I don't suppose a galactic observer is watching us. At least, not watching
us all the time. After all, there are likely to be billions of planets
around the universe capable of sustaining the type of carbon-based life as
we know it here on earth. Maybe there's a cricket-ball circling around and
filming us and, maybe, there are some galactic historians somewhere who
take a quick look at us once every century or so to see how we're doing.
Only a hundred spot-checks ago would have shown us to be a stabilized
species of perhaps two or three million individuals and fairly well spread
around the earth. Life was hard but, as gatherers, scavengers and hunters
we were successful enough. Like other species, we probably had a daily
average energy surplus of perhaps 1% above that which we needed to survive,
reproduce and raise our children.
Half-a-dozen spot-checks ago would also have shown us to be a stabilized
species. This time, however, we were several hundred million. Not only were
we spread around but we were cultivating every square yard of earth that
could be exploited by manual efforts -- from alluvial valleys and up the
sides of innumerable mountains that weren't too steep or too cold. Life
again was hard, but successful enough even though this time, because of our
inadequate, mainly vegetarian, diet, our genes were temporarily re-set to
produce an undersized body which didn't begin to recover its full hunter
size until the last spot-check in the case of Europeans and the present one
in the case of Asians.
A spot-check today would reveal a very de-stabilized population -- one
might say a schizophrenic one. Four-fifths of the world's population, not
restrained by infanticide, disease, periodic starvation and the like any
longer due to Western medical procedures, has been leaping forward and
won't start to stabilize for another spot-check or two. Contrariwise, one
fifth of the population, particularly in Western Europe and America, has
not only stabilized but half of them are already not replenishing
themselves and will be fast heading for extinction by the time of the next
spot-check.
And the four-fifths will probably follow them to extinction, too. They'll
either migrate into the countries with declining populations and copy their
ways of little more than one child per reproductive couple. Or they'll
continue migrating into grossly large metropolises -- about 100 of them --
around the world, and also copy the negative reproductive ways of urbanized
man, albeit in less congenial surroundings.
Depending on the psychology of the galactic historian, he may shrug his
shoulders and say, "A pity, but that's the usual way of a promising
species" or he may say, "M'mm . . . I wonder?".
He'll unreel today's film a bit to 2003 when the first draft DNA sequence
of man was published. "M'mm . . . I wonder?" Then he'll look at today's
film and note that there are hundreds of scientific teams around the world
who are rapidly revealing the nature and complexities of our genes and
(very recently) our epigenes. "M'mm . . . I wonder?"
"M'mm . . . I wonder? Maybe they are now beginning to realize that their
instincts are quite as powerful and quite as deep as the obvious ones they
have observed in all other species. Maybe they'll realize that, if they
can't do anything about the instinctive status-lust of the male, then
they'd better set about recreating the sort of social and governmental
systems in which the over-ambitious male can be de-throned before he can be
dangerous or tyrannical. Maybe they can learn how to breed children of more
health and intelligence than now and, maybe, re-learn the joys of having
two or more children per couple. M'mm . . . I wonder? I'll put their films
on the "Possibles" list for the time being."
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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