Overpopulation

On today, my 25th birthday, I find this to be a fitting subject for a post.
Disease, infertility, famine, natural disasters.. I think the Earth is trying to tell us something. There’s too frickin many of us!!! If you have seen the movie Idiocracy you were probably, like me, quietly terrified by the plausibility of such a future. Just last week I watched a few minutes of a show my mom had recorded on the dvr about kids that live in hotels. One of the families was comprised of a mother working the night shift at a hospital, an unemployed father, two young boys, a daughter and shiny new baby. Why would you continue to reproduce in that situation?!?! Why are people who can’t afford to have kids having so many?? I’ll tell you why, it’s because they’re dumb Americans.  Dumb- because of their obliviousness about the planet they live on, American- because of their mindless adherence to the ways of media-driven consumerism.

“The Saintly Mother”
Religion and popular culture have bred a positive image of motherhood that I think is starting to backfire. Let’s get to the point here: is motherhood a beautiful thing? Absolutely. In this day and age are the sacrifices a mother makes for her children allusive to martyrdom? Debatable but I’ll say yes. So how has it backfired? Here are a couple of names you might know- The Duggar Family, Jon and Kate Gosselin, and Octo-mom. The Learning Channel has been shamelessly exploiting this phenomenon for years now. It’s all about the same message; life is horribly difficult with a boatload of kids but in the end it’s worth it and these mothers are superhuman. That’s another thing by the way, the role of father is still secondary it seems as I would guess the majority of the audience for these shows is women..but back to the subject. It’s no secret how kids are made. People have sex and babies happen. The ability to have children is something every human is born with (with exceptions here and there of course). I think, in the case of poor uneducated families they see the attention and empathy that the Duggars and Gosselins get (not to mention all the freebies from churches and charitable organizations) and see a niche they can easily and willingly relate to.  With shows like Jon and Kate plus eight we’re telling people that if they can have a lot of babies they can get support from their community and maybe even get famous. We need to redefine motherhood- quality over quantity people! Life is such an awesome gift, don’t depreciate it by selfishly reproducing. We all have to fit on this planet somehow save some room for other people, if not for the sake for the rest of the lifeforms on this planet.

IVF + Abortion
You know what, plain and simple- if you can’t have kids take it as a cue from mother nature to adopt. There are plenty of children out there who need homes. I’ve said in a previous post that yes, I’d like to contribute my genes to the pool by having one biological child (and I think every intellectual should if they can), but I’m not going to go against nature. We don’t interfere when a seagull snatches up a an endangered baby sea turtle but if a human family can’t produce human number 8,497,618,195 they’ll drop their life savings on in vitro fertilization. Man, we sure do make a grand exception for our own species when it comes to obeying the laws of nature. On the opposite end of the spectrum you have people inconvenienced by conception and so they just hop on down to the abortion clinic and have the problem “taken care of.” We are paying for services to give us the kids we want and get rid of the ones we don’t. Has life lost it’s meaning entirely? Why can’t everyone just be responsible? Use contraceptives, get your tubes tied, practice abstinence- have children at the right time and make sure you can support all their needs in a sustainable manner.

We have lost touch with nature. Our ignorance about what we are doing to our planet and our health is costing us billions of dollars every year. I think before anyone decides to start a family they should reach out to their origins as another species of organism on this planet and truly discover what it is to live on the Earth. When you see the way other animals fight for their right to live against predation and decreasing habitat maybe you will appreciate life more and be less inclined to belittle existence by excessively reproducing and greedily expecting the planet to pay for it.