• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

[Ne] Why haven't we solved world hunger?

AzulEyes

New member
Joined
May 16, 2012
Messages
622
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
7w6
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Posted this in the NT forum too- but knowing we have the capacity as a planet and human species to END world hunger, and knowing that children die every day, and knowing we can forecast that more will die tomorrow, next month, next year etc- why don't we solve it?

Is it greed?
Is it apathy?
Is is racism?
Is it stupidity?

Should "nature take it's course" and people should starve to level off the population?

Or should we do something about it knowing that we can?
 

pinkgraffiti

New member
Joined
Mar 20, 2011
Messages
1,482
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
748
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
because it isn't convenient (to the rich). if you don't have poor people, you can't have rich people. you need a certain part of the world's population to live in misery so that economy can go around.
sorry, but this is unfortunately my cynical outlook on this matter (which interests me dearly)
 

RaptorWizard

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 19, 2012
Messages
5,895
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Because God clearly put some people in better life positions than others just because of our character before we came here.

I don't actually agree with that, but some religious folks may try to justify this question with that argument.

We haven't solved world hunger yet because it's too far ahead of its time more than anything.
 

93JC

Active member
Joined
Dec 17, 2008
Messages
3,989
...knowing we have the capacity as a planet and human species to END world hunger...

We do? I think this is a false premise.

The amount of arable land worldwide is slightly less than it was 25 years ago, and in that same time frame the world's human population has increased by 2 billion. In particular most of the growth has been in Africa and Asia, which have had the lowest amounts of arable land per capita since records of that sort of thing have been kept.

I don't think we have the capacity to "end world hunger" at all, and in fact it'll just keep getting worse as the population keeps increasing.
 
A

Anew Leaf

Guest
We do? I think this is a false premise.

The amount of arable land worldwide is slightly less than it was 25 years ago, and in that same time frame the world's human population has increased by 2 billion. In particular most of the growth has been in Africa and Asia, which have had the lowest amounts of arable land per capita since records of that sort of thing have been kept.

I don't think we have the capacity to "end world hunger" at all, and in fact it'll just keep getting worse as the population keeps increasing.

This is what I was thinking too. Factor in wars, genocide, disease, extreme poverty, lack of education... even if we did manage to feed people, what are we feeding them for?

/has no heart
 

Lark

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
No way, what happened to my posts?

I was writing about food security and international policy, is this like some kind of humour thread in which an actual response is off topic?
 
W

WALMART

Guest
No way, what happened to my posts?

I was writing about food security and international policy, is this like some kind of humour thread in which an actual response is off topic?

I ate them. Tasted like meat loaf.
 

Stanton Moore

morose bourgeoisie
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Messages
3,900
MBTI Type
INFP
No way, what happened to my posts?

I was writing about food security and international policy, is this like some kind of humour thread in which an actual response is off topic?

Mine went bye-bye too.:huh:
I doubt it was personal.
 
W

WALMART

Guest
Reasons not to bother with the forum #1002

Hopefully I am the Alpha and the Omega.

Seriously, you probably posted in the identical thread on this subject, in the NT subforum.
 

greenfairy

philosopher wood nymph
Joined
May 25, 2012
Messages
4,024
MBTI Type
iNfj
Enneagram
6w5
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Posted this in the NT forum too- but knowing we have the capacity as a planet and human species to END world hunger, and knowing that children die every day, and knowing we can forecast that more will die tomorrow, next month, next year etc- why don't we solve it?

Is it greed?
Is it apathy?
Is is racism?
Is it stupidity?

Should "nature take it's course" and people should starve to level off the population?

Or should we do something about it knowing that we can?

All of the above. Yes to every single question.

Mostly, rich people want to stay rich and people want to get rich. An economy based on money turns everything into a commodity, which makes it possible for it to be exploited. When something is exploited, it is treated merely as a means to an end and not an end in itself. This sort of system of (un)ethical thinking creates and enforces attitudes of depersonalization and severs personal connection. The land, natural resources, animals, and people who are being used as means to ends become a depersonalized other, a non-sentient thing which lacks moral worth. It creates and enforces a system of hierarchy. Those at the bottom (including the Earth) cease to be important.

Combine this with overpopulation, and people think in terms of competition rather than cooperation.

While we could theoretically support all the people on the planet, we can't support this number of people in a healthy manner, because that will require a healthy biosphere, which will require a much larger amount of space consisting of natural wilderness, along with a great reduction in industrialization.

So some people must die to preserve the balance of nature. It'll happen sooner or later. The Earth is a large ecosystem, and ecosystems have self-regulating processes which include keeping populations of species in balance. For 99% of human history we have accepted this fact. It's only been within the last 12,000 years (modern humans evolved about 120,000 years ago) that humans have developed the technology to have the birth rate far exceed the death rate.
 

Chad of the OttomanEmpire

Give me a fourth dot.
Joined
Jun 9, 2013
Messages
1,053
MBTI Type
NeTi
Enneagram
478
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I'm inclined to think it's one of those things that just goes along with being agricultural.

Ever since humans stopped hunting and gathering and started planting things, we've had haves and have-nots. The bigger and more bureaucratized our societies have become, the correspondingly greater the stratification. Some are stuck on the bottom without even the means to feed themselves, and they are helpless against the rich and powerful. As humans, we're designed to care most about "our people", so unless we and our families are the ones who are starving, the will to change the status quo just isn't there (and if you're the one who is starving, you haven't got the means to promote your own cause).

I think a lot of people do care, but even when folks donate money and organize relief efforts, there are logistical and bureaucratic problems. For instance, I think I read somewhere that about 83% of UNICEF's proceeds go toward supporting UNICEF--it's not that efficient, right? Same goes for distributing resources towards world hunger. It's just the nature of our society--"hunger" is not hitting close enough to home, and the structure of society doesn't make for an easy re-distribution of resources.

I think a better question is, Why aren't we doing more about climate change and population control (which is only going to exacerbate the hunger problem, and give us a whole host of new ones)?
 

CheshireCat

New member
Joined
Oct 20, 2013
Messages
82
MBTI Type
GOO
Enneagram
954
Because false philanthropy is a tool to spread deception.
 
G

Ginkgo

Guest
Because we haven't realized how nutritional cancer patients can be.
 
Top