World Over-Population

Dan Brown's Inferno
I recently finished listening to a new audiobook, that of the novel Inferno by popular author Dan Brown. I wanted to post about this because the issue of population features heavily in the book, and it is one particularly close to my heart as it were.


In the story, returning protagonist and art historian Robert Langdon faces a race against time to stop the release of a virus developed by seemingly crazed transhumanist (see below) scientist Bertrand Zobrist. The story is not the main subject of this post but I'll just say that I did enjoy the book. It was fast paced, exiting and well written with Brown's normal riddles, puzzles and symbol-based challenges for Langdon to solve.

I hadn't previously heard much about transhumanism

The Wikipedia definition: Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.



Inferno no doubt paints a bit of a straw man concerning transhumanism - it would be easy to read the book and go away with the impression that it is a dangerous movement, that needed to be stopped. My own views are somewhat sympathetic towards transhumanism. I am very much for the development of technology that would allow us to transfer those aspects of our minds that make us human into another form, be that genetically engineered, or digitised, that was better able to survive the unknown challenges of the future.

This thinking is aligned with the notion that quality is better than quantity, i.e. at the moment we are over-populating the planet, whereas what we should really be doing is concentrating technological development towards transgenic or artificial intelligence solutions, to the problem of survival in inhospitable environments for instance.

The virus deployed by the transhumanist in Inferno, touted at first as something to control the world's population, we assume by recreating the effects of the Black Plague, actually turns out to be a sterility plague. Its only effect is it causes about one-third of humans to become sterile - so nobody dies as a direct consequence of the virus.

The notion of a sterility plague is explored in some depth in the Mass Effect series of video games. Here a prolific and violent alien race called the Krogan are affected by a genetically engineered virus called the genophage, that effectively renders 99.9% of krogan infertile (only 1 in 1000 pregnancies is viable). This is widely seen as a big mistake and overly harsh punishment; ethnic cleansing and a despicable act. Although it is possible to take a more pragmatic view (the Krogan did need to be controlled at the point when the virus was deployed) the game leaves you in no doubt that it was nothing more than a morally questionable means-to-an-end. It even goes so far as to make you reverse the effects of the virus (or at least appear to) in order to get the krogans' help later in the series.

With a much lower efficacy than the genophage, Zobrist's plague in Inferno is not as extreme. It is only intended to curb population growth rather than quickly bring numbers under strict control. And the krogan have a short life span and are very war-like so the lack of replacements for their high death rates rapidly reduced their numbers in Mass Effect. The situation is thankfully different for humanity in Inferno.

I did like the way Inferno asked the grown-up question of whether we should even try and stop the effects of Zobrist's plague once they had been unleashed. In other TV shows etc. I have seen any hint of sterility enforcement has been met with utter rejection and demonisation, so I was pleased to see the book push the real need and possible benefits of it. Of course what we should consider when exploring these ideas is the need to make the effect of such a virus indiscriminate, so as not to be seen as trying to influence the racial composition of the population.

The fact that no-one really wants to discuss the serious need for population control, in the world today of over 7 billion people, is extremely concerning to me. If ever there were a massive elephant in the room, this is it. Just as I don't want to see religious people wallow in their comfort zones - and challenge their beliefs, we shouldn't rule out any thinking not aligned with the biblical "go forth and multiply" mantra.

From a consequentialist perspective, such a plague as described in Inferno is not as bad an idea as some people may think. Whilst it may ultimately be too extreme an answer to the population problem, the thought of such a virus not being the worst possible solution (as in worse than wiping each other out in the future over acquisition of resources) is a sobering thought that we should all consider.



Population Matters
Formerly the Optimum Population Trust, Population Matters are a group advocating for a lower world population enabling more effective and rapid solutions to problems of environment, ecology and sustainability.

I wholeheartedly agree with the aims and goals of Population Matters and follow them on Facebook. They are doing important work in challenging the conventional view that technology will ultimately provide all the solutions to these problems. Whilst this is certainly possible, I can't see how trying to effectively manage population and limiting growth rates would not assist in this regard, either lowering the scope of the "damage" or giving us more time to find technological solutions, or both.

I accept that it is unreasonable to expect the population of developing countries to fall into line with these aims - that's why we in the Western world should be setting the example and be attempting to slowly reduce our national populations. This is one of the few areas where I don't completely agree with reformed environmental activist Mark Lynas, who has now taken on a more scientific approach to environmental advocacy. I'll hopefully return to this later when I review his book The God Species.

You might want to take a look at their website. It makes it all too obvious the challenges that the environment, standards of living and resources all face with continuing population growth. We cannot continue on this path forever.






Advocating for anti-procreation
 Recently I've started following this Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Advocacy-for-Anti-Procreation/250119691710353?fref=ts



They have some very interesting posts and ideas.

I would like to raise some pretty controversial questions: Do we have a right to expect to be able to have children?

I would argue, no we don't. With the spiralling world population in mind - Bearing children and raising a family is a luxury that we will probably not all be able to engage in, in future generations. I am for researching the technology for fertility treatment, but not necessarily making it available for people who can't naturally have children - certainly not for free on the health service. Explain to me - rationally and objectively, without resorting to heteronormative, ideologically motivated or religiously rooted reasons, why it is worse than being a "family man" to be someone who works all their life paying into the state and does not leave a genetic legacy? Why is the latter not a viable and accepted alternative?


Is it too easy to become a parent?
I would say a most definitive yes. We only need look at examples of people who are parents who are so obviously not suitable to be such. It's hard for me to avoid the conclusion that us humans are just too fertile for our own good.


Furthermore, the low rate of adoption around the world is shameful, being hampered by incredibly strict requirements that simply do not exist for erstwhile parents of newborns. Is it even ethically acceptable to bear your own children, all the while knowing that many thousands of children already exist that you could love and give a fulfilling existence? Are we still so tied to leaving our own genetic legacies to the world? This is a perfectly reasonable question for a consequentialist, which no-one seems to want to answer.

I have also witnessed a curious and vile hatred towards those few women who announce whilst at "child-bearing" age that they do not want any children, ever. The so-called childfree. They are routinely abused and demonised - but these are the same women I know to be fantastic individuals who are responsibly making a positive choice, to try and help reduce their environmental and financial impact on the world. I have a huge respect for them. This hatred to such a noble goal simply is unacceptable behaviour.

Strangely enough there seem to be quite a few of these great women in the skeptic, atheist and humanist communities. Being so sensible must go with the territory!

I am just asking questions here, and challenging the behaviour that everyone seems to take for granted. We all just seem to think it's OK to just have as many kids as we want or can support - I don't necessarily share this opinion.

This post is not about telling people what they should or should not be doing. It's about challenging existing preconceptions of acceptable social norms and asking if there are alternatives.