We (humans) are doing all sorts of damage to Planet Earth. Humans have always been careless about their garbage. In primitive times, when a tribe accumulated a lot of waste in one location, the tribe simply relocated to a new place. We have, however, run out of new habitable places. We believed, of course, that we had been told to “be fruitful and multiply.” That probably made sense at the time it was originally said, as in those days there was a lot more space than there were people, and life was short and brutal for most people. The best way to ensure survival for one’s children was to have a lot of them. The best way for a tribe to survive was to be fruitful and multiply. Those days have passed.
Currently, population growth is out of control, and we already have about 8 billion people on the planet. When humanity started, the only way for a group to ensure its survival, was for individuals to have many children. And, of course, early humans didn’t have many dependable ways to prevent pregnancy and childbirth. When children were unwanted for one reason or another, they were simply abandoned to die. You may recall that in the play, Oedipus Rex, Sophocles has Queen Jocasta is told that her child will kill his father, so she has the infant Oedipus left out to be eaten by wolves. The infant is rescued, lives to adulthood, and kills his father. He then marries his widowed mother, and the rest of the tragedy unfolds.
But at least we can’t blame Oedipus for the increase in human population. Nor can we blame the ancient Egyptians (or European royalty) inbreeding for the ever-increasing population. Where once human couples had to have several children to ensure that some survived, survival became the rule rather than the exception. That is in spite of the World Wars and other global conflicts in which millions and millions of people die and epidemics that kill thousands, and sometimes millions, of people at a time. In spite of all the death and destruction that has occurred in history, human population has grown exponentially.
It would be one thing if we had developed the time warp technologies of science fiction that would allow us to find new planets where humans could survive and thrive. The two principal problems with that concept are that (a) we don’t really have any idea how such speeds might be achieved and (b) that, if other planets like ours do exist, they might well be facing the same problems of overpopulation that we are. (And if they develop the technology before we do, they might want to replace us on Planet Earth.
Our best bet, it seems to be for us to become good caretakers of what we have. We simply must do a better job of controlling (and reducing) our human population, and we have to stop destroying our environment. Neither of these is, of course, easy to do. The principal problems are human ignorance and greed. As I have mentioned in blogs previously, power corrupts, and those with power tend to be greedy. If you follow politics in the U.S., you already know that the party in power does everything it can to rewrite the laws (and write new ones) to enhance its wealth and power. From time to time, reformers will attempt to level the “playing field,” but such efforts tend to be short-lived and less than fully effective.
We can’t really blame the politicians for their all-too-frequent greedy excesses any more than we can blame farmers for wanting to make hay while the sun shines. The current prevailing political philosophy is that greed is good. Unfortunately, greed is the desire for excess, and that doesn’t work well. It is, however, human nature. As Woody Guthrie said a long time ago, some will rob you with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen. The Legend of Robin Hood is an older version of the concept of a hero who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. At some point we need to stop and think about the appeal of such stories. Why do such stories have such wide appeal?
When things get too bad for too many, people tend to revolt. It has happened in France and in China (more than once), and is always an undercurrent when a sufficient number of people are unhappy with their political and economic situation. The question is how bad do things have to get for how many people before violent revolution seems the best option? My sense is that, at this point, we are a long way from that, but we seem to be pressing our luck. The natural tendency when things are difficult is to find someone (or something) to blame. Poor people in the States are being told, “It’s not your fault. The problem is the influx of poor people from other countries. If we build a wall to keep them out, we’ll (you’ll) be safe.” The world, however, is relatively small. People are coming here because things are really bad where they are coming from.
What we need to recognize, is that when it comes to humanity, we are all in this together. We have to start treating world poverty as an infectious disease that spreads more quickly with increases in population. The problem will, of course, eventually be solved. It is only a matter of how and when.
