Nguyen Ba Thanh wonders if death by old age is civilisation’s destiny.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/116/Is ... tural_Fate
Is An Ageing Population Our Natural Fate?
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Re: Is An Ageing Population Our Natural Fate?
Well, good news if population doesn't grow faster, it would be good if it stop growing. And we live more than before.
Re: Is An Ageing Population Our Natural Fate?
Dear Editor: It seemed odd that Nguyen Ba Thanh, in his article ‘Is an Aging Population Our Natural Fate?’ (Issue 116), would take such a catastrophic view of our declining birthrates. All I saw was good news. But he seemed to be describing something similar to the movie The Children of Men. Perhaps his focus on the self indulgence of the "modern lifestyle" might have led him to overlook other possibilities. For one, in a world in which a handful of people are feasting at the table, and everyone else is fighting for the scraps, it may be that most people don’t have the resources (both time and money) to bring more children into the world. But more significantly, it may be that it is just the right thing to do.
Thanh describes a kind of Kierkagaardian aesthete and declares their indulgences irresponsible. But if anyone is being irresponsible, it would be him. This seems clear in his complete neglect of the population’s impact on the environment: either through manmade climate change or the depletion of our natural resources. And what scares me most is how many people share his obliviousness. Corporate media, for instance, ignores it completely. And to add insult to injury, we have had American reality TV shows like 19 and Counting which elicited us to fawn over a big, happy family when (setting the scandals aside) all we should have seen was justification for eliminating the child tax credit after the third child.
Even more perplexing is Thanh's concern that by practicing birth control, we are wiping out our species. Then how is it that, at a much lower body count, and working under far more brutal circumstances, our species managed to get us where we are? We did, after all, survive a plague in which a third of our population was wiped out. Even in the extreme situation of a Children of Men scenario, all a bigger population would do is put off the inevitable.
Thanh basically offers solutions to a non-existent problem. And the only reason I see government getting involved, as he suggests, is to prop up the expansionary values of producer/consumer Capitalism. But those solutions can only contribute to the very real problems we do have. No doubt, he is accomplished. But I’m just not getting his math. Mine tells me that the more people there are, the bigger the strain on our resources. Therefore, if we are to survive as a species, we have to, first and foremost, address and reign in population growth. It just seems common sense.
Thanh describes a kind of Kierkagaardian aesthete and declares their indulgences irresponsible. But if anyone is being irresponsible, it would be him. This seems clear in his complete neglect of the population’s impact on the environment: either through manmade climate change or the depletion of our natural resources. And what scares me most is how many people share his obliviousness. Corporate media, for instance, ignores it completely. And to add insult to injury, we have had American reality TV shows like 19 and Counting which elicited us to fawn over a big, happy family when (setting the scandals aside) all we should have seen was justification for eliminating the child tax credit after the third child.
Even more perplexing is Thanh's concern that by practicing birth control, we are wiping out our species. Then how is it that, at a much lower body count, and working under far more brutal circumstances, our species managed to get us where we are? We did, after all, survive a plague in which a third of our population was wiped out. Even in the extreme situation of a Children of Men scenario, all a bigger population would do is put off the inevitable.
Thanh basically offers solutions to a non-existent problem. And the only reason I see government getting involved, as he suggests, is to prop up the expansionary values of producer/consumer Capitalism. But those solutions can only contribute to the very real problems we do have. No doubt, he is accomplished. But I’m just not getting his math. Mine tells me that the more people there are, the bigger the strain on our resources. Therefore, if we are to survive as a species, we have to, first and foremost, address and reign in population growth. It just seems common sense.