Alright, I have read a little bit more here and there about the overpopulation problem vs myth perspectives after I wrote this blog. I wasn't looking for any particular point of view, I just wanted to come to a reasonable conclusion, as close as the truth as possible, whatever the truth is. I was able to see it very clearly:
Overpopulation is not a myth, it's a taboo.
What? Yes. This dude at the New York Times explains it very well.
Climate change, peak oil, hunger, poverty, pollution, mass extinction, etc, etc, etc, are all problems our society currently faces, and all of them are the result of one thing, wanna guess what?
Yes,
It's Number 1.
If you solve that, everything else goes away.
However, you will never ever read it among the big bold headlines, and if you do, it'll be briefly, and focusing on the problems it causes and the ways we should go about fixing those problem without even considering solving the root issue, the number of humans on earth. People don't even consider population control as a solution because it doesn't exist as a solution in the media, and no scientist or politician dare to go there either. I'm guessing doing so would be career suicide.
But why? My uneducated, naive, irresponsible guess is that it's because in our society what we value the most is freedom and human rights. We measure our society's quality, our greatness, with those two things, and we are very proud we humans have worked really hard to achieve the freedom and the rights most of us enjoy today. Equality is one of the biggest achievements of the human race. And while it's not yet universal and there's still plenty to be done, it is some sort of credentials that shows how far we've gone. I understand this and I'm happy to be part of our current society, very happy indeed.
However, the concept of population control conflicts directly with this concept of freedom we worked so hard for and are so proud of. Asking people to stop having kids is probably considered a ridiculous idea that no one will take seriously. Deterring people from having kids using some kind of monetary punishment might be thought as an abomination, and forcing people to not procreate by making it a crime is plain immoral and a violation of freedom and human rights, even if allowing people to procreate irresponsibly could endanger the whole human race. We could use incentives to promote smaller families, it may help a little bit, but I suspect it won't go that far. And you can bet your ass you're gonna have half of the country bitching about how that promotes negative feelings towards big families, and how it goes against god and the Bible, and they'll say it will lead the country to some kind of futuristic apocalyptic scenario where we're all slaves working for Big Brother. So we choose to ignore the issue and dedicate all our resources and efforts to deal with all the problems our baby-making society generates. All in the name of freedom. We are free to have as many babies as we want, responsibly or irresponsibly, regardless how fucked up we are or how this may affect everyone else, including our babies.
"Don't you ever talk shit about our babies, they are NOT responsible of any future human catastrophe. Look at them! They are so cute, they could do no harm, so fuck you!"
I believe that enforcing a global one child policy for only 2 generations could solve many of the problems the world faces today.
But population control has such a negative connotation that it often comes up among conspiracy theories. The government, Bill Gates, and the Illuminati are trying to control the population with vaccines, and sometimes military planes spray cities with deadly germs. But man, if that was true, then they really suck at it, if after getting help from multiple wars, natural disasters, famines, genocide, murderers, cigarettes, drugs, and stupidity, among others things, they still haven't been able to obtain positive (or negative, depending of how you see it) results.
I've never been good at economics, I admit, and maybe me worrying about this issue is comparable to a caveman freaking out when hearing thunder, because he believes god is upset and may fuck shit up. However, to me, our situation feels like being in a ship with a broken wheel that's heading straight up to an iceberg. "Dude, don't panic, we have a great mechanic that can fix anything, he's fixed all kinds of things before". The iceberg is looking kinda big and I'm shitting bricks, so I decide to gather my bags and jump on a safe boat, fuck it, and then someone stops me and says "dude! You can't do that, are you crazy? You know how much money that boat costs? We need it here, if you use it we won't be able to replace it for a while and the ship will look ghetto. Just chill out, our mechanic is working on the wheel and I'm pretty pretty sure he'll fix it before we hit the iceberg. Seriously, I have a pretty strong gut feeling we'll overcome this little inconvenience and my gut feelings have never been wrong. Here, I'll give you a drink ticket".
Until we really have this issue fixed, meaning, all the issues that overpopulation generate, I'm not going to be able to calm down. But at least we have people like this guy, who can turn a very scary subject into a hilarious comedy sketch:
Cheers!
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