When you lower a frog into a pot of boiling water it feels the heat and jumps out. When you lower a frog into a pot of cold water and then place the pot on the stove and heat it, the frog does not feel the heat, does not jump out, and gets cooked.

It appears a frog gathers, processes, and values, the available information well enough to save its life in the first case but not in the second.

Is it possible that humans think like frogs?  When immersed in our environment, we cannot appreciate its dangerous destination and can’t identify or take the behavior that would avoid it.

Consider the possibility that we are experiencing ever increasing social conflict and cannot see it.  We are experiencing ever diminishing wellbeing and can’t see it.  That our progeny will live an animalistic life near subsistence and we can’t see it. Consider the possibility that rapid population decline (RPD) for 300 years is the only way to avoid that destination and we can’t see it. 

On the contrary what we can see, relative to rapid population decline, is that it produces an aging population, cultural extinctions, economic disruptions, diminishing strength against external enemies and diminishing voting strength within democracies. 

With existing thought processes, most people will not take the one child per family behavior that implements RPD.  With existing thought processes most people will be surprised when they are forced to perform acts of genocide to survive at all.

Maybe we should work on developing the cognitive abilities of a future generation so they think and behave better than we do.