Intuitive fred888: depopulate

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

depopulate

I realized I was interested in defining what this word really means. It says, "substantially reduce the population of an area". So, by this definition I suppose it would be that people either leave an area or they die.

This is a good definition of what is happening to the average person in northern Syria and northern Iraq right now. It is also happening in Libya.

So, one way to look at this is ISIS and Al Qaeda are depopulating Shias, Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen and anything else that isn't extremist Sunni from these areas. And everywhere they go they will do more of this depopulating those areas too.

This is one reason why I think seeing ISIS especially as a social phenomenon among Sunnis now in the middle east might be useful. One useful analogy would be lemmings jumping off a cliff because there are too many of them.

From this point of view it is what any animal (mammal) will do when the environment can't support as many individuals as live there with local water and local tillable land.

So, in Scientific terms what is happening is what all mammals might do given the same dynamics in an area. Ebola might also be a part of this.

So, looking around the world we may see more of this sort of thing other places where local potable water and local tillable land cannot support the number of individuals present over time of any species of mammal including man.

de·pop·u·late

dēˈpäpyəˌlāt/

verb