I'm told Martin Luther brought a sense of individual accountancy into the Western world. It started as an individual's relationship to God, so different to the Roman Catholic hierarchical institution. Apparently, noone ever knew if they were saved or not in this new understanding of faith because there was no hierarchy that could justify confirming it so Protestants began to look for evidence of being blessed in their material prosperity. This led to the Protestant work ethic which led to capitalism. That individuality has expanded through capitalism to give us a world of people lost in themselves.

This is similar to many of my previous posts. Only my point was with regards to human overpopulation. I contend that overpopulation in the human species occurs (occurred) when society no longer can exert checks and balances on deleterious or abberant behavior.

In the case of the human species this occurs at about the upper level of the tribe size of population. Accepting this premise that means that overpopulation actually occurred between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago. Roughly coincident with the rise and shift to agriculture

Because culture and society are an evolutionarily integral and necessary part of human development, anything that that is deleterious to the "fitness" of the well-being of the cohesion renders that society evolutionarily "unfit" (eg. religion). Once abberant behaviors become cemented and are left unchecked, the greater that society moves toward evolutionary unfitness. Ultimately leading to extinction. For humans this begins above the tribal level size. So we have been overpopulated for quite a long while.

I think you are basically correct, however I would posit that human beings still strive for survival and many still do across the globe. Look at all the poor desperate people crossing the US southern border. That and of course we retain the urge to reproduce.