I'm deviating a little bit today from my usual topic to talk about what I think is the greatest threat to the existence of mankind... the unchecked growth of the human population.
Let me reiterate my topic. There are several clever examples of irony, but this is what I believe is the best illustration of the word, partly because I came up with it. "The advances in the science of longevity of human life being the ultimate destruction of mankind". This realization dawned on me yesterday when I was watching the discovery channel and they were talking about the advances science was making in extending the average lifespan of humans. You know that it's really come a long way when there are doctors, no... specialists, called "longevity experts". They do nothing but help rich old men extend their lives as long as their bank account will support it. I'm not talking about keeping them plugged into a machine on their death bed... I'm talking about prescribing a 100 pills and supplements a day to what they call "reverse the signs of aging".
Why is longevity so important? Whatever happened to quality of life instead of quantity? Personally, I'd take 50 years of healthy, fullfilling life experiences over a 100 years of simply "existing". I truly believe that the single greatest threat to mankind is overpopulation. The result of this unchecked epidemic is self-destruction. In a world where resources are already growing scarce, the last thing we need is more people trying to share a shrinking piece of pie. There are these tree-huggers and Al Gore lovers who go on and on about how we should "save the Earth by conserving it's resources" and then produce 5 offsprings each. Have they thought about how much resources each of those 5 bastards are going to use up? In 2000, the world population was around 6 billion people; it's projected that by 2030, the population would go up to 9 billion. How much longer can we keep dividing these finite resources amoung us?
Which brings me to my real topic here; as alarming as the birth rate is at it's current rate, we're not doing any good by drastically reduing the death rate. There's a reason nature intended for people to die at a certain age... to maintain a balance in the sheer number of people. But once we start messing with that, we're opening Pandora's box. What if in the next 10 years, we increase the average human lifespan by 10 years. That's 'n' number of people we'd have to sustain for an extra 10 years than originally planned by nature. What if we make a huge breakthrough and extend the lifespan by 30 years. People who should have died at 70 are now all living to a ripe old 100? The fact that they are not going to be contributing members of society cannot be changed. So the burden falls on the working "younger" folks to pick up the slack. How long can we sustain that? Think of the simple case of health care; just because these folks live to be a 100 doesn't mean that they aren't going to need health care! And as seniors, they aren't going to be the ones picking up the tab; that'll fall on the government, which is really you and me. At a time when people can barely afford health insurance for themselves, we're going to ask them to foot the bill for all these other folks too?
Yes, I do know some really nice old people and I'm not talking about mandatory limits on people's ages. If you can live to be 90 as a reasonably healthy person without being a burden to others or to society, then fine... I have no problems with that. But if we're starting to extend life simply for the sake of "living on", then that's pointless and dangerous in the grand scheme of things. You may think this is crazy... that I'm just being a lunatic here. Hopefully I won't be around to see this, but in 50 years, when the world's at a staggering 12 billion people and everyone around you is living to be 100 years old and trying to share your space and resources, then this point will make more sense.
Stop trying to simply aim for longevity of life... aim for quality of life and when it's time to go, say your goodbyes and move on.
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3 comments:
Hey Fred, I fully agree that unchecked growth of population is scary! How do you think it can be controlled? Do you think there should be incentives for having less kids? (People who have kids actually get tax cuts!)
I loved your post, and completely agree with your thoughts on this "population explosion". But, are you also suggesting that we should just succumb to our destiny, and not try to fight it? For e.g., If I am diagnosed with a deadly disease, should I just say my "good byes" instead of seeking treatment for the same?? Also, where does that leave treatment research?
I'm just confused as to where we should draw the line, and who determines that line. I am definitely not one to seek "immortality", but at the same time there are these other grey areas to consider. Also,I know you are a big advocate of limiting the number of kids a person has, but where does socio-economic status and genetics play into this whole equation. I don't believe in eugenics by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, I feel I am an inetlligent, and financially stable person who can afford to bring more than one child into this world. I am going out on a limb here and saying that if genetics,environmental factors, and parental upbringing have a big role on what my kids are going to be like, I think my kids would make a great contribution to society and not be a burden.
I would love to hear your thoughts on these few minor details that I pointed out.But, keep those blogs coming!!!
Wow, I'm only 3 years late in responding to these comments! Sorry guys, guess I gave up due to the overwhelming traffic that my blog was generating :)
Anyway, as for Santaslilhelper's comments, let me try to answer one at a time:
1 - diseases: no, I wasn't suggesting that we simply "give up" and succumb to diseases, for the simple fact that diseases (most of them) affect people of all ages and ethnicities. I believe in survival and research that betters the quality of life and that's what these disease fighting research does... betters our quality of life by not letting us suffer because of the disease.
2 - Eugenics: boy, we need a separate post for this one; so that's what I'll do. But in short, no... I'm not advocating eugenics, since though I like the idea in principle, it can so easily be fucked up by anyone (not just the Nazis... even our own country practised some form of eugenics as late as the early 1900s).
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