Spirit in Turmoil

06.07.2010

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the Mother Jones article I spent so much time on and part of me is so angry. I’m angry because I’m taking so much into consideration and I’m angry because I feel like I’m alone in thinking about the future generations. Our educators aren't, many parents aren't, and our politicians sure as hell aren't.

I’m also angry that I feel like I need to sacrifice having a child because our world is so overpopulated while people pop out babies sometimes by the tens, or 20s if families like the Duggar family keep it up. It angers me that I care so much and that I’m unable to find a balance. I feel that if we have a baby I am betraying everything that I stand for environmentally and, if we don’t, then I’ve given in to those who keep having babies by saying, “I’ll sacrifice on your behalf.”

And, although I want to adopt and have wanted to since I was 15, I’m learning that it’s not as easy as it seems and it can cost into the tens of thousands of dollars to do so...money we don't have.

Why…why is it so hard to want to do the right thing?

The Dangers of Education, Part II

06.04.2010

One of the solutions that the journalist in the Mother Jones article that I referred to yesterday wrote about is “education.” Ironic, of course, because I opened my entry yesterday about how depressing it can be when one is educated and able to think critically.

There have been a number of studies that have shown that when a group of people is educated, the benefits of living rise exponentially. This is self-explanatory, I think, but what surprised me greatly was the fact that most illiterate people in the world are women. Actually, that fact alone doesn’t surprise me. Men, who make up most of governments, have always tried to suppress women and a lack of education is a very good way to suppress anybody. But I digress.

I’m sure we’ve all heard of microloans where a person in a poorly developed country, mostly a woman, receives a small scale loan of some sort to help her provide for her family. It can range from a monetary loan to being provided with a goat or some other animal to help her make some money.

A Bangladeshi man by the name of “Muhammad Yunus founded Grammen (“villages”) Bank in 1983. His revolutionary model was to loan to the unloanable poor – notably women – who lacked collateral, enabling them to develop their own businesses and free themselves from poverty. This radical innovation won Yunus the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.” Next is the clincher: “Empirical studies now support his intuition of 27 years ago: Women make better loan recipients than men if your aim is to increase family well-being. Compared to men’s loans, women’s loans double family income and increase child survival twenty-fold…[In other words,] The best 21^st-century contraceptive is a Yunusian device, a microloan.”[1]

When a woman is educated enough at least to take a loan and support herself, she sees the world a little differently and may have fewer children so that they can have a better life than she growing up. More money provides an opportunity for a better quality of life.

Many Americans have a better quality of life, but I think what’s happened is we’ve become greedy. We want 4 cars for a two-adult household, we want to be able to take whatever we want and use it because, by golly, we’re entitled to it. Right? But our selfishness and greed is destroying our future. But, I guess, because we don’t immediately feel the affects of our actions daily and right away, we choose to ignore it. And as long as we keep popping out babies, the notion is that we won’t be around in 100 years to feel the affects of our decisions of today, so why should we care? Our great-grandchildren won’t know who we are personally so there’s no deep investment that far down the line. What matters is that our emotional needs of having babies are satisfied now.

I leave with the following to think about:[2]

[1] pp. 41-42.

[2] p.31.

The Dangers of Education, Part I

06.03.2010

I sometimes feel a burden of being educated and being able to think critically. I know how that sounds. I know it makes me arrogant and self-righteous. But education does bring an extra layer of worry. Keeping up with various topics and, for the purposes of this blog, keeping up with the issues of children, it’s exhausting to read an article and look into our future and see how grim it can be.

I picked up a magazine that I never read called Mother Jones. I’ve heard of it and seen it at my mom’s house before, but I’ve never actually read it. I picked it up because the cover page was titled “Who’s to Blame for the Population Crisis? A) the Vatican B) Washington C) You.” Under each choice is a sketch of the Pope covering his eyes, Uncle Sam covering his ears and a woman covering her mouth (based on the famous “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” motif). I immediately picked up the magazine because the issue of our global population crisis is one of the top reasons why I still have no child.

The article is mainly about India and I suppose the reason for that is because the population crisis there is emblematic of what the future holds for us. Much of India’s farmland has become desert with others in the process of becoming a desert. Topsoil in the US has long eroded shrinking our own farmland because of irresponsible farming practices as well as the demand for food outgrowing our ability to produce it. This prompted companies like McDonald’s to go to South America and start destroying the Amazon in order to graze cattle for beef to feed the need for our demand of fast food.

Globally, the tipping point came in 1983, “when our population of nearly 4.7 billion began to consume natural resources faster than they could be replenished – a phenomenon called ‘ecological overshoot.’ Last year, 6.8 billion of us consumed the renewable resources of 1.4 Earths.”[1]

What scared me immensely is the following statistic. “Planned or not, 139 million new people are added every year: more than an entire Japan, nearly an entire Russia…Countered against the 56 million deaths annually, our world gains 83 million extra people every year, the equivalent of another Iran. That’s 1.6 million more humans alive this week than last week and 227,000 more people today than yesterday – all needing food, water, homes, and medicine for an average lifespan of 69 years. We are asking our world to supply an additional 2.1 trillion human-days of life support for every single year. Eventually, most of these 83 million new people added every year will have kids, too.”[2]

How do I justify in my head bringing another human being into this world that is drowning in human population? How do I justify it?

The common misconception is that we are killing the Earth and one day, species will be extinct and we (humans) will all become extinct too. But the fact of the matter is that while we are killing parts of the Earth, she will survive. WE are killing ourselves and our future by overpopulating the Earth and using and abusing her resources for our own selfishness. Earth will figure out a way to survive. She has done so for decades and decades and decades. One of the ways she pays us back for our abuse is providing droughts. About 50,000 Europeans were killed in 2003 because of a heat wave while also slashing crops harvest by as much as 36%.[3] India is now experiencing a drought and we have begun to experience one in the US. Ever notice the water conservation ads that have started to hit the ad waves both on TV and on billboards? By over consuming and by the grace of our arrogance, we are killing ourselves. Not the Earth.

Do I want to bring a child into this?

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[1] Whitty, Julia Mother Jones Vol. 35, No. 3, San Francisco, CA, June 2010, pp. 27-28.

[2] p.34

[3] p. 31.