re: #335 Right Brain

Eon, undoubtedly all countries are having a reduced birthrate due to the changes in agriculture. I had this thought first when sitting on a panel at the National Arts Club, in Grammercy Park in NYC someone was making fun of Sarah Palin, at the time Governor of Alaska, in control of roughly 13% of the proven oil reserves and mother of five children, all hers by birth. And I looked about the room, perhaps a third of whom I knew, and I counted two kids among thirty people. And I had this thought, which seems proximate enough for me, that creationists reproduce, why is immaterial, or at least no more materials than why certain other species are selected for. I find it holds true from place to place.

And by the definition of Darwinian selection are being selected for.

The why is indeed eminently material; they do so because their religions tell them to. That’s what makes it memetic rather than genetic. And it’s not a good thing.

Ecological degradation may be divided into natural resource depletion and biosphere pollution, but both have overpopulation as a root cause. Overpopulation drives us like lemmings to mow our global lungs for farmland, lumber and cattle pasture, sapping species diversity in the process. It drives us to strip-mine our eroding soil to build skyscrapers, cars and soda cans. It drives us to burn our fossil fuels, overheating our atmosphere and decimating our ozone sunscreen for the sake of light, mobility, plastic containers and air-conditioned comfort for a small percentage of our teeming billions. It drives us to turn our over-fished oceans into toxic cesspools when our rivers bear our pesticides, factory byproducts and sewage to the seas. Furthermore, the resulting competition for room and resources on a shrinking sphere has led our infant race to nurse the barrel of the nuclear gun.

It is ecologically imperative that we control our rate of reproduction generally, and the fundamental pillar of feminism that women must have the right to control their own reproduction individually. To this dovetailing of the calls of personal freedom and global necessity, the fundamentalist responds with an iron demand frozen for thousands of years in the face of catastrophically changing circumstances; you must be fruitful and multiply.