Self-extinction of Mankind

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There is a very well-known cliché that goes “our children are the future.” This line usually gets bandied about around the time educational programs receive another drastic cut in funding as politicians carefully avoid targeting the pork spending that repays their sponsors and gives them a chance for reelection. But in this new era, I have a new phrase for our over-materialistic, over-monetized, and dehumanized society: “people are the future.”

It seems rather obvious, doesn't it? There isn't a future, at least in terms of the human race, if there are no people in it. In Darwinian terms, life is a struggle for survival, with the best coming out on top. Those least suited to survival become extinct, either through being unable to adapt to their environment, or with help from outside factors, such as predators and humanity itself. The biggest goal of any species is survival and reproduction, ensuring a small immortality through its progeny and the continuation of its species. However, humans, supposedly the smartest of all of the animals on Earth, have elected to embark on a program of self-decimation that would certainly reduce its viability as a species, especially in the matter of its future progeny.

Allow me to explain in more depth. As civilization has expanded, and especially in the past two hundred years, observers have collected data to compare and analyze the patterns of growth in various nations. From there, a model arose called demographic transition. Demographic transition predicts the changes in birth and death rates as a result of industrial changes. Initially, there were only four stages of transition, but the need for a fifth stage has become obvious. Each stage corresponds to a different point in economic development, and I will explain each one succinctly.

Stage I defines pre-industrial society, where birth and death rates are both high and the general growth rate is low. The human population would boom when food was abundant, and would collapse during times of famine. As such, people were at the mercy of nature when it came to population growth and death. At present, no country in the world is still in Stage I.

Stage II can be defined as the high growth period of a society's population. During Stage II, the crude death rate plummets, while the crude birth rate remains high. This is typically the result of industrialization, as the process produces more efficient food production techniques and frees up labor for the manufacture of other goods. The wealth produced by these manufacturers is then typically invested in improved sanitation and medical care, amongst other pursuits. This combination of factors results in more food becoming available, people living longer, and an increase in both wealth and its level of priority.

Stage III is the first deliberate drop in the crude birth rate. During Stage III, the birth rate begins to decline, resulting in more modest population growth. Social and economic changes result in the drop in growth as people begin to deem children an economic handicap. I will address Stage III in more detail later in this article.

Stages IV and V deal with zero growth and negative growth, respectively. In Stage IV, demographic transition has achieved a perfect equilibrium where birth and death rates are equal, and, theoretically, there is a large population perfectly balanced between expansion and contraction. Stage V, however, deals with a society that is declining in population, as the death rate exceeds the birth rate, and the society becomes an aging community that can no longer sustain itself.

In a sense, the global economy is still in Stage II, with new advances in agriculture, such as flood-resistant rice and other modern food miracles are introduced with greater frequency even as people pour money into researching ways to postpone Death, as if Death were the greatest enemy of mankind. However, at the same time, there has been a great alteration in attitude regarding people and children. During Stage III, children are deemed an economic liability, an irritating distraction from the far more important matter of self-gratification. After all, you have to feed children, clothe them, educate them, even sometimes go so far as actually raise them, and who would want to do that when developed countries (developed countries that are deep within Stages IV and V, might I add) have indoctrinated their people to believe that they are special, that there is no need for children to clutter your life with when the purpose to life is to get everything you want. Turn on any television and that’s the message you will receive.

As always, there is more to it than money, though not much. Feminism and the so-called sexual revolution have their own roles to play in this general scorn for children. For all their protestations otherwise, the majority of modern feminists consider children and even the traditional family as ‘parasites sucking out the living strength of another organism’ or a subtle sort of oppression that gives women a competitive disadvantage against men. Being a woman is no longer respected; being a mother is considered a crime against the general female sisterhood. With that, feminism launched a full-blown assault on many laws that protected the woman who chose to be wife and homemaker and left them vulnerable.

There is more to this, of course. Feminism has co-opted the term women’s rights, so any opposition to feminism is then painted as sexism and opposition to women’s rights. Women should be protected, cherished, appreciated, and respected. However, that does not mean that the traditional role of homemaker should be treated as not only shameful, but as a hindrance. Homemakers put in more working hours than even the most workaholic CEO, and they work with the most fragile and defenseless part of society: our children. When did bearing and raising children become a mark of shame, when it is both the most difficult and most rewarding part of life?

Again, there is more. Recently, some green gurus have declared that having more than two children is bad for the environment, to the point where they suggest shifting money from curing illnesses to forcing family planning and contraception on us all. Humans are indeed the largest variable factor and the biggest agent of change in our habitat, the Earth. But as I’ve already noted, when you supposedly attempt to balance the population, you actually move to force it into decline. Stage IV inevitably leads to Stage V, as Britain, Spain, France and a half-dozen others can grimly testify as they struggle to encourage people to have children to replace the previous generation.

Not only that, but environmental groups attempting to bring pressure against having more than two children is hypocrisy of the highest order. The biggest effect people have on the environment is not only through their carbon footprint, but also through the chemicals we produce and use. Recent studies have demonstrated an alarming feminization of male fish and other similarly vulnerable animals. While these studies have been very politically correct and typically evasive in avoiding placing any blame, I certainly have no problem in pointing out one of the biggest things at fault: the pill. Women ingest the pill to avoid getting pregnant. However, the female body can not process all the estrogen inside of the pill, and as such, it is expelled through female urine. Water treatment plants are unable to remove estrogen from water effectively, and higher and higher doses of estrogen go into the water supply, where they will inevitably be cycled back into humans. Rendering a male population sterile unambiguously means the end of the species. If you really want to be environmentally friendly, why not advocate less use of the pill? It does far more harm in the long-term than a baby.

People are the future. This simple phrase encompasses everything in this article. However, that future is in jeopardy, not to outside forces, but to our own selfishness. The planet and even the universe would not notice our disappearance, but self-extinction because mankind is too busy seeking self-gratification to fulfill the basic biological imperative to renew itself? To become extinct because our cultures, the traditions that we have used to guide ourselves to the future, fade away to be replaced by a society that cares nothing for life and inextricably heading toward death? Are we certain that mankind is not the dumbest animal on Earth?

Sources
The Cultural Landscape, An Introduction to Human Geography, James M. Rubenstein, Prentice Hall, 2002
Fighting Hunger with Flood-tolerant Rice
Longevity Pill Tested in Humans
Feminism vs Women's Rights
You Don't Know Feminism
Two Children Should Be Limit, Says Green Guru
Animals’ Sexual Changes Linked to Waste, Chemicals
Study links river pollution to 'feminization' of male fish
Shaping Our Legacy: Reproductive Health and the Environment