The Polemics of Carrying Capacity

The ‘what’ of Carrying Capacity? I have never had to use dictionary.com as much as I did to understand what Frank Joseph Smecker was talking about throughout the article. If you are interested read the article I chose and leave a comment whether you are able to understand it or not. His advance vocabulary he uses may be good for the common university professor to understand but not the common student. Conceptual Analysis is highly needed throughout the article because of the high level of vocabulary that some (including myself) find too advanced to understand his main points completely. Conceptual analysis is the understanding of a phrase or term that one may misunderstand.

The quote “With regard to a contemporary program, for instance (neo)-Malthusian measures, to solve the “population problem,” such propositional theory put into wholesale praxis would essentially expand and accelerate the genocidal effects of the civilizing process” (Smecker, 2009) can be interpreted in many different ways because of the language that may be misunderstood. The author is explaining that the Malthusian approach to reducing the overpopulation problem is to increase the rate of people dying. He is also stating that the ideas that Malthus came up with were key to a successful world even though his beliefs may be morally wrong. Some ambiguity that one might come across is the understanding of the wholesale praxis. He believed that inequality was natural and good, helping solve the issues with overpopulation.

Malthus also put down early marriages and soup kitchens while promoting smallpox, child murder, and slavery. It took me a couple times of reading that sentence over to understand what Malthus was trying to say. He is saying that the promotion of negative problems such as smallpox should be kept while life sustaining charities such as soup kitchens should be reduced. The word denounced means to negatively talk about. That word alone can cause some ambiguity about what the author is trying to say because it is not a word that is easily understood without looking it up with a dictionary. Some may disagree with his statement but in his world the key to a sustainable world is to basically try and not fix issues that cannot easily be changed.

In conclusion, Smecker’s article is in need of some more simple vocabulary to get his points across more quickly. Also, it is to avoid people being turned off by his article because it is too difficult to understand him.

Reference:

Smecker, Frank. http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/10/the-polemics-of-carrying-capacity/. Accessed October 28, 2009