I once saw a documentary about Bedouin tribes that were dying out. The problem was very simple, from the outside; they were killing virtually all of their female children.

The team interviewed an elder of one tribe, asking him about this practice. As expected, the elder said that parents wanted sons to continue their family names.

"If no-one in the tribe has any daughters, where will these sons find wives?" asked the interviewer. The elder confidently replied without hesitation, "They will get wives from other tribes." "But what if the other tribes kill their female babies just like your tribe does?" the interviewer persisted (In fact, they had met people from several tribes, and indeed they all followed this terrifying practice). The elder looked at the interviewer like he was a slow child. "They will get wives from other tribes."

[–] SirEDCaLot 6 points 2 days ago

The elder looked at the interviewer like he was a slow child. "They will get wives from other tribes."

I believe Darwin might have had something to say about this attitude...

[–] Justas@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I have literally had this argument, but it was about shrinking population growth. "We will just have more immigrants." From where, outside of West Africa and Central Asia, all the countries have fertility rates below replacement levels and even those countries' levels are dropping.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Tbh, immigration isn't the worst "solution".

We do have an overpopulation problem. Well, an overconsumption times overpopulation problem, really.

We could fix that by either consuming less (which we apparently, as a species, really don't want) or by having fewer people (which we apparently really want).

So, in the end, reducing population isn't a real problem. Even if the population shrinks by 50% each generation (~25 years, for the sake of the argument), there will still be 250mio people left even after 5 generations. The trend should probably be reversed sometime then, but until then it's really not an issue on the species survival aspect and it would actually be really good for the planet and our long-term survival.

But until then we have mainly one problem: our economic system is based on infinite growth, which can't work. So again there are two main solutions: either we bring in people from other countries, who benefit from a higher standard of living here while supporting our economic system, or we get rid of the real parasites and freeloaders in our societies: the ultra rich. And again, for some reason we really don't want to get rid of the rich.

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 7 points 3 days ago

Did he mean "from other tribes" as in from elsewhere in the world, far enough that their culture is not as concerned with family names as theirs?

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

“Never interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake.”

I’m not trying to imply that beduins are the enemy, more that insanely stupid people are and since I don’t wanna get into eugenics, well, this is all I got.