The most awaited event of the year 2011 is obviously neither the next release of Rajnikant nor the IPL (not even the cricket world cup for that matter). The year 2011 will be remembered in the history of humanity for a similar but larger feat than the one in the year 1999. In 1999 the world supposedly witnessed the birth of the 6 billionth living human and in late 2011 we are going to witness the birth of the 7 billionth living human (in fact certain agencies are coming up with precise date and time and one lucky person would be given the honor of being the 7 billionth!!). The planet earth is having to bear the load of 7 billion creatures with 5 senses or more and all the nuisance they come up with day in and day out. We have environmental issues, climate change, inflation, poverty, unemployment, greed, ego, racism and a hundred other issues to be taken care of, and as the worlds population increases these problems are only going to increase manifold.
Could we have avoided this situation through some precautionary measures some time in the history of humanity? I guess the answer is yes, if our ancestors would have been rational and practical mainly. If we have such a huge population base today it’s our ancestors who are to be blamed. You must be wondering why am I so anti ancestral?
Just try and understand the following argument to realize what led to what and why we are in such an awful situation today. Most of our forefathers and the generations that followed have had 5+ children (There are a lot of them I know of who can form a cricket team) and those children have had their own families and then their children their own families and so on. The family tree kept growing, so did the population, without realizing the fact that their actions will lead to serious issues for the generations to come and it would in fact become a threat to their own family members of the future generation.
Now lets just say that our fore fathers were rational and conservative and had control over their actions by limiting the number of children to 2 or 3, at least 40%(a random guesstimate) of the population that the world has been a host to whether living or dead today might have never been there leading to layers of generations later on. And the number 7 billion that we are talking about today would have been a distant dream. All the troubles that we have to go through today would either have been non existent or we would not have been a part of the human species to witness the same.
Now that we are talking about restraint and family planning, if some of these things would have been put into the heads of our ancestors, may be the world would have been a far better place to live in today.
The question to which I don't seem to discover an answer while thinking about the whole population explosion thing is the rational or logic behind our ancestors wanting to have too many children, what joy did they get? Most of them were neither well off, nor had sufficient resources to take care of their children and their well being. Then why did they have to burden themselves with more people to take care of leading to more expenses and worries there of? As a result of actions of these ancestors that we are talking about a lot of their children remained uneducated, were subjected to child labor, made multiple sacrifices every now and then, always lived for a share in the pie and in some cases lacked proper care and upbringing leading to not so happy lives (this is strictly my assumption, though if this question is raised to any of the elder generations the answer would be totally opposite).
Did our forefathers not see the population explosion coming up? Were they so well to do that they assumed their earnings would serve the generations to come? I think the answer to the second question is an affirmative No, while to the first one it might be a no or a may be as our forefathers themselves faced lack of resources, so from where did they get a ray of hope that the situation might improve? I guess if they had a chance to go back in time and rewrite their life's story, it would be a completely different tale and state of affairs all together. Anyways now that our futures are in jeopardize, at least may their souls rest in peace. And the ones who are still breathing – "You Two, Ours One" is the way forward (as the Chennai auto’s convey) i guess.
P.S. – The trigger for this write up was this article on TOI a few days back. The family trees above were made by the author for the purpose of illustration. Only four generations have been shown in the illustration as the author feels a maximum of four generations may only see the light of the day in a century and its sufficient to consider a century in the context being discussed.
Today's Favorite Line - "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today's Favorite Song - What about now (West Life)
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