THE MATERNITY WAR
Let us mention right away that we are all ignorant of many things; or of all things to some degree. It's no dishonor, unless you are lacking in some certain knowledge that pertains to an important action you're going to undertake, and do nothing to learn it.

We've covered, elsewhere, the concept of Selfish Altruism: that doing good will eventually have consequences that are beneficial to the one who did the original good thing, as well as everybody else. Doing harm will also return its burden to the doer; so we see that immorality is anti-altruistic; thus, ignorant of the feedback. (okay, the feedback is very small, but imagine if everybody did it. Or at least everybody in a small closed group.)
. . But to the point: here, we also mean the reverse, that sometimes ignorance is immoral; it often leads to harm, especially if it's done with the passion of a true-believer trying hard to help. (See "Love and Evil" and "The Deadly Virtues".) Many people of this type even try to remain ignorant of data that would disprove some of their beliefs.
. . Starting with a very simple example--if you pull a gun's trigger, you have the responsibility to see that nothing alive is in front of the gun. This applies not only to guns, but to many things--like to the purchase of a big car--where the entire planet is in back of the tailpipe. It applies to the return and reuse of grocery bags, on your next trip to the store. It applies to the kind of light bulbs you buy. It even applies to the "garbage" you might throw out instead of recycling.
. . The world is in many dangers, but other than another planetisimal-strike from space, man is the world's only enormous danger. Think of it: the effect of humanity is the worst thing to happen here in the last 65 million years!
. . What makes humans so dangerous is not simply our intelligence, but our ignorance of the dangers of intelligence. The Gaian mechanism has never had to cope with such a thing. We are the sophomores: wise fools. Our intelligence runs far behind our wise application of it.
. . An exception: the U.S. went thru quite an uproar to stop the SST airliner, but the public interest finally won out. Many people know that just because we can do something like that doesn't mean we should. Scientists now know even better what damage the SST would do to the ionosphere. We were fortunate that they knew enough back then. It could easily have been that the data was still a few years into the future.
. . But isn't it extreme to call ignorance immoral? Isn't ignorance a good excuse? Not if ignorance causes harm, and a person is aware that he/she is lax in knowledge about his/her actions.
. . In law, the phrase is famous: ignorance of the law is no excuse. You have a legal duty to know. So, what we're saying here is that you have a moral duty to know--to know, at least, what is likely to cause harm, not only as a direct consequence, but secondarily or eventually... to people you know or can see, and those not known or seen.
. . What is the maximum number of people the Earth can support? Two and a half to three billion, at our current level of ignorance. With universal wisdom on recycling, bicycling, and resource use, our limit on population could be much higher; but why should it? Why should we steer near the brink? It is much like driving a car near its limits of adhesion on a mountain road. It is seldom wise to stay very near a maximum of any kind.
. . We are way past that limit already. We are into the crash, in very slow-motion. But it's speeding up. Human numbers will come down, and not easily.
. . Life on Earth has labored for 3.5 billion years to maintain a balance. Humans are violating it badly, without even the knowledge of how far we can push it before it falls.
. . There is a point past which it is immoral to remain ignorant, when the person could improve his knowledge. The Pope is way past that point. Child-bearing is analogous to robbing a bank of its resources. An infamous bank-robber said.... 'cause that's where the money is."
. . Oxygen must be said to be a resource that all the people and other animals of the world own in common. For an American to have even one child, draws out his share many times over, compared to a person in a poor country. Americans not only breathe it, we burn it--a lot of it. We are withdrawing vastly more from the "bank" than we own. That is a crime.
. . I must iterate that oxygen is not a critical resource, but is implicated in the problem. When burned, it produces CO₂, which is a critical resource in a reverse way. CO₂ is like a speed limit. Too much tends us toward a crash.
. . Our reproduction limit must be held to one child for many generations. This is because our forebears, in innocent ignorance, violated the balance so badly. Ignorance is no longer an excuse.
. . It's easy to understand the desire for children. With our physiological response to their features, like pug-noses and chubby cheeks, we seem designed to adore them. Yet producing more than one remains the most evil thing we can do.
. . We can pass band-aid laws that can try to force behavior a certain way, so that we minimize our pollution and destruction, such as bans on dumping hazardous chemicals. But no amount of these band-aids can ultimately make up for any population increase.
. . Total up the effect. How much pollution does one person produce in a lifetime? That entire amount of pollution is caused by one or two people's decision to produce a child. A child, after all, is a person who will spend 60 years in life. (Yes, only sixty; as the population rises... you know: everybody's life expectancy goes down.)
. . Past that simple realization, there is another paradox for the prospective parent to face. The better-off that child becomes as an adult... the more pollution it produces with the money. Bigger cars and house, more consumer goods, etcetera. (Tho, yes, the better-off then produce fewer children.)
. . In 80 years, one person consumes 12 cars, 700,000 liters of gas (usta be 160,000 gallons), almost 4 metric tons of beef, 32 garbage cans, 12 TVs, 20 fones, etc. . I donno how many liters of soda, but the world releases 80 million tons of CO2 per year!
. . You raise the CO₂ level with the flip of a light switch, let alone driving a car. But the most polluting thing a first-world couple can do--by far--is to have a child. That child will, for a lifetime, use resources that dozens of other people--elsewhere in the world--will die without.
. . Creating population pollutes. Pollution kills.
. . Therefore, having children kills people. And other animals.
. . Having children is the opposite of being "fruitful and replenishing the Earth". I would assume that whatever god there be probably thought he took care of the "multiply-forever" problem by giving us a huge brain. Either that's true, or it is a superfluous organ--and he made a mistake! If we all use our brains for more than we use an appendix, we can save ourselves before we further multiply ourselves past the present mass-death situation.
. . We must observe, besides, that the phrase can as easily mean "work to let the trees produce fruit, and work to let the Earth replenish itself."
. . There is a comparison between gun control and population control. To ignore the population problem, and proceed to have a second or third child, is like firing a machine gun into a crowd and saying it's okay because your eyes were closed and you didn't see those anonymous people die!
. . Whether the instrument is an H-bomb, a gun, or one's reproductive organs, does a person have the right to use that instrument in a way that kills other people?
. . Starting with a very simple example--if you pull a gun's trigger, you have the responsibility to see that nothing alive is in front of the gun. This applies not only to guns, but to many things--like to the purchase of a big car--where the entire planet is behind the tailpipe. It applies to the return and reuse of grocery bags, on your next trip to the store. It applies to the kind of light bulbs you buy. It even applies to the "garbage" you might throw out instead of recycling it.
. . It especially applies to that most-personal weapon.
. . The world is in many dangers, but other than another planetisimal-strike from space, man is the world's only enormous danger. Think of it: the effect of humanity is the worst thing to happen to this planet in the last 65 million years!
. . At what point is it immoral not to study a possible danger? How does that point change as the population goes up? It requires more study before you do anything.
. . Here's the worst possible decision; at least I've tried to make it so, in this example. A sick woman lies before you, dying. You know that she has sworn to have a dozen children. She is in a country where you know that these children will starve. (Or others, for lack of the food they would eat.) You have a pill in your hand that will completely cure all her afflictions. It is in your power to save her life, simply by dropping that pill in her mouth. However, by your action, you will cause a dozen other people to die. If you save her, your "virtue" will not go unpunished!
. . World over-population puts this horrible... god-level decision into all our hands, whether we are aware of it or not.

Does our distance absolve us?
. . Over-population means mass-death, for humans exactly as for any other animal. To cause this--or contribute to it--is a crime; that seems obvious to us. It is not yet a crime in a legal sense, only in a moral sense.
. . Having children qualifies as "world-abuse"! Repro-crime. To paraphrase Churchill: Humans will always do the right thing... after they've exhausted all the alternatives.
. . We, and a substantial portion of the nation, already recognize what we can call population-crime, and we feel sure that within fifty years, even politicians will be able to see it.
. . By then, the public will loudly force them to do something about it. Be assured that few of them will do anything till forced to; most have few moral values that outweigh their re-election concerns. But if we wait for them, it will be too late.
. . It's too late for much of the world already.
. . The Chinese excuse on population was ignorance, ours is stupidity; that's the difference between the words. (China's much better now... "their boat is sinking more slowly".)
. . To the need for population control, there are those who say "So who ya gonna kill first?" It's an ignorant and prejudiced statement; not worthy of a direct response. I suggest we start by killing those who ask such stupid questions, then get on with reducing the remaining population rationally. (Kidding! I'm kidding!)
. . Let's respond, however, to those who say "I've had four kids, an' I wanna know which ones you think I shouldn'ta had."
. . Reply with patience. They are speaking of people already in existence, while intelligent debaters speak of potentials: the mere possibilities--before someone exists. The people who'd ask such questions seem to think there are "people" floating in the "ether", like hungry ghosts, waiting for a human egg to be fertilized somewhere!
. . You don't prevent babies or people; those are only potentials. You save real lives--people who already exist--but you prevent population.
. . A blastocyst (fertilized egg) is a potential human, as a rock is potential sand. That doesn't mean we should start to call a rock "sand", or that a rock is "meant to be" sand, or is sand "waiting to happen". If you think a blastocyst is a human, I challenge you to take the word "rock" out of your vocabulary.
. . A blastocyst can become a human; a rock can become sand; each is sometimes desired. If you want a baby or a beach, the progression is a good thing... if if if it hurts nobody else.
. . However... an increase in population--especially American population--does hurt others. Tremendously.

Another simplistic question: "What if an Einstein isn't born because of population-control program?" If that many children were born--enough, statistically, to include one Einstein--he would starve with the rest of 'em. Besides, malnourished children never develop their full intelligence. Even if it has not damaged their brain, they can't concentrate in school, so their education and interest are lacking. If there were even sufficient schools to go around.
. . Someone contemplating a second child should consider, instead, a second job; one that not only pays nothing, but costs them a tremendous amount. Go ahead; ask your employer if you can volunteer to pay instead of getting paid. And be sure to ask if you can sign a contract to work at an unknown kind of job--one that will change into other jobs--and commit yourself to it for eighteen or more years, no matter what the job turns out to be, or how hard it is. Also, you get no appreciation, and a chance of being stuck with a lifetime horror, or involved in crimes. (See "Stranger")

Speaking of Mammon; there are many considerations as to the practicality and morality of childbearing. Think of more than the immorality; think of the impracticality of child-bearing: there is about a 1% chance that a child of yours or anybody's would be born with a disease or malformation of body and/or mind; this alone would cost the parents and society enough money to save the lives of literally thousands of people in starvation areas. We must add 1 percent of those thousands of dollars to the average cost of bearing and raising a child in a wealthy country.
. . You'd spend a quarter-million dollars for the kid's education alone. Think of the security you'd have with that much money! The interest alone would be twenty thousand dollars a year. Food's going to be vastly more expensive in the future.
. . But let's assume for a moment that we will survive as a species. What are the criteria of the ideal human population number? One billion? Suggestions are as low as a million. Would it be based on human number; say... how many would it take for a sufficient stimulus in universities and culture in general? How many do we need to sustain scientific progress and social dynamism? Athens did well in the history books... with only 5,000 people.
. . Statistically and genetically, what is the minimum number that will escape any threat of inbreeding? Does our technology make a larger number necessary? The minimum number for genetics would depend on care taken to avoid near-relation breeding, like computer planning now for race horses and zoo animals. We want not to go that far. But!--that wouldn't happen till the number was only a few tens of thousands. Ridiculous.
. . Or would our ideal number be relative to the population of other species, and the needs of those creatures? Our fair share?
. . Regarding how many people can the Earth's resources support... the U.S. and Japan, mostly, are responsible for deforestation of Brazil and Indonesia, not just the natives there: we consume the wood. We consume and waste how many times the amount consumed by the poorest and hungriest people? Ten times?
. . On top of that, we are the biggest producers of the things that cause the extra CO₂, ultraviolet and acid rain. That reduces crops... Hey; doesn't affect us in this country; we can just stop sending our extra food to the people who are starving. We'll hardly notice--can't hear 'em cry from here. But, given the numbers of people who will die there, we may be able to smell them from here!
. . Forty thousand children a day die of starvation; so several thousand are indirectly attributable to George Bush! All he had to do was nothing, to save them from slow death.
. . Partly because of his administration's withdrawal of birth control information and money, 8-10 million abortions a year are done in China, mostly from contraceptive failure. Fifty to sixty million abortions a year are done, worldwide. Half are illegal, and many get botched, which results in 200,000 deaths a year! (U.N. Population Foundation, NY, NY.)
. . During Reagan's eight years, the world's population got worse by 700 million people.
. . It's time the species went on a population diet! On the personal level, how about some required study before parents can have a child?! It's too important a thing to leave to rank amateurs.
. . If man ever has the scientific power of "gods", and can control everything (but entropy) and survive, then we will be like gods only in that we've learned how not to destroy everything (or anything). How to leave it alone; how to do the nearest to no damage.

If man ever shows godlike qualities, the best example of it will be
how he has learned not to destroy himself.

If you got here from the HOME PAGE, click on
"minimize" or "eXit". (upper right browser buttons)
If you didn't: the site.)