Over 8 billion Served
The news that we are now a planet of 8 billion people is welcome, good and glorious news.
This article by Leigh Phillips was such a beautiful one to read—and if you Google, “eight billion people on earth” or something similar, you probably won’t find it. What you will find is all manner of opinions about how the earth is over-populated and eight billion is too many, etc. It is a deluge of requiems by the onerous scolds who also claimed that by the late 1970’s, the earth would be out of food, or by 2010, the earth would be out of oil or that by 2020, there would be no rain forests….etc.
But none of those scolds points out what Phillips does in his research for the article. That research is inspiring and convincing, but I’d like to think that I didn’t need it and that I’m an optimist who naturally leans toward more people are better, not worse. As Phillips writes:
“…the late astronomer Carl Sagan described members of our species: “We are the local embodiment of a cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of 10 billion, billion, billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.”—Phillips
Phillips goes on to point out that all of these people means more advancement, more wonder—it is the creative individual who brought about sewage systems, antibiotics, agricultural revolutions and an enlightenment that allowed those things to spread over the globe.
It’s very easy, of course, to say, “yeah, but what about…?” But that is not a question that anyone, religious or atheist can keep asking with any honesty. If one believes in a divine source of life, then one must surrender to the sacred nature of it—and must finally acquiesce that simply intimating “there are too many people in the world,” means you must finally side with deciding which ones get to live and which ones get to die. And if one’s atheism means that they ultimately believe that human beings are at the head of the class of the self-aware, then that sense of humanity cannot ultimately suggest that one human can decide who lives and who dies with any legitimacy.
Phillips rightly points out that the advances we’ve made are not without challenges—that technological advances untethered to the equality of each human being is not going to free and liberate people—but the long work of humanity is to do just that, to free and liberate people so that they can rise up to the level for which they may aim. The work of our time is freedom for all, not control—not power, not authority, but true libertarianism that releases the eight billion from the chains that may bind them.
The enormous hubris of one person saying, “there are too many of us—we need to cull the herd,” is absurd and in the end, dangerous. To be sure, the nature of life will ensure that wars, disease, politically caused famines (nearly all such famines are entirely man-made, and not naturally evolving) and other catastrophes will indeed “cull the herd.” But who are we to say such arrogant things like “My family and I, and my friends are just fine—but those people over there should never have been born.” Does anyone really want to be on the side that says, “you get to live, but not you…”?The only response to such awful and ignorant reasoning is from the great Charles Dickens in my own favorite piece of literature, A Christmas Carol. The Ghost of Christmas Present, frustrated by Scrooge’s intransigence, says:
“Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child.”—Dickens
That is the only sentiment that can replace Scrooge’s dyspeptic misanthropy. Phillips points out the obvious challenges faced by a growing population, but he also points out how well we’ve mitigated such challenges—how the “emergencies” of what has come to be known, for example, as “climate change,” are a result of creative people providing answers to these problems. The data are very clear that life has gotten better not worse. But again, if you were to Google such things, you’d be hard pressed to find them. But they are there—Phillips links to this piece that reveals again the alarmism about earth’s future is fantasy, and largely tied to driving clicks on the Internet, not an actual emergency.
In this advent of the year, it seems truly fitting that we should welcome the newborn to our midst, to commit to their freedom and liberty and to give ourselves a chance to stop asking what’s wrong with this place, and start providing the building blocks to make it right again. That, as Phillips rightly points out, means committing to equality (not equity) among people, and bringing the englightened values of freedom and liberty to all so they can welcome the next generation with open—and free—arms.