the market — Benj96

Market values and money to be made is a big part of the problem.

There are market values and money to be made in bars, too. Why don't bars result in more happily married couples? Because the raison d'être of bars is to sell alcohol which fairly quickly impairs judgement and helps sell even more alcohol. That said, I've met some very decent guys in bars, and alcohol served as the necessary lubricant.

You shag a bunch of them and maybe one stays with you. — bert1

That was my strategy as a young gay guy. Lots of shagging (which was great on its own) to shake out a good prospect, who, as it happened, came along several times -- the last being good for 30 years.

What "terrible deeds" are incels responsible for?

I think increasing social atomization is at the root of this, basically forcing young people into an artificial dating scene that for obvious reasons doesn't appeal to nor suit many of them. — Tzeentch

Atomization and anomie seems to be on target.

Then one must look to prehistory. — Vera Mont

Please site your "prehistorical sources.

The sex demographics are complicated by education demographics. According to Pew Research...

among those ages 25 to 64, men outnumber women by a large margin among never-married adults (125 men for every 100 women), but men are outnumbered by women among previously married adults (71 men for every 100 women).

Among never-married young adults with post-graduate degrees, women outnumber men by a large margin. There are 77 never-married men ages 25 to 34 with post-graduate degrees for every 100 women with similar educational credentials. Among never-married young adults with a bachelor’s degree, the male-to-female ratio is 102 men for every 100 women.

Rates of marriage are further complicated when race is figured in, not to mention gays and lesbians or cohabitants vs. formally hitched.

They only see through the lens of expectation. — Benj96

Who doesn't?

It's not just a matter of a bunch of guys holding onto an outdated ideologies, I think you underestimate 1) how biology played a role into forming these traditional ideologies in the first place, and 2) how their frustrated biological drives now plays into forming post-hoc misogynists rationalization. I bet a lot of incels coudn't care less about traditional norms and values... they're mostly frustrated, and invent stories to make it more bearable for themselves. — ChatteringMonkey

Contemporary society is a thoroughly alienating experience for many people -- not everyone, but a good share. Social media, dating apps, etc. bring the chilly competitiveness of business to the more intimate business of finding friends and sexual partners. It's great for the winners, not so hot for the losers.

The images of men and women (in many contexts) that the businesses of social media and advertising project are often very distorted, and the projections are pervasive. From media that is designed to promote consumption (of goods, services, and other people) it's no wonder that some people feel like they are the left-overs from a clearance sale.

Your exposition of the incel's condition is very through; I'm wondering whether this is based on personal familiarity with incels, or whether it is derived from a general understanding of changing society.

I don't know anyone who is or claims to be an incel--meaning just that I can't identify anyone that way. How many men are thought to be incels? Why doesn't auto-correction recognize the word 'incel'? Is there a female equivalent? Are there any rational justifications for the incels's claims?

Yes, birth rates have fallen, particularly in industrialized countries. Japan is already experiencing the unwelcome problem of too few young people in relation to the number of elderly people. Who's going to provide assistance and care? China will also experience this problem.

But some countries are not headed for the mushroom shaped demographic distribution in the near future (large elderly population on top, narrow stem of young people). France, India, and the United States, for 3 examples, will probably maintain a good age distribution while also growing slowly. However, projecting very far into the future (like 2123) is a very uncertain game, given how global warming might result in significant crop failure, disease outbreaks, intolerable wet-bulb temperatures over large areas, and so on. (The 'wet bulb' temperature is a measure of heat and humidity. At 95ºF, and high humidity, humans can not cool off -- we experience heat stroke. If we don't get cooled off, then we die fairly quickly.)

Exactly.

That doesn't make much sense to me. I don't see how it would matter whether we emit 100 billion metric tons per decade or per century. — frank

Carbon dioxide is recycled -- recaptured -- by biological processes, IF -- BIG IF -- the carrying capacity of the planet is not exceeded. Maybe the planet can recycle 100 bmt of carbon in a century without a climate consequence. 100 bmt per decade is 10 times as high, and might exceed the planet's carrying capacity, resulting in global warming.

Population is absolutely a problem. While birth rates are falling, the population is still growing -- it reached 8 billion about a year ago.

The 1890s required a lot of coal. Remember London was in a giant coal smoke fog back then? — frank

We all were using a lot less energy in 1890, London's coal fog notwithstanding. The really bad smog episodes were caused by temperature inversion layers over London, plus lack of regulation.

Here's a graph of energy usage (in MTOE - million tons of oil equivalent) from https://www.encyclopedie-energie.org/en/world-energy-consumption-1800-2000-results/



What would this kind of dramatic energy reduction mean?

1) much more walking
2) much more bicycling
3) electrified transit on light or heavy rails
4) much more physical labor
5) far fewer chemicals manufactured
6) organic farming, by default
7) much more exposure to hot and cold weather (no air conditioning)
8) much less consumption of dry goods (clothing, for instance), and other manufactured goods
9) no plastics!
10) a smaller population and not by choice