The really fascinating question which even the most intelligent people are
in total denial about is:
Why is modern life not worth living?
Intellectually, this is a ridiculous question. "Of course it is," is the
scathing response of most.
Genetically, however, it isn't a ridiculous question. Left to themselves,
modern parents in "advanced" industrial countries have not been
replenishing themselves for several decades. The Total Fertility Rate, far
from being a necessary 2 is now fast approaching 1 in all advanced
countries -- and could well go below that in the coming years. Without net
immigration of uneducated agriculturally-experienced people, the population
of every single advanced country is either declining, or will do so in the
next generation when the present crop of oldies dies off.
Intellectually, the above question may appear to be superfluous. After all,
the world is obviously still suffering -- already -- from gross
overpopulation to the tune of several nutritionally-deprived, undersized,
billions. Agricultural cultures of more than three or four children per
pair of parents have still not adjusted to the industrial age. They are now
urbanizing rapidly and having smaller families but it will still take
another two or three or four generations before stabilization ensues.
It is no use saying that -- with better methods of growing grain -- even
the present world surplus population could be fed adequately. They can't
be. For one thing, there isn't enough freshwater for much more agricultural
production. For another, the more prosperous part of the world's population
wants -- and will take -- a great deal of those carbohydrates to feed to
cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens (and, recently, farmed fish). A
protein-eating Westerner needs ten times the agricultural acreage than a
mainly vegetarian Third World person needs.
Will the people of the advanced world voluntarily adjust themselves to a
nutritionally-poor, mainly carbohydrate diet in order to share the whole
agricultural crop with the starving billions of the world? Of course not.
Genetically we are selfish. Human nature doesn't do this. Charity begins at
home and stays very local. International aid is guilty conscience at best
and political manipulation at worst.
Back to the first question. Only a very small proportion of the world's
population can possibly begin to answer it. Let us say -- at a pure guess
-- about 0.00001%! These belong to the profession of evolutionary biology.
And not all of these good souls -- for career and research-funding reasons
-- will go so far as to pose the question publicly.
The answer -- or, rather, the partial answer -- is that when the population
of a species is in decline it is because it is experiencing overwhelming
stress, subtle or ostentatious. The population of a species will decline
until the stresses disappear or reach manageable levels. If not, it goes
extinct.
So the other part of the answer -- which even evolutionary biologists
cannot yet be precise about -- is:
What are the stresses of living, working and commuting into and within
cities and suburbs in which 90% of advanced populations happen to exist?
Most of those have consumer-goods wealth far beyond anything that Queen
Victoria ever possessed. She was the Empress of a quarter of the earth's
land surface and lived only 100 years ago. Besides our fantastic
possessions, each of us has 50 times the equivalent of personal services
than even Queen Victoria's flunkies -- John Brown and all! -- could supply.
A partial part of the partial answer is that, somehow, cities -- and
perhaps consumer goods and services as presently experienced -- are not
good for us. At least, we probably need to regress to smaller communities
in which we've spent 99.9% of our genetic existence. But, apart from that
guess, there will be stresses somewhere in our urbanized way of life. And,
more than anybody else, evolutionary biologists will one day certainly
determine precisely what those crucial stresses are.
Until then -- if I were to live long enough -- I would keep my eyes open to
see whether any particular part of an advanced country population has, or
decides to have, more than two children per family. It could be the Old
Amish of America. Or it could be what I call the meta-class -- that
generally highly educated minority (including the most successful business
people, the best research scientists, etc) who have a great deal of freedom
where they live and work. If this sub-species exists, or comes into
existence, they will be the survivors. So far, the rest of us are going
extinct for reasons as yet unknown.
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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