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Population Competition for Security or Attack.
A Study of the Perilous Pursuit of Power through Weight of Numbers
By Jack Parsons
Interactive CDROM format: 4th edition; 'A' Series
Price: £25.00 (incl. UK p&p)
ISBN: 0-9541978-1-X
'What a monumental publication ... one of the most remarkable assessments of population I have ever encountered ...(Dr Norman Myers. CMG, Green College, Oxford)
In this highly controversial new book (originally turned down by 101 publishers) Jack Parsons' thesis is that although there is some sound literature on the fear of population decline; there is very little on the deeper issue of confrontational population competition often involving competitive breeding. In a world with an already severe imbalance between human numbers and the resources needed for a reasonable quality of life for all, every factor which increases the already disastrous world population growth rate (a 50% increase is predicted over the next two generations) is seriously dysfunctional. Of these factors, the most insidious of all is competition based on the quest for power through weight of numbers. This is a very substantial, original, and very well-reviewed book and the publication of the updated 4th edition in this format may be breaking new ground in the following respects:
1) It may be the first large (originally two substantial hardback volumes) and serious book on issues of vital concern to appear on CD
2) New material was being added up to a few days before production started on the first print-run.
3) Three different versions of the text are included:
(a) As an 80-page synopsis:
(b) The complete text with each chapter or other distinct section saved as a separate folder to facilitate a step-by-step approach by readers with less powerful computers: &
(c) As a single large document to maximise speed & flexibility in text-handling for those with high-capacity equipment.
4) It is interactive in two important ways: a) Readers can rapidly search the text on any topic of interest. b) The reviews and readers comments on the original editions are already included in quasi chapters in the end-matter. Production runs will be kept short so that new reviews and later readers comments based on this CD or the earlier hardback versions may also be quickly incorporated.
Table of Contents
Part 1: The population/resources/quality of life problem : a brief introduction
Part II: Introduction to competition in general: Plants, animals, & environments versus each other; Humans versus plants, animals, & environments; Humans versus humans in general
Part III: Human population competition: Sexual & population competition in small groups; who belongs?; Is Small really Beautiful? Population quantity vs. quality; Religious-; Political-; Military-; Economic-; & Racial/ethnic population competition. Effectiveness of pop. competition policies.
Part IV: Effectiveness of number-power : Re: environment; in society; in war; in population control.
Part V: Problems arising: Theoretical & Ethical considerations cooking the books & the Kamikaze Conscience; (Ir)rationality in human behaviour.
Part VI: Conclusions: Some possible ways forward; Optimum populations.
Part VII: End-matter: Bibliog. & indexes (incl. a Place Index), etc. plus new author-material, reviews, & earlier reader comments & criticisms.
Excerpts from four reviews of the original hardback editions 1 & 2
(in reverse chronological order)
4) What a monumental publication ... one of the most remarkable assessments of population I have ever encountered. For all that its 800 pages are jam-packed with statistics and detailed analyses, it is a compelling account of what must be the front rank phenomenon of the past quarter million years ... . Jack Parsons ... Patron of the Optimum Population Trust ... has done a formidable service in alerting us to a crucial though little explored aspect of the phenomenon, in the form of competition ... between human communities. ... it makes absorbing reading. ... replete with illustrative examples and rigorous appraisal. ...
[He] lays out our choices through elegant and persuasive argument. How I wish I could have had his book to hand when I first broached the subject of population and security in the late 1980s ... it is weighty without being ponderous, exhaustive without being exhausting. It sparkles with scholarship ... and wraps up with 1400 references and 1300 names of persons cited. A monumental compendium ... typical of ... the book throughout. ... Parsons is to be congratulated on a masterly evaluation of ... a thesis that has been largely overlooked in the vast literature on population ... you will find it as entertaining as it is instructive ...
[This is] a must for demographers, sociologists, security experts, historians, political scientists, and whoever else is concerned with human population. Who among us cannot be concerned?
(Dr. N. Myers, CMG.Visiting fellow, Green College, Oxford. The Environmentalist. (1) June (2001)
3) Reading [this book] was a breathtaking and enlightening experience. [it] was impossible to put aside once reading had started, and I look forward to returning for a close reading of key sections. ... many of [his] results are wildly controversial, politically, and cannot be quoted in fairness with[out] the surrounding detailed reasoning ... The text is one of its kind, gathering all sorts of information and reasoning ... otherwise available only in disparate places ... the work is beyond competition within the social sciences ...
(Morten Lintrup, Demografisk Og Selskab, Denmark. The Pherologist, (1), Feb. 2000, p.1. Emmeloord, Netherlands)
2) The core of the book [is] the massive compilation of quotations documenting competitive breeding ... [and] it is alarming to discover both how widespread and how recently persisting is this form of insanity. ... Parsons, by richly covering every topic remotely relevant to his main subject, has produced a fascinating, often entertaining and always extremely readable book, written with verve, wit, and integrity.
The diversity of his illustrative material is remarkable [but] the whole message of [his] book is summed up in his quotation of the magnificent words of Martin Luther King: 'In the need for family planning, Negro and White have a common bond: together we can and should unite our strength for the wise preservation not of races, but of the one race we all constitute, the human race'. ... The book has all the qualities of a best-seller except the price - I hope there will soon be a cheap edition.
(WMS Russell, Prof. of Sociology, Reading University. Medicine, Conflict & Survival. (1) 2000, pp.140-42)
1) [This is] the fruit of 30 years' collecting of evidence ... on ... one of the most widely tabooed subjects ... Conflict, devolving into violence, is seen as innate and pervasive in human societies. As directed into reproduction, it is manifested in machismo (and machisma) at the individual level and in the pronatalism of clan, ethnic, religious, and national groups ... [He seeks] to establish the pervasiveness of population competition throughout history and at many different social scales, and the important role it has played in overall population increase. He is also at pains to show the economic, social, and environmental ill-effects of that increase, and the speciousness of the contrary case. ...
[He] is correct that the politics of numbers has been a comparatively neglected field in population studies, and his investigations and commentary on the subject draw attention to much relevant material - as well as making for provocative and entertaining reading.
(G. McNicoll, Senr. Associate, Policy Research Division, Population Council, New York, & Professor, Demography Program, Australian National University, Canberra. Population & Development Review. 3 Sept., 1999, pp. 609-10)
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