Island Civilization summary/response

Island Civilization is a fascinating idea; it opens new light to what the human race needs to strive towards.  Roderick Frazier Nash opens up by not even mentioning the idea of the island civilization until the last half of the essay.  He explains all of the problems we have with the way the human race does not live in the ecosystem but is almost in charge of it.  His ideas expressed that one possibility in the Fourth Millennium the human race will completely control the ecosystem. With the use of modern technology humans would one day control the world so much that the weather, temperature, animals, and anything else that humans needed would be exactly like we want it. But it would be a healthy earth with no diversity; we would only have what we needed to survive. Only animals we eat would live and only plants we needed would grow.  Another was we would turn the Earth into a waste land so that nothing would be here. It would be proven that humans would have ruined the world. Another scenario is that we become more primitive and live off the land with no large buildings and we would have technology but use it wisely. The final scenario is the island civilization.

The island civilization was a much better solution to living in the world than the other three. With the island civilization the population would have to shrink down to less than a quarter of the current population. In the island civilizations the populations would be separate from each other and each having a 100 mile radius or circle. It would be like the Greek city states of the past, where there would not be an exchange of resources but of culture and knowledge.  Each population would have all of the resources it needed to survive on their own. Outside of the cities the land would be free; the animals would roam as that want to and the plants too. The island civilization seems like a possibility in the near future.

The world we live in is exactly the way was Nash described it in Island Civilization. If we keep going on with the old and bad habits we have the Earth will end up being a waste land as described in one of the scenarios.  However, if we change our habits one of the three other scenarios is not too far out of reach. If we turn into the controlling humans as described in the second scenario does not seem very bad for the humans, since we are the ones in control, then there is a problem with sustaining the environment. No matter how many inhabitants there were the ecosystem would not be in balance what so ever. The plants and animals would either invade everything or go extinct. There would be no way that the human race would be able to sustain the earth where we were in complete control and only had the species we needed. The idea looks good on paper, but when put into action it might turn around on us. The fourth scenario, island civilization seems that it would work the best.

The island civilization also looks great on paper and would most likely work when it was put into action. The entire idea of the island civilization seems great. The environment would have very little impact from the towns; it would almost be like the humans did not live there since there would be so little interactions.  The only problems would be cooperation with the humans. Would one civilization not want to take over another? There is no way say that there would be do disputes between them. I can understand them working for several years, but not forever. The idea seems very practically; especially since the outside environment would be able to live on it’s on without the human interactions. The island civilizations would be a large feat if they were to happen, we would not really have to give up any of the modern technology just have a smaller human population on earth. I think with the human race growing and the advances in modern technology we would be able to establish enough island civilizations on Earth and other planets that the population would still be able to grow. If humans really start to care about the Earth island civilizations on this planet and others is not far in the future.