We are the top of the food chain, so we have no natural enemies to limit our population (and therefore stop spreading). We’re largely unaffected by environment so those natural barriers are gone. We’re not limited by the resources at hand (as you said) so, again, another barrier gone. I’ll let you add more to this list.
Animals have a lot of things forcing said equilibrium: environment, predators, mating rituals, food availability, etc. We lack most, if not all, of these things.
Apparently you are dismissing economic and other social factors. People move to other areas for a variety of reasons, but in many cases it is resource-related in one sense or another. Healthcare availability, politics, housing, etc etc. Those are all resources.
And those are all resources that aren’t used up. They are simply at current capacity, and so more is needed.
The natural equilibrium you are referring to does not exist. Populations are in constant flux. And that essentially means that things die miserably when resources are scarce or otherwise occupied.
And we have the same limiting factors as all other life. We simply have the ability to make our environment much more productive and so greatly increase our carrying capacity. If we reach our limiting factors, we’ll die off or move just the same as others.
We are certainly more like mammals than viruses, which have massive population explosions followed by near 100% rapid die-offs and no real control of their migration or resource allocation. That’s the central point in refuting that silly quote. Which, by the way, was a quote from a machine that the movies spent all their time working to prove wrong about humanity.
Just reread the quote and have another comment. It says that other mammals instinctively balance with their environment. That’s absurd. All animals fight to survive, nothing less. When there are too many of a particular species or group of species in an area, they starve to death or get killed by their own species or another. It’s not instinctive. They aren’t trying to die.
I love Arnold one-liners but one movie has the lines that I consider “powerful.” It’s also my favorite movie!
The Thing (1982). Here’s the ones I like the most:
“I dunno what the hell’s in there, but it’s weird and pissed off, whatever it is.”
“ I’m going to hide this tape when I’m finished. If none of us make it, at least there will be some kind of record. The storm’s been hitting us hard now for 48 hours. We still have nothing to go on. One other thing: I think it rips through your clothes when it takes you over. Windows found some shredded and bloody long-johns in the trash but the name tag was missing. They could be anybody’s. Nobody,nobody trusts anybody now, and we’re all very tired. There’s nothing more I can do, just wait. This is R.J. MacReady, helicopter pilot, US outpost #31.”
(In Norwegian) “Get the hell outta there. That’s not a dog, it’s some sort of thing! It’s imitating a dog, it isn’t real! Get away, you idiots!" Love the fact you couldn’t understand what he was saying. Leaves you guessing what’s going to happen.
“Why don’t we just wait here for a little while…see what happens…” Fin.
Not entirely true. Our explosive growth DOES use up resources in an area, and does force us to expand. Look up Easter ISland or the Greenland Vikings, or even teh Anasazni for examples.
Further, we’ve used up most of the easy to get resources, like fossil fuels and ores, meaning it will be hard for us to bootstrap again if we screw up this century. In short - it doesn’t matter why you use up resources, just that you used them.
No guys, we’re not going to die and stop having kids so that the rock called Earth smells like roses.
We’re not going to limit our way of life because some rich bored Elite decided to run a scaremongering.