Audio Spectral Travel

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Making Babies

There is a large and growing argument for mass depopulation. Some arguments go as far as to claim that couples who cannot provide a decent income and support for a child should not produce children to be a burden for their neighbours, that bringing unneeded children into an overcrowded lifeboat is evil.

Many will nod their heads in agreement. But the argument speaks of unneeded children. Excuse me?

While on the topic of need, how much income and support does a child need? For that matter, how much does any human being need? The problem is not overpopulation but over consumption. We do not need fewer people; we need fewer cars and televisions and wars.

It's hard to believe there is a strong argument suggesting the need for fewer people because we are unwilling to have less stuff. Or is it? Somehow it seems easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Yet one is real and the other an ideology.

Life is about making babies, caring for them and caring for our elders. Instead we have been creating systems and machines to care for them so we can have free time to destroy the planet in the name of progress. Although this may have not been our intention, the road to hell has thus been paved.

Then the argument cries for more education (read: indoctrination) to stop making babies, to create more systems and machines in order to repair the world we have damaged, instead of doing what we are supposed to do: care for our children and our elders, and allow the planet to heal herself.

1 comment:

  1. I think the best point here is the population vs. per-capita consumption argument. I wonder what the real mathematics on this look like. Such as, what percentage of per-capita consumption reduction is actually practical, and how would we determine that? If success is not possible through consumption reduction alone, does that not beg for further strategies? Would there be negative consequences of championing both strategies? Esp. considering different personalities would be more open to one over the other, or even a bit of both, as not everyone places an intrinsic value on personally procreating. But yeah, we've clearly been valuing modern trappings and progress over the well-being of our own species for a while now, and it's arguably almost the entire problem.

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