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I think it's more important to have a conscious population, then a growing one. If the population has a goal, a meaning to exist and the environment doesn't restrict it too much, it's going too grow. I am living in a town, which has been on a demographic decline for decades, it's not a city. Only 1 city in Lithuania is growing and it's mostly from immigration from other places. I may be wrong, I am not prolific in this topic.
2023-08-27 · 9 months ago
@Ruby_Witch first of all I appreciate you taking my argumentum ad absurdum gently. I too am sure that what happened in Syria was not done by environmentalists! I just looked at the state of affairs here & tried to imagine how the world will look like if we curtailed its population to 4 billion people. How will the remaining people behave, what means will they use to fulfill their needs, how will they produce their food, the social & political structures they'll embrace & its effect on development; & it occured to me that: having less people might be harmful & damaging! If we want to be our planet's keepers we should have more people not less. Taking care of a planet is not a trivial mission
Degrowth is not population control. It's about when your clothes get dirty, instead of throwing them out you just get a washing machine. Or when your plates get dirty, instead of throwing them out you just buy a dishwasher.
And if your dishwasher gets hungry, instead of leaving them to die and getting a new one you just feed them. Yes it harms the economy but overall its not that bad.
More seriously, degrowth is about living equitably with the people around you. Capitalism makes it really easy to ignore the labor of others and dehumanize them. Then you get into the crazy rationalisation that everyone should have what you have. An order of magnitude the other way you'll be wishing everyone had a private yacht complete with staff... err... robot staff!
At some point you have to admit it's not just a fantasy which helps people rationalise their own existence, but it is actually a contemptible way to live. It is the fundamental cause of our ills. Leaving the big web for Gemini isn't just less resource intensive, for example, it is actually healing.
@gyaradong thanks for the informative description, but I think what you decribed is more related to sustainability, efficiency, common sense, etc..
As for degrowth, the term is the antonym of growth which webster defines as:
(1) To decrease in size by a natural and organic process; to decrease in bulk by the gradual loss of matter out of a living organism; -- said of animals and vegetables and their organs.
(2) To become smaller and weaker, to wane, to be diminished, to decline, to fail.
It is interesting that such a semantic was chosen for this term you described. Wonder if the plain meaning should be rejected in favour of description you kindly provided?
the people who came up with the term chose a contentious name on purpose. Not everyone agrees with the choice, specifically because a lot of people equate it with decay.
Life in a Degrowthed Country — I am new to Gemini Space, in fact this is my first attempt at writing in this corner of the cyber world. In Gemini space I read many articles about degrowth, and being resident in a depopulated city, I thought I would give my two cents on the topic. The philosophy is not new. In the past they just used to call it Malthusianism, and in my opinion it is a harmful idea, a relic from the colonial past. I am writing now from Damascus, the capital city of Syria, a...
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