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WE NEED TO FEED THE WORLD
In order to insure that the Earth become a sustainable
planet, with resources and population held in balance, we need first to
insure that all be fed so that an equality of interests and needs can
exist on a global level.
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There are some things that are so fundamental to our outlook on life and to our way of life that we no longer think of them as moveable or changeable. We hold them as 'facts' of life, rather than merely as prejudices or preferences. And we delay questioning these presumed 'facts' since they are longstanding and seem to insure the continuation of our own comfort and security.
Such is the outlook of many when it comes to a discussion of population control, of the 7.2 billion already living on the planet and the exponential growth of these 7.2 million by the end of the century. With diminishing resources and expanding populations, many ask how a sustainable planet can be brought into existence.
The means for introducing birth control has been widely discussed, with many cultures having their own ideas about this, and many populations still reluctant to accept this on a wide scale. However, the reasons for non-acceptance may have less to do with a lack of education concerning birth control than with an overriding need to maintain large families that precedes, in importance, the need to balance resources and population.
What is this overriding need?
It is the need to survive and to maintain oneself and one's family under conditions of deprivation, hopelessness, and often of despair.
How does this affect population control?
Those who perpetuate large families are doing many things in relation to such a choice:
- they are affirming ancient cultural traditions
- they are creating a larger family pool of those who might work to contribute to the family income
- they are maintaining a standard of 'success' and 'virility' by bringing children into the world
- they are creating 'insurance' in the presence of a higher mortality rate for infants at childbirth and a higher mortality rate of children due to childhood diseases
What needs to happen in order to alter this?
If we want to control population growth, if we want to have a global population that recognizes and adheres to the needs of the planet,
WE NEED TO FEED THE WORLD.
(And this includes the invisible world of those who go hungry or are 'food insecure' within developed countries such as the U.S.)
We need to insure that families in poorer nations will not go hungry while those in wealthier nations are overfed.
We need to insure that childbirth practices will be supported by the best medical knowledge and the best available emergency resources that are currently present in only a portion of the world.
- We need to make western medicine and pharmacological advances available to the rest of the world, rather than, as it presently stands, offering medicines to undeveloped nations at prohibitive costs
WE NEED TO FEED THE WORLD WITH TECHNOLOGY, MEDICINE, and especially with the local resources for people to produce their own FOOD.
We can no longer afford to complain, in the West, about the combined dangers to the planet due to diminishing resources and expanding population. We can no longer speak of the world as if it is our personal world, our personal way of life that is at risk.
WE NEED TO FEED THE WORLD because it is all 'our' world, and because only in this way can we preserve the planet and its resources.
Such a perspective has been articulated by many, for decades. It is not new. It is not unheard of. And yet it has not taken root in mainstream consciousness in a way that has allowed governments and the economic structures that influence them to alter their worldview, to see their future as inextricably connected to the future of the planet as a whole.
The time for changing this worldview is coming and has arrived, a time in which the necessity for this shall become clear to people everywhere because of the changes that the current planetary situation shall bring, and because of a changed consciousness that shall alter, forever, the idea of 'survival of the fittest,' or 'every person for themselves.'
Out of necessity shall come a willingness to accept what has been unacceptable before, not simply out of a desire for survival, but because the recognition of oneness shall become clearer to every human heart, and the need to care for all human beings as of equal value shall emblazon itself upon every mind.
This moment of clarity has not yet arrived but it is at our doorstep. May its coming light be bright and clear so that those in doubt may cease to wonder, and those in fear of the loss of their own security may feel reassured.
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