Runaway Fruitfulness

Back in 1942 the world population was calculated to be two billion. Today, in a mere sixty-seven years, the world population is hurtling toward seven billion!

For some head-in-the-sand reason, world overpopulation has been pretty much treated as a taboo subject for too long as a media concern. This avoidance is practiced in spite of the fact that global poverty and possible ecological catastrophe are directly tied to the explosive increase of human lives.

Once upon a time, of course, multiple children were valued as a resource for the parents in their declining years. Technology and science contributed toward healthier offspring and protection from diseases, so runaway fruitfulness was/is no longer necessary as a means of self-insurance.

The so-called sacred books of man's religions catered to this preservation tactic, and in addition almost universally indulged in the idea that exploiting the planet was their "divine right." The instruction for this was supposedly stated by god: Be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). At that particular point in the priest-written story, the "man" created in the image of god was something like a hermaphrodite. How "he" was to "replenish the earth and subdue it" hovers like a divine mystery: sexual reproduction could not have been an active issue until after the strategically placed "forbidden fruit" had been nibbled (chapter three of Genesis).

This "revealed wisdom" and instruction, unfortunately, implied that all entities are expected to become breeders for god! Leaders of most religious sects all subscribed to that teaching for the simple reason that it assured an increase in their followers. This is still the mindset of those seeped in the illogicality of religious storytelling and look upon bearing numerous children as an expression of god's love and abundance. This irrationality is so pronounced even today that various national leaders advocate childbirth bounties!

The present world population is ecologically unsustainable. History has shown clearly that in periods when human population increased up to sevenfold there followed disasters of unpresedented food shortages, escalating prices for essentials, followed by rampage and riots--even cannibalism. But still we have religious resistance to contraceptives, sexual information, and taugh aversion of same sex attraction--which well may be Nature's way of keeping resources and life forces in balance for a habitable planet.