I think that is very well said Sacred, and in particular your point about how paradigms constrain our ability to think innovatively.
One of the more controversial ideas that I entertain, and seek to provoke my students to think about, is that there are quite simply "too many of us."
To preemptively react to any possible misperception of this as legitimization or motivation to engage in genocide or violence: it is NOT. One can acknowledge that there are simply too many human beings in existence and entertain the possible non-violent, non-oppressive, voluntary and humane, i.e., 'good' responses/solutions without any resort to violence, warfare or genocide.
Most of the problems that Diamond discusses, and which a lot of environmtalist discussions center on, do not inherently derive from any particular industrial or agricultural order or technological system. They derive from the sheer scale of those systems being elaborated for the sake of ~7+ billion consumers . . . or to be more precise, ~2b high-end consumers, and ~4b 'wanna-be high-end consumers.'
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, this consideration of population size leads us not to a condemnation of agriculture or its associated spinoff technologies and ways of living, but rather to a consideration of our individual rights/privileges/motives of reproduction, family, group identity, etc.
There is I'm sure a long and comples discussion that this could open up, so I wouldn't expect to make my full point clear in one post in this thread, but as one example to kick things off: why do we continue to retain the nuclear family as the least inclusive unit of social cohesion in formal social order? There is no question that ample precedents exist for our communities and governments to impose order that is presumably in the interest of the collective weal onto our families and ourselves as individuals. Yet for some of the most fundamental of social processes, The Society, broadly speaking remains largely uninvolved in the family. To put it more simply: why does one have to get a license to operate a motor vehicle, or run a business? Obviously because the behaviors one can engage in when operating a vehicle or running a business represent a possibility to infringe on the well-being of others in the society and as such, gradually over time, even the most liberal of societies have reached the somewhat unpleasant realization that behaviors like these need to be under some degree of oversight and regulation by the 'authority' in the society.
Given that producing a dysfunctional person represents arguably the greatest possibilty to infringe on the well-being of others in the society (imagine on one end of the continuum people like a Charles Manson or an Anders Breivik, and on another end people like the Enron execs or other highly accomplished white-collar 'cheaters') why is their so little dialogue about anything like oversight and regulation of reproduction and family?
One last point I'll raise: we do not have to look far to find precedents of voluntary restriction of procreation so we are not inherently takling here about 'restricting' anyone's rights. Rather, we might simply try to constructively think about how to shift the sense of value, obligation and rights as it relates to bringing new people into our world.
