Nothing exceeds like excess
Nothing like a quote from Oscar Wilde to get started. I hear a lot of clammer about the aging demographics and how too few children being born and that we need to make babies to keep the economic engine rolling along. Not only is there clammer, but there is money as well. In Quebec they are paying folks to have more children, through their baby bonus. It’s even in the art. In Russia there are statues of pregnant mothers pushing baby carriages being erected (pardon the pun) as an ad for the virtues of procreation. Six-and-a-half billion people in the world and counting and somehow we still feel the need to make more.
I just finished a documentary mini series about a Persian philosopher and prophet named Zarathushtra. It took me to many places, but specifically, the relevant place as far as this ramble is concerned, is that it took me to Mumbai, the former city of Bombay in India. Nobody is telling the folks in Mumbai to get on the motherhood bandwagon. In case you didn’t know, Mumbai has a number of distinctions. It is the economic engine of India, home to Bollywood and has the largest slum in the world. Its population is 18-million, little more than half of Canada’s total all living in an area half the size of Prince Edward Island. And more than 17.5 of its fine citizens live in said slum. In fact, slums like Mumbai are according to the United Nations, the fastest growing segment of human population. More than a billion people worldwide now live in slums. That is one in six people on the face of the Earth. Sao Paulo, Rio de Janiero, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Manila, Moscow and the list goes on and on.
How is it that we can have the largest population of any species of animal ever, and still at the same time say that we need to make more of us! All in the name of consumption so that the economic forces that drive our society can stay stoked. Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic! Here is another quote, this time from an ancient cartoon called Pogo. “I have met the enemy….and the enemy is us”!