by David McPletl, SUNY Cortland
Posted in on Monday, May 5
By the end of this paper you may think me a monster. Hark well these words, for they are my core argument. The natural world cleaves to no moral code.
If you think me harsh, merely throw yourself into a jackal’s pen and try to discuss your right to life with the beast. I would guess that your philosophy would be met by “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”
Many give voice to the idea that mankind has too many members. That our numbers swell, plague-like, and choke off the world around us. To these people, I speak no word of disagreement.
I would suggest looking to Nature for an answer to this crucial dilemma. Say we look upon the beasts and birds and see what happens in their circles when the numbers rise too far. The deer in the forest compete for their fair foliage, when winter comes the herds are thinned by those who have not the strength or skill to gather food. Only the young, nurtured by mother’s milk need focus only upon surviving the cold. Unless of course, the fangs of the hunter's stalk the night, then all but the fleet and fit need fear. Of course, if winter is mild and predators scarce, then the numbers grow mightier, yet Nature has another remedy. Blight and parasite wait to breed upon the masses. Disease dances through the herd and culls the weak.
Ants give us one of the greatest examples of Nature’s last method, had we but eyes to see it. When expanding colonies glance against each other the workers and soldiers launch themselves upon the enemy with stings and pincers. The ants know the truth, that that which takes food from the colony is the enemy.
So what methods does nature use to thin the numbers? Let me give them common names. War, Pestilence, Famine and Death; these are old names for age old answers. Like a forest fire clearing deadwood so the new growth can rise. So these horsemen offer a way to clear the excess from our societies.
But we are human! We have science and technology and philosophy! We can defeat those old terrors. Our hospitals can stave off Death and Pestilence; even a disease like AIDS can be held at bay for decades. Our farms can grow fresh organic crops to feed the world if only people would escape the corporate tyranny of poisons and gene manipulation. Our peoples can talk and work together and, with open minds, avoid the horrors of war. We need not suffer Famine or war, if only people would see…
But there are too many people. Forgot, did you? You would suggest having less children perhaps? Kill the next generation for the folly of the first?
Imagine a world where over 50% of the people alive were over 40 years old. With help they live to a hundred, complaining all the while that there are too many people…
If you can build a pyramid where the pinnacle and the base are reversed; and if that pyramid can stand in a hurricane, I will credit your philosophy. Make a liar of Nature. Yet when in twenty years you watch role after role empty and see no new generation fill it, remember my words.
If you are concerned with Nature and overpopulation, listen to it. Close the hospitals, stop searching for cures, shut down the plantations and give out the guns. Tell everyone under 40 to kill or drive out their elders to Nature’s tender mercies. In 20 years there would be no overpopulation.
Nature does not care for your morality. Nature is not kind, caring or compassionate. Nature is cold and relentless. In Nature you are born. You eat. Grow. Fuck and Die. Then your children take over. Disagree? Ask the dinosaurs if I’m lying.
There is one man who grasped the whole of Nature. He said that one law ruled the wild: “survival of the fittest.” It is a brutal law to live by. Yet the dove does every day.
Think outside the hypocrisy and find a human answer. Because I know you have no stomach for Nature’s answer. I sure don’t.
For a dynamic illustration of the population trends in the US from 1950 to a projected population in 2050 go here http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbpyrs.pl?cty=US&out=d&ymax=250&submit=Submit+Query
Images are collected from http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/
and I’ve quoted both Charles Darwin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
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