Whenever I bring up (in conversation) population size/growth I always get the “Lindsay’s at it again, that girl is crazy!” side glances.
Am I the only one who thinks that over population of our planet is one of our biggest worries?
In the short 24 years I’ve been on this planet we have put over a billion people on it! Is this not completely absurd? I can only imagine how many people we will create in the next 24, 50, 100 years.
I have given up on the thought of having my own children simply because of these figures. I cannot knowingly put more beings on this planet, while there are millions of children, teens and adults alike starving for a better life (I hope to adopt one day). This does not mean that I am in any way against people having children of their own. My sister gave birth to twins a little under a month ago and I have begun to worry about their future. Will they have enough food to eat, water to drink, air to breathe when they are my age or older? Will their children or their children’s, children be starved of these necessities? What kind of life will they live on this depleting planet?
I thought the reason for procreation was about the survival of the species? To create a new generation of species hopefully stronger and more resilient than the last. Now reproduction seems more of a recreation, than a survival mechanism. We are taught (at least in western society) that the measure of a good life is getting and education, entering a career, finding a mate and having children. This is a good life…or is it? We seem to be breeding at excessively high rates and the offspring, I find aren’t stronger or more adaptable than the last. In fact, they are in many ways weaker(this generation is expected to be the first generation that will not outlive their parents). I agree that every generation opens their mind a bit more which is promising but the fact that we are still teaching our children to rely so heavily on non-renewable resources and technology, frightens me. These things will too run out, these things will too come to an end and then what?
I was born in the late eighties, both my grandparents and parents grew up without television, without running water, my dad(along with his brothers) even hunted pheasants and rabbits to put food on the table. I grew up hearing “When I was a kid we didn’t have blah, blah, blah.” I was always highly aware that the conveniences of today were just that, conveniences. I worry that the kids born in the new millennia will never care to learn about how life was before the industrialized revolution. When I was young the past was still very close, only 40-50 years earlier were things much different. However, today it is closer to a century, we are living in the science fiction novels of the late 1800 and early 1900’s. It is hard even for me sometimes to see how far we have come in such a short period of time, hard mainly because it is worrisome. We move so fast in todays society, barely able to wait for the next big thing, already working on the next big thing before the last big thing even came out. Only the big thing is not saving us, it’s killing us.
Here is a few concepts for thought. We spend all this time and money on finding a cure for cancer, surgeries for obesity, pills for mental illness, but we spend little to no time on figuring out why these have become so common in our society. I think it is something like 1-4 people will have some type of cancer in their life, 42% of Americans are over-weight and it seems that almost everyone knows someone who has or had some form of metal illness (I myself have family members currently fighting with all three of these diseases). Why can we not put some effort into figuring out what is causing this cancer, this obesity, this mental illness?(these are only a few of the problems we face daily).
I for one believe much of it is coming from the food we put into our bodies that is laced with chemicals and jam packed with ridiculous amounts of salt and sugar. The air we breathe everyday, all day is becoming more and more contaminated. We are demolishing the very things this planet needs to support our livelihood. We are not even close to as active as we were just 50 years ago, we also live in a high stress, face paced global society, which leaves us with little to no time for meditation and reflection. People rarely take the time to be grateful for what they have because they always think they need more, that they have the right for more.
I am not suggesting I have the answers to these problems. I am not a scholar, but I am a human, a human that is hoping for a better future for all life on this planet. I still have hope for mankind (even with all it’s issues) I feel we can make a change if we start talking about the things that we are ignoring everyday, and start putting action to our words.
This seems to be another one of those blogs where I start somewhere and end up somewhere completely different. I don’t want to these words to be preachy. I am not the knower of all things, I only write what I feel, and today and many days this is how I feel. Why I worry about these things, I do not know, all I know is I do, I worry for you and me, for the trees and the bees! (always good to end a serious blog with a rhyme!)
Peace and Love
Lindsay, The Non-Knower of things 🙂
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