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The phase change that enabled the physical platform to be raised through creativity, also raised the life expectancy of man. At the primitive stages the life expectancy was low, in the 14 to 18 year range, as life was harsh. The long term stability in the population level indicates that this tiny human population that existed, was all that the natural system was able to support on a poverty limited plain of existence. On this poverty limited platform, the human population remained in an equilibrium for 800,000 years until the metaphysical capability of man began to unfold. From this point on, things began to change dramatically.
During the Paleolithic (hunter-gather) and Mesolithic (proto agricultural) ages, until about 10,000 BC., the early effects of intelligence raised the physical platform of living to the point at which 4 million people could support themselves on the planet. Has the earth changed that it could now support or four times as many people as before, or has the human being developed a capability to create for itself what the earth didn't provide?
Since the earth has not changed, it cannot be said that the carrying capacity of the earth changed. But the nature of life changed, and its capability changed. Man had changed. A capability had unfolded in the development of man that never existed before in the entire history of life on the planet. With this capability more and more people were able to support themselves, and this with a greater security than before.
After the early stages of this new development, during what is called the Neolithic age until app. 3,000 BC. (the era of the early "agricultural revolution") the physical platform was continuously raised to higher levels by advances in the mental processes that generated certain technologies by which food could be produced at quantities that simply could not exist naturally. Through further advances in metaphysical unfoldment, it became soon possible for 10 million people to support themselves on the same planet that once supported only 1-1.2 million people. Also, with the advance in metaphysics, as life became easier and more secure, the life expectancy became increased to an average of 25 years.
Throughout the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, including the Mediterranean Classical Period to app. 500 AD (this includes the time of the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty in China), food production became evermore organized and technologically intensive, so that the physical platform that was thereby created made it possible for 200 million people to sustain themselves on the face of the planet, or two-hundred times as many as the planet had once supported by its primitive means.
During the next 1,300 years, including the Medieval Period to the 18th century, an unfolding industrialization raised the physical platform to still higher levels, to the point that now 720 million people could support themselves on the earth, with an average life-expectancy of 38 years.
By the mid 1970s, the world's high energy intensive industrialization and farming had raised the physical platform to such high levels that now 3.9 billion people could live on the earth quite comfortably, and with a life-expectancy of over 70 years.
This development indicates that the effective, so-called carrying capacity of the earth, was constantly raised to higher levels as the physical platform was raised through intelligent processes. The earth, itself, has never changed throughout this entire period. It was mankind's capability that had changed. Mankind's mental capacities had developed and created processes that raised the physical platform of the world out of a subjection to primitive limitations, to a metaphysical environment that enabled the creation of constantly new resources for living which never existed on the primitive platform.
By this term dynamic process of life - creating constantly new and greater resources for living - mankind has been able to sustain itself in ever greater numbers on the same planet that once supported but a few. The impact of thought upon human living has been so dramatic that it enabled a 5,500 fold increase in the number of people that can support themselves on the earth, with no perceivable end in sight. As far as one can determine, there exists no fundamental limit that would end this process of unfolding.
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