In 1983, when it had just opened up to independent travel, I took my bicycle to China for a bit of a look round. And much to my amazement their maps showed China in the middle of the world. The bloody cheek, everyone knows Europe is the middle of the world or more specifically the UK.
Yes completely bizarre but very good training for a bike trip to the US. Although they haven't put their country in the middle of a world map since the school rooms of the 1950s (ChatGPT) every single citizen was very, very certain of their place in the world, at least in the 1980s when I took my bike over for a bit of a look round.
Perhaps a little less certain these days.
Professor I'd like to take this opportunity to warmly thank you for introducing the brilliantly graphic concept of the Senica Cliff into the lexicon. I introduced the Limits to Growth work to my students of Town and Country Planning when I lectured in Trasport Planning in the late 1970s. They thought I was off the wall suggesting that they should take planning for the bicycle very seriously, as did the rest of the faculty, but such is life.
There is something to be said for the 'Middle Kingdom'. It got backed with some canny admin and philosophy, even if it came and went a bit. Not so much for the notion 'we are the (civilised') human beings', the others being something else?
Hi Ugo, following your post I read your exterminations. (My papa was a theoretical physicist and one of his hobbies was statistical mechanics. When I was an adolescent he explained to me how from the properties of one molecule one could predict the behaviuour of gases. I immediately thought one should do the same for humans and human masses. Thats why I like your approach). There might be additional factors:
There was a frenchman Gaston Bouthoul who already before WW2 asked himself what makes humans go to war. 1970 he summed up his ideas in an inspiring text "L'infanticide différé" (available in Italian: https://www.amazon.it/-/en/Gaston-Bouthoul/dp/B0C6GQYDLL) theorizing that wars often serve to eliminate a youth surplus, the conventional reasons for war being mere rationalisations.
Gunnar Heinsohn elaborated on these Ideas in his "Söhne und Weltmacht" (2019) and concludes that a youth bulge, especially an overshoot of testosterone-laden young men has the potential to cause wars. In fact many wars have been preceded by a population explosion e.g. in Gaza, Lebanon, Kosovo etc. (the Ukraine war is an exception but it was not started as a war but as a neocolonial operation).
Besides: The greater part of asylum seekers come from countries where such a population explosion takes place. This fact is almost never mentioned by the humanitarian organisations, and this fact makes also that we can take as many asylum seekers as we want, nothing changes, there will always be more.
Thanks, Lukas. I didn't know these authors, but what you tell me about them makes perfect sense. If you read my chapter on WWI in "Exterminations", you may have noted how I interpreted why Italians joined a war in which Italy had nothing to gain. It was because of this "bulge" of testosterone-laden young people that had to be somehow eliminated. Of course, no one ever said that explicitly, but I think the idea was there, hidden, but present. After all, it was the same for the Crusades, centuries before.
Interesting, then Italy before WW1 would just be another confirmation of the Bouthoul/Heinsohn view.
Heinsohn in "Söhne und Weltmacht" (2019) moreover gives the provoking theory that after the depopulation by the black death the powers that be wanted more people again and therefore the witch hunts also served to eliminate the wise women who knew and instructed younger women about methods of birth control (he gives several confirming documents), the consequence being a population explosion which then fueled the colonial expansion after 1500.
I am fascinated by the analogy with the gases in another way: Hunter/gatherers lived so widely dispersed, that there was scarce opportunity for conflict. The neolithic shift to agriculture increased population density up to hundredfold, meaning - according to statistical mechanics - that friendily and hostile encounters would increase with the square, up to tenthousandfold. Therefore an increase of population density must have a very strong potential for conflict. If moreover the population concerned consists of testosterone-laden young men the potential multiplies further, young men being much more violent than their older counterparts.
It seems, that in such conditions men have the potential to change the nonviolent human phenotype into a genocidal phenotype (a type normally observed in rats). Examples include the old testament, Caesar, Charlemagne, the Mongol empires (Gengis Khan, Tamerlan, Babur), Himmler (who interestingly had the Mongols as his model and distributed a book about them among his SS-officers), Stalin, Pol Pot or Assad. From such observations one must conclude that such genocidal violence is part of the human behavioural and reaction norm, nothing exceptional, and to be expected to recur at any moment, as shown in your statistical analysis.
That population density can change a phenotype is exemplified by the locusts, which normally are solitary and peaceful individuals, but under density stress they secrete serotonin and change to a larger phenotype able for long flights, forming large swarms and devastating large areas, whereupon we are in the old testament again.
I am glad to have found somebody to talk to about these issues which are ignored by the so-called public opinion.
Witch hunts as way to avoid birth control in Europe? Not unthinkable, although, I think, a little stretched. But, who knows? People do things according to internal forces that they can't control, and not even detect.
We had in Bern an excellent climate historian (Christian Pfister) and I asked him thirty yeras ago if the witch hunts could be explained by food scarcity, which he denied, insisting that they were a way to confiscate fortunes of defenseless people, the same thing you say.
Heinsohns theory is ideed surprising, but in his book he gives documentary evidence that abortion/birth control/fertiliy accusations played a role in the witch trials. The witch, as well as female contraception are forms of female empowerment, which of course have to be crushed by the patriarchate.
I love your ironic writing style, Ugo, all the while stimulating interesting thoughts in us and sharing very interesting histories and geography. I really appreciated the link to the Death of Yazdgerd movie which I found fascinating, full of class observation, ancient and modern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTeNKpAdqP8 I'll add a link to the Wikipedia description of the movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Yazdgerd_(film)
In 1983, when it had just opened up to independent travel, I took my bicycle to China for a bit of a look round. And much to my amazement their maps showed China in the middle of the world. The bloody cheek, everyone knows Europe is the middle of the world or more specifically the UK.
Travel broadens the mind.
A bit of a pity more folk don't travel.
Same for me. When I was in Russia for the first time, I was surprised to see a map showing that Moscow was at the center of the world!
Yes completely bizarre but very good training for a bike trip to the US. Although they haven't put their country in the middle of a world map since the school rooms of the 1950s (ChatGPT) every single citizen was very, very certain of their place in the world, at least in the 1980s when I took my bike over for a bit of a look round.
Perhaps a little less certain these days.
Professor I'd like to take this opportunity to warmly thank you for introducing the brilliantly graphic concept of the Senica Cliff into the lexicon. I introduced the Limits to Growth work to my students of Town and Country Planning when I lectured in Trasport Planning in the late 1970s. They thought I was off the wall suggesting that they should take planning for the bicycle very seriously, as did the rest of the faculty, but such is life.
There is something to be said for the 'Middle Kingdom'. It got backed with some canny admin and philosophy, even if it came and went a bit. Not so much for the notion 'we are the (civilised') human beings', the others being something else?
Hi Ugo, following your post I read your exterminations. (My papa was a theoretical physicist and one of his hobbies was statistical mechanics. When I was an adolescent he explained to me how from the properties of one molecule one could predict the behaviuour of gases. I immediately thought one should do the same for humans and human masses. Thats why I like your approach). There might be additional factors:
There was a frenchman Gaston Bouthoul who already before WW2 asked himself what makes humans go to war. 1970 he summed up his ideas in an inspiring text "L'infanticide différé" (available in Italian: https://www.amazon.it/-/en/Gaston-Bouthoul/dp/B0C6GQYDLL) theorizing that wars often serve to eliminate a youth surplus, the conventional reasons for war being mere rationalisations.
Gunnar Heinsohn elaborated on these Ideas in his "Söhne und Weltmacht" (2019) and concludes that a youth bulge, especially an overshoot of testosterone-laden young men has the potential to cause wars. In fact many wars have been preceded by a population explosion e.g. in Gaza, Lebanon, Kosovo etc. (the Ukraine war is an exception but it was not started as a war but as a neocolonial operation).
Besides: The greater part of asylum seekers come from countries where such a population explosion takes place. This fact is almost never mentioned by the humanitarian organisations, and this fact makes also that we can take as many asylum seekers as we want, nothing changes, there will always be more.
Thanks, Lukas. I didn't know these authors, but what you tell me about them makes perfect sense. If you read my chapter on WWI in "Exterminations", you may have noted how I interpreted why Italians joined a war in which Italy had nothing to gain. It was because of this "bulge" of testosterone-laden young people that had to be somehow eliminated. Of course, no one ever said that explicitly, but I think the idea was there, hidden, but present. After all, it was the same for the Crusades, centuries before.
Interesting, then Italy before WW1 would just be another confirmation of the Bouthoul/Heinsohn view.
Heinsohn in "Söhne und Weltmacht" (2019) moreover gives the provoking theory that after the depopulation by the black death the powers that be wanted more people again and therefore the witch hunts also served to eliminate the wise women who knew and instructed younger women about methods of birth control (he gives several confirming documents), the consequence being a population explosion which then fueled the colonial expansion after 1500.
I am fascinated by the analogy with the gases in another way: Hunter/gatherers lived so widely dispersed, that there was scarce opportunity for conflict. The neolithic shift to agriculture increased population density up to hundredfold, meaning - according to statistical mechanics - that friendily and hostile encounters would increase with the square, up to tenthousandfold. Therefore an increase of population density must have a very strong potential for conflict. If moreover the population concerned consists of testosterone-laden young men the potential multiplies further, young men being much more violent than their older counterparts.
It seems, that in such conditions men have the potential to change the nonviolent human phenotype into a genocidal phenotype (a type normally observed in rats). Examples include the old testament, Caesar, Charlemagne, the Mongol empires (Gengis Khan, Tamerlan, Babur), Himmler (who interestingly had the Mongols as his model and distributed a book about them among his SS-officers), Stalin, Pol Pot or Assad. From such observations one must conclude that such genocidal violence is part of the human behavioural and reaction norm, nothing exceptional, and to be expected to recur at any moment, as shown in your statistical analysis.
That population density can change a phenotype is exemplified by the locusts, which normally are solitary and peaceful individuals, but under density stress they secrete serotonin and change to a larger phenotype able for long flights, forming large swarms and devastating large areas, whereupon we are in the old testament again.
I am glad to have found somebody to talk to about these issues which are ignored by the so-called public opinion.
Witch hunts as way to avoid birth control in Europe? Not unthinkable, although, I think, a little stretched. But, who knows? People do things according to internal forces that they can't control, and not even detect.
BTW, Lukas, you may be interested in this seminar where I'll be mentioning your work and your book
Reminder:
You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Speaker: Ugo Bardi
Subject: The Coming Population Collapse
Time: Oct 15, 2025 13:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83166311313?pwd=2VIVQK2bXhlHNTb7fOpsnQ9lOfaUJT.1
Meeting ID: 831 6631 1313
Passcode: 811686
Highly interested. :) I will try to link up.
We had in Bern an excellent climate historian (Christian Pfister) and I asked him thirty yeras ago if the witch hunts could be explained by food scarcity, which he denied, insisting that they were a way to confiscate fortunes of defenseless people, the same thing you say.
Heinsohns theory is ideed surprising, but in his book he gives documentary evidence that abortion/birth control/fertiliy accusations played a role in the witch trials. The witch, as well as female contraception are forms of female empowerment, which of course have to be crushed by the patriarchate.
I love your ironic writing style, Ugo, all the while stimulating interesting thoughts in us and sharing very interesting histories and geography. I really appreciated the link to the Death of Yazdgerd movie which I found fascinating, full of class observation, ancient and modern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTeNKpAdqP8 I'll add a link to the Wikipedia description of the movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Yazdgerd_(film)
Thanks!