"We have only one thing to give up.
Our dominion.
We don't own the world.
We're not kings yet.
Not gods.
Can we give that up?
Too precious, all that control?
Too tempting, being a god?"
--Anthony Hopkins, Instinct, 1999
Should we solve world hunger?
If so, how should we do this?
The growth rate of any population seems- based on a wealth of evidence from all species (humans most definitely included)- to be irrevocably tied to available food. Take a population of any species and give them access to enough food to support a higher population than currently exists and the population will (barring mitigating factors) grow at least until it reaches that higher population.
The population may overshoot of course and then crash as a result. Likewise, limiting factors such as available space or other factors may slow or stop population growth. But barring this, populations of anything will grow to the capacity dictated by the available food.
How then do we address world hunger? As soon as we hit the carrying capacity of the current food supply, those people on the margins will start to fall off into the less than gentle arms of natural selection. It happens this way in every population of every species we have ever found.
Are we looking at this the wrong way?
We see human life as sacred- or so I have been repeatedly told. But does that mean that the loss of any human life should be prevented? Obviously I do not wish to see anyone I care about die. But that wish does not change the biological imperative.
I have heard serious scientists who are actually attempting to eradicate aging, speak of old age as though it were a disease. Aging is one of the few things that keeps our near geometric population growth in check. I do not wish to see people die, but I understand that this is how life works.
It starts, it travels a certain distance and then it stops- consumed to fuel the next starting life.
If we seek to prevent the final stage, we remove one quarter of the wagon wheel upon which life turns. A world where nobody died would crush with a human population that would strip the Earth bare like locusts. A world without hunger would devour the Earth in a single day as population exploded like a nuclear bomb across the globe. Lining the oceans with cities would not prevent our very speedy demise in such as case.
Perhaps in our obsession with abstract ideals, we have forgotten that nothing is abstract and we are not special. Our time, as a species, as a culture and as individuals is finite.
We may strive to prolong our stay, but to do so in a manner which ends the whole experiment of life on Earth is bad form.
We are not worthy of special attention as species go. We were not made special on the sixth day. We do not have special dispensation to ignore biological law.
Hunger is a feature of life, not a problem. It will persist as long as life persists. The problem is that we fancy ourselves as gods- and think that we have the right to say "No, this shall not be!"
One day soon we may wake up to find that our Godhood was a delusion that lead us off a cliff and into a free fall towards a canyon floor with which we cannot survive colliding.
No comments:
Post a Comment