On overpopulation, a Bimbo’s opinion

To preface this post, I would like to thank Veronique for her series of posts, the most recent being this one on the topic of overpopulation. Thank you for giving me the impetus to write this post before heading off to work.

I had the meaning of life figured out at 7 years old. There was no doubt in my mind then and there is none now.

The meaning of life is to reproduce. That is what our most basic human instincts push us to do, and the same holds true for every other being. It is true.

Usually when people talk about the meaning of life, they talk about the impact their life can have on the world. I think there can be no greater impact than raising an intelligent, selfless child who can better the world. Leading by example in relation to your kids, from actions as small as recycling to as big as helping impact education, teaches kids that giving of yourself is the correct way to live.

If you are an intelligent and selfless person, you are exactly the type of person the world needs more of, so please do the selfless thing and have children and raise them to be like you. Many unintelligent, un-selfless people are having many children and are under the false impression that THEIR genetics must be carried on. Please affect these statistics in the positive rather than the negative.

The planet as a whole is nearing the tipping point of over-population. What is unfortunate is that high birth rate is linked to poverty and lack of education. Whether it’s the Western world or developing countries, the poorer a citizen is the more likely they are to have too many children.

Notice I said too many, rather than any children. When fellow left-leaners talk about empowering and educating women, they talk about the positive side effect of those women having less children. This is true, when a woman has a job, she has less time to make, carry, birth and raise 10 children. Any woman who works and has children can relate to you the challenges of having even one child. Many will have the common sense, despite the logistical difficulties, to have at least two children, so that their one child doesn’t wind up suffering from only child syndrome. But few women who are given choices take the Michelle Duggar route.

When you hear criticisms of population reduction proposals such as education, universal health care (which closely ties to birth control), it’s usually from extremely right leaning groups. To hear their rhetoric is to have the impression that to fight overpopulation is to fight our very basic nature, which is to reproduce (or God’s mandate to go forth and multiply, if they’re more obvious in the religious motivation behind their thoughts). I have never in my life met a woman who emphatically refuses to ever have even a single child. I have friends, acquaintances and family members from a massive variety of ethnic, religious and socioeconomical backgrounds and absolutely none of them could truly say they refuse to ever have children. All of them want at the very least, one child. I think the same would hold true in any impoverished country in the world.

The reason that population reduction is the most ethical choice, is that life will be BETTER for the children that are born. They will have more of their parents’ time and attention, a bigger chunk of the limited financial resources many families deal with, a better planet earth with more fresh air, water and food. When we talk about a better world, we talk about passing down a better world to our children. There is no parent on the planet that can deny they want more time with their children, more economic opportunity for their children and a healthier planet for their children.

God forbid something happens to both parents (a much more possible reality in some parts of the world than others). 2 children for extended family members to now raise and feed, or 10? 2 children in orphanages, where they’re unlikely to ever get adopted, or 10? Who in their right mind would ever make the choice for 10 children to be left without parents. Yet many people advocate against birth control measures in areas with civil war conflicts and/or rampant AIDS crises. My sister and I were raised during a bloody civil war and we were lucky enough that both our parents were alive. Had one or both of them lost their lives, it would be a less challenging proposition for our extended family to raise us. Had they listened to our incessant begging for a baby brother or two, that would have raised the stakes even higher. Let’s not even discuss the devastation a parent feels when the child is sacrificed to the cruel world we live in. Had there been 4 of us and my siblings and I had been unlucky to be in the field of a bomb dropping while in the playground (as many others were), can you imagine the devastation my parents would have gone through in losing 4 children rather than 2.

Clearly, anyone who believes in uncontrolled population growth, especially in non-western countries, clearly either doesn’t value human life, doesn’t have an ounce of sense whatsoever or somehow magically believes that human ingenuity can outsmart nature.

Many pioneers in fields of crop yield optimization and the like, have warned that their innovations were only staving off the inevitable. That eventually there would not be anymore nature which science could manipulate to create the highest yields.

What we forget is that Mother Nature is the cruelest and most unfeeling type of mother we could ever fathom. She has allowed many of her children to go extinct. She has allowed many natural disasters to occur. She has allowed her most intelligent, yet impertinent and disrespectful child, the Homo Sapiens to completely disrespect her rules for a very long time now. But her rules are natural law and there is no way to take this kind of law to court. When a population upsets an equilibrium, it will eventually be whittled down by Mother Nature’s very cruel methods: famine, disease and the ugliest part of human nature: the us vs. them mentality that allows Westerners to turn a blind eye to the fact that others are suffering and that allows certain militant groups in other parts of the world to wage war blindly on the West for being cruel and imperial to the rest of the world. These ugly components of human nature get amplified when you cannot feed your children (be they 2 or 10) and you look for someone to blame. The fact that we band against each other instead of uniting is just another way our nature is very much against us.

If you are a woman, anywhere in the world who might be reading this. The power is yours to make the world a better place, even slightly. Have children, but don’t have so many that you risk giving them a life which you would never truly want for them. Have children please, but instill in them the values that will make the world a better rather than a worse place. You were born with the incredible blessing, honour and power of being a woman. Though there are many men in many parts of the world who like to believe they have the power and they convince many women of this lie, they are not the ones who carry, birth and raise children. If their wife loves them and respects them (and make them earn your love and respect) they get a secondary hand in raising children. But ONLY if the mother, a child’s most important Goddess, doesn’t minimize their influence. Every single woman on this earth has an incredible amount of power to make it better. All men can really do is try to convince us we don’t, or try to work with us.