We Forgot the Begat

 

World Population: 5 scenarios

As a follow up to my post last week about the De-Darwinization of the human race due to the development of contraception (but with a brief nod to music at the base), further confirmation this week of my “End-of-the-World-in-5,400CE” prediction.

My projection of population in that article (and in the AMiTe paper on ‘how we’ll really meet E.T.’) was based on human population peaking at 10bn by 2100, then halving every hundred years. This 10bn is now looking like an over-estimate. A new study for the Club of Rome was published this week https://www.earth4all.life/news/global-population-could-peak-below-9-billion-in-2050s suggests the global population could peak just below 9 billion people in 2050 then start falling. With a ‘Giant Leap’ in investment in economic development, education and health then global population could peak even lower and earlier.

So, how about the halving? The second "more optimistic scenario" – with governments across the world raising taxes on the wealthy to invest in education, social services and improved equality – the report estimates human numbers would hit a high of 8.5 billion as early as 2040 and then fall by about a third to about 6 billion in 2100.

This fall of 29.5% in 60 years is very close to my estimate of halving in 100yrs (in fact, it’s equivalent to 44% fall per 100 years, just exponential mathematics). And why would it stop? People tend to revolt from the idea that very low birth rates might become embedded and get dewy-eyed with visions of Little House on the Prairie, but can’t explain why the trend, already a reality in developed countries, would significantly alter. It’s OK, people/societies will be just as happy/unhappy and probably as obsessed and inward looking as they are now.

The most cogent reason for a here-to-stay trend was hinted this week by Elon Musk and his pals, re Artificial Intelligence, GPT etc in Pause Giant AI Experiments: AnOpen Letter - Future of Life Institute. The key question re human futures (and decisions on family size) was, for me, not all the tosh about A.I. being inimical or running amok. Much more significant was the socio-economic question of “Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones?“  This will entrench the worries of parents, on top of the global turbulence we are seeing now (and the rest…) about whether their kid(s) will find fulfilling roles; the conventional wisdom will become to be conservative on number of progeny.  But water finds its own level, so society will be just as happy/unhappy as ours, self-similar, in-fact.

It makes you yearn for the good old days, when we were “a little bit naïve” The Begat: Finian’sRainbow. How’s that for a bit of Darwin-related music (‘Ratio of increase so high…”)? We performed that at our folk-music session last week, minus dancing.  

Chuck Cooper & cast in FINIANS RAINBOW 2009 Broadway (Harburg & Lane)

Picture credit: Earth4All report (linked article), FiniansonBroadway.com

Birthday Memorial for ‘Holmes of Hanney’, Family Planning pioneer

 

Biography of Holmes, paper of Hanney History Group

I wrote on 17th January 2023, that that would have a good claim to be ‘Un-Darwin-Day’ as the date when the world’s most populous country had entered numerical decline, overturning – in a symbolic way - one of the pillars of Natural Selection: “Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life”. This may seem strange when the world only reached 8 Billion Day on 15^th November 2022. I blogged about that at the time but also that the underlying trend in birth-rate was firmly down, leading to a surprising conclusion.

The reason for the De-Darwinisation of the human race lies of course in the exercise of personal choice, and with the availability of effective contraception. As with any technology, there are always early adopters, usually the rich and well-informed. The most famous or notorious of these was, of course, Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) who enjoyed inflating them as a suggestive party trick. But these were ‘high end’ early technology and not yet ready for the mass market. Enter  Charles Goodyear and Thomas Hancock with their invention of the vulcanization of rubber (see a short history of the condom) which led to the first ‘American Tips’ being created in about 1858. ‘Full length’ had to wait until 1869.

There is lots to write about this, especially to put into its social context.  Observed effects of population pressure had been commented on well before 1800, most famously by Thomas Malthus. The North American continent provided a significant safety valve but emigration wasn’t for everyone, so pressure grew in intellectual circles to allow the matter to be discussed. A key moment in the Great Britain was the trial of freethinkers Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant (1876) for republishing an American treatise by Bostonian doctor Knowlton.

While information was easier to diffuse amongst the upper/middle classes, for the working class word was very hard to get round, and ‘channels to market’ were highly restricted by obscenity prosecutions – and certainly no clinics were available for women to get advice until one was opened by Margaret (Higgins) Sanger in NYC in 1916 (I’m pleased to note that she was born in Corning, N.Y. where I lived for three years in the nineties). No, word had to get around by post. I’m proud that the Oxfordshire village where I live was home to a young chap, James Robins Holmes, who was stirred up by the Bradlaugh/Besant trial, enough to do something about it by creating what we would call today a ‘Social Enterprise’, (he was a minor landlord and apparently a very good one at that). In 1891 he published a booklet ‘True Morality’ promoting the use of what we call family planning for married couples, and including a price list for ‘hygienic requisites’ (which could be washed after use for poor couples). This was “the greatest honour of my life”, which had him prosecuted and fined for ‘obscenity’, and he succeeded in distributing 150,000 copies the booklet in several editions. ‘Goods’ were supplied all over the Empire in little packages, sent from Hanney Post Office.

A splendid fellow, whose 164^th birthday it would be today, 17^th March.

My dog, Polly, paying her respects at J.R. Holmes memorial on his birthday

Picture credits:  Hanney History Group (Sam Green), David Gahan

Glories of the Vegetation of the Tropics: New Music!

 

The Glories of the Vegetation of the Tropics Rise Before My Mind (more vividly than anything else).

It’s about time I posted some more of my own Darwin music to this site, as there’s a full hour of it written. This an excerpt from The Glories of the Vegetation of theTropics, the first  of Three Soliloquies for Baritone and Classical Guitar (see Darwiniana tab for description). These three settings of writings from Voyage of the Beagle and Autobiography represent a personal journey of the mind, in his own words, starting with the sensual delights of the Brazilian jungle.

You’ll have to sing along with it (the guitar and ‘voice’ rendition) as it’s not yet been performed, although I’m convinced there’s a ready audience for Darwin’s words in music. I worked on the guitar settings with a well-known, world-leading classical guitarist who is up for playing in public, as is a leading Oxford baritone for singing. All we’ve got to do is find a suitable concert format. Let me know by comment if you have any ideas!

The clip is quite short, as rendered music is pretty terrible compared to real humans. But the underlying words are also interesting as amongst Darwin's most 'deist', conventionally referring to the God of Nature. Other extracts will be less so. If he wrote it, I’ll set it (edited  musical sense but as lightly as possible). In the meantime, you can sing:

"The primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man...no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.”

The words on the rain-forest are quite poignant given what’s happening to it and were quoted by David Attenborough on (I think: Planet Earth 2) before panning out to reveal a completely razed ex-forest. I think we’re all a little disgusted today (10^th March) to hear that a sixth episode of ‘Wild Isles’ will not been screened withthe rest to avoid the inconvenient truth of the real environmental impoverishment of the British/Irish Isles, because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from UK rightwing politicians and  press.

But, back to beauty:

“In my last walk I stopped again and again, to gaze on these beauties, and endeavoured to fix in my mind (forever) an impression which at the time I knew sooner or later must fail”

A version of what he witnessed from the Beagle Diaries:

29^th Feb 1832

The day has passed delightfully: delight is however a weak term for such transports of pleasure: I have been wandering by myself in a Brazilian forest: amongst the multitude it is hard to say what set of objects is most striking; the general luxuriance of the vegetation bears the victory, the elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers — the glossy green of the foliage, all tend to this end. — A most paradoxical mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady parts of the wood, the noise from the insects is so loud that in the evening it can be heard even in a vessel anchored several hundred yards from the shore. Yet within the recesses of the forest when in the midst of it a universal stillness appears to reign. To a person fond of natural history such a day as this brings with it pleasure more acute than he ever may again experience.

5^th March 1832:

King & myself started at 9 o’clock for a long naturalizing walk. — Some of the valleys were even more beautiful than any I have yet seen. — There is a wild luxuriance in these spots that is quite enchanting. — One of the great superiorities that Tropical scenery has over European is the wildness even of the cultivated ground. Cocoa Nuts, Bananas, Plantain, Oranges, Papaws are mingled as if by Nature…

(In fact, the ‘primeval forests’ weren’t that undefaced, having been cultivated by the indigenous peoples).

 Picture credit: http://darwinbeagle.blogspot.com/

Happy Birthday to Brian Cox: Who I Hope is Wrong

 

The Glories of the Southern Skies

I just have to say Happy Birthday to physicist and musician, fellow Irksider and also 3^rd o’March baby Brian Cox. That’s probably the end of the resemblance but not bad for an intro. Actually, we share that birthday with WW1 poet Edward Thomas who wrote a rather good poem celebrating the day, so a present for all 3/3ers (inc. my mate Eddie).

I’ve just listened to the first of the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage Southern Skies recorded in Sydney – the lucky lot. And lots of rubbing-it-in about the ‘Majesty of the Southern Sky’ versus our “arse-end-of-the-galaxy” view from points Northern (Robin Ince on poetic form, there).

Charles Darwin clearly agreed: “Amongst the other most remarkable spectacles, which we have beheld, may be ranked, — the stars of the Southern hemisphere…” (BeagleDiaries). Here’s an image from my setting of those words for chorus/orchestra. I’ll post a clip of the music at a later date.

 

"We Beheld the Stars"

The main reason Brain (typo, but why correct it?), Robin & astrophysicist guests gave for the superiority of the Southern Skies was the view of the Galactic Centre, the star lanes and darker dust lanes between them. And lurking in the middle… “Almost every galaxy has a Super-Massive Black Hole” said Devika Kamath. “I recommend looking at it from a far distance” was sensible advice from Kirsten Banks. A terrible place, by the way, for a galactic meeting place for technologically advanced civilisations. @AstroKirsten gave some nice stories from Australian First Nation star-lore. At one point, she interjected, “You’re right, Brian, but not all the time”.

Fair Enough. One thing where I hope Brian is wrong (or, scientifically speaking, a test could be proposed which may show his conjecture to be wrong) is the following. In another, epoch-defining IMC, episode ‘UFO Special’, broadcast 17/2/20, Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock set up the question with, “If civilisations don’t overlap, we will never meet the aliens.” Brian replied, “The question is how close the nearest civilisation (is at present); I think the answer may be outside the Milky Way and therefore forever inaccessible.”

Thereby giving me a good steer in the right direction for my lock-down project, ‘how an engineer would find the Aliens.’ Rule 1 in engineering is ‘relax the constraints to make the challenge easier’. If you want to find a needle in a haystack, and you have the chance to remove the haystack, you might find the job easier (other things being equal). I’ve written about a better place to look in this blog and in the referenced paper. If you have the time (about 20MY).

But there may be an even better place to look, if you’re a bit impatient. And only those lucky ‘beholders of the Southern Stars’ can gaze up there (but I recommend a Space-based observation, for about a hundred years). Can you spot it in the map above? I will write further about the target at another time.

Happy 3/3:

“Here again (she said) is March the third
And twelve hours singing for the bird
'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six
To half past six, never unheard.” 

Edward Thomas (d. April 1917, Arras)

Picture credits:

Music: “Remarkable Sights” copyright DFG