BBC Radio 4 - Reith Lectures 2007 - Lecture 4: Economic Solidarity for a Crowded Planet:Ahhh. I have thought so much and so long about this very topic. The story of that would take far too long to tell, so instead I shall tell a story from the year 2015. It has been 3 years since the Zorgonians first landed their saucers at the UN ...
.. .The fourth challenge, excessive population growth, is similarly susceptible of practical and proven solutions. Fertility rates in rural Africa are still around 6 children or more. This is understandable, if disastrous. Poor families are worried about the high rates of child mortality, and compensate by having large families. Poor families lack access to contraception and family planning. Girls often are deprived of even a basic education, because the family cannot afford it, and are instead forced into early marriage rather than encouraged to stay in school. And the value placed on mothers' time is very low, in part because agricultural productivity is itself so low. With few opportunities to earn remunerative income, mothers are pushed - often by their husbands or the community - to have more children.
Yet, as shown by countless countries around the world, fertility rates will fall rapidly, and on a voluntary basis, if an orderly effort is led by government with adequate resources. Investments in child survival, contraceptive availability, schooling of children, especially girls, and higher farm productivity, can result in a voluntary decline in total fertility from around six to perhaps three or lower within a single decade. But these things will not happen by themselves. They require resources, which impoverished Africa lacks...
... No more disease. Our children shall live centuries. Zorgonian technologies will allow us unlimited energy production with no greenhouse gas emissions. It is all we have dreamed of, and yet ...I trust the analogy is obvious. A wonderful prize offered, but a prize with a Faustian price. African peoples who accept Sach's agenda will be transformed, and they know that well. To us the transformation is worth the prize -- we don't particularly care for genital mutilation anyway. The recipient's opinions will vary.
... The Zorgonians have not demanded any price, but already we can see that we must change to fit their complex world. We cannot interpret their alien emotions, but it is clear they have little patience or interest in our religious traditions. They are suggesting a program of aggressive eugenics; in their world there is no tolerance for the weak or the slow. Bleeding heart liberal or NASCAR fan -- neither win the favor of these alien peoples. To run with this pack, we must abandon all but the strong.
They offer us devices that will extend our mind and reason, but those who use them seem so different, so uninterested in the things we love and treasure ....
... Is their gift worth the price?
When I was a 1st year medical student in 1982, still reeling from the the complex adventures of a year in Asia studying fertility programs, I wrote a long and garbled paper on social engineering for a McGill medical school elective course (my first use of a word processor by the way). It was clear, even back in 1982, that dramatic fertility transitions were associated with radical changes in social structures. Women, in particular, rose quickly. Many men saw their power base shrink. Mating preferences changed. Traditions were being destroyed, new social structures were emerging. Why not face this fact, I thought, and think about how to deliberately engineer the transition to technocentric modernity? There must be many ways to covertly destroy a social order and rebuild a new one....
My poor medical anthropology elective course supervisor nearly died, and my medical career almost ended before it began. I might as well have written a paper for Opus Dei advocating sainthood for Satan. I'm not quite sure how I survived.
I was a naive idiot. Also young. And yet, 25 years later, the reality has not changed. I hope and pray Africa will emerge from poverty, undergo a demographic transition, and flourish in a technocentric world. The price, however, will be high.
