Gorthar, Orwell, and a Malthusian Irony

Things seem to be progressing along nicely. We seem to have somehow adopted "Gorthar" as the womb name for our offspring, who, if you are unfamiliar with the name in the Schwartz lore, is King of the Universe.

Amanda has been very tired recently. Gorthar has successfully learned how to sap the energy out of his host. Last night he was demanding vegetables. I suppose the pickles and ice cream will soon follow; but if he has inherited my expensive palate, Amanda's cravings will likely consist of lobster, caviar, and coffee that is made from the coffee beans that are digested and pooped out by Indonesian cats.

On a more somber note, my wife and I are apparently on track to being "irresponsible," since we would like to have three children. Jonathan Porritt, a chairman of the Optimum Population Trust and highly influential environmentalist in the United Kingdom, recently stated, "I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible." He believes that government intervention is necessary to curb the population growth, and that abortion and contraception are the way to do that.

I was not really appalled at this statement as it is not the first time I have heard it. Various organizations have been whining about the growth of the world's population since Thomas Malthus wrote his Principle of Population. Paul Ehrlic's Population Bomb in 1968 was a continuation of these Malthusian catastrophe predictions. So, Jonathan Porritt is just the latest influential person to advocate the regulation of humanity; no big deal, right?

Well, Malthus's principles received very little acceptance (but were very influential); Ehrlich's suggestion of "zero population growth" shocked the world with his propositions of passive genocide, but his work gained widespread interest among very powerful and influential people, including Ted Turner, George Soros, and most notably, Mikhail Gorbachev, who called the first "State of the World Forum" in 1995 in order to "address the problem of controlling the world's population," by reducing global population by 90%. Academia, as they are wont to do with any notion contrary to traditional Western ideology, also embraced and promulgated these ideas.

Now it seems that these two notable demographists have set the stage for a widespread acceptance among the commoners. In the comments of article linked above, there are perhaps just as many proponents of population control as there are of those who are outraged. Many seem to have become immune or numb to the idea of regulating humanity. They seem to have accepted that humans are the cause for all things evil, and with that acceptance they naively and arrogantly believe that we can actually do something about it. The proponents of population control have cleverly increased the salability of this idea by implementing global concerns beneath the mask of schemes such as neo-Darwinism, global warming, abortion, and most recently, homosexual marriage. Each of the above reduces the significance of human production and advocates a reduction. Each of these has also gained more and more widespread acceptance, especially over the last 20 years.

The Malthusian irony is twofold, if it is to be believed at face value:

1. The major proponents of population control are almost unanimously evolutionists. If they are to truly accept their world-view of random mutation and natural selection, how dare they hinder the natural evolution of mankind by doing nature's job for her? If they expect mankind to evolve as nature would have them to, they must not interfere with the natural supply and demand of population and resources. They must not preclude the survival of the fittest in an ultra-competitive environment such as an overpopulated globe. Necessity is the mother of evolution after all, right?

2. If population controls are put in place, we reduce the possibility of solutions for the problem itself. Cyrus Hall McCormick, the inventor of the reaper and eventual founder of International Harvester, which revolutionized crop sowing and reaping, was one of three siblings. Thomas Edison, whose invention of the electric light has enabled every modern convenience we enjoy and enabled succesive inventions that drastically increased productivity, was the youngest of seven siblings. Had their parents adhered to Malthusian and Porrittian principles, their discoveries may have never happened. If we are to regulate the production of children, we hinder our own technological progress to solve the original problem.

(I do not believe it is possible for the human population to ever exceed its means to the point of extinction or cause the death of the earth, regardless of an individual's teleological view: A Creator would not allow mankind to cause his own extinction; an evolutionary and uniformitarian ideology presupposes cycles resulting in homeostasis, or nature eventually balancing itself out.)

But to continue the hypothesis:
All morals aside, why would a global enterprise, government, or anyone realistically want to regulate the production of humanity? If global powers such as the International Planned Parenthood Foundation have their way, their agenda of limiting births will be implemented. Mothers would be required to receive surgery after their second birth in order to prevent a further infestation of humanity. But this does not account for the variables involved in birthing (dizygotic and polyzygotic births, black-market births, increased life-expectancy, etc.). The population will continue to increase and the "problem" will still be there, and further action would be needed. The next step would be not to regulate production, but to regulate survival, which, if you really think about it, is ultimately a much more effective way of handling the "problem" than abortion and contraception are. People would be denied medical treatment after they had received so much, since they would have become a liability on society. Living Permits would become a very profitable commodity and would assist in raising governmental revenue; the affluent would be able to purchase a longer life.

You may consider the above postulation a huge stretch. The government, you say, would never allow the systematic execution (or prevention of survival) of individuals because of social status. Why not? Stalin and Hitler did. And their genocidal philosophies were directly influenced by Thomas Malthus, Charles Darwin, and Herbert Spencer. Of course a government wouldn't do that now; it would look too much like those totalitarian dictators we as a collective society still abhor. But they must only find an acceptable reason to administer such a policy in order to gain widespread acceptance.

And once the dystopian policy of depopulation is accepted, there will finally be a problem of global proportions that will enable the call for a one-world government and a global dictator, and man will continue the adventure he has quested since Adam's fall--from the Tower of Babel to the Egyptian Pharaohs, from Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar, from Constantine to Charlemagne, and from Napoleon to Hitler, Stalin, and Hirohito--to become King of the Universe.

As for Amanda, Gorthar, and I, we will continue to strive for "irresponsibility."