Imagine you are living 10,000 years ago in an isolated valley community at the beginning of our human agrarian culture. The valley has been fertile, abundant with mineral rich water, a river flowing all year, and plentiful herds that move through the grasslands above. The community has flourished here for as long as the oldest generation can remember from stories passed down to them as children from their eldest generation. In this valley, the elders live healthfully past their hundredth year, and the children are born vibrant and strong. Hardly any diseases take life from this community, and accidents or conflicts are rare because the desperation of hunger or lack does not demand life to be risked or cheapened.
Imagine living fifteen years in this ancient valley, the life of a passionate, confident young woman of this peaceful community. But during these 15 years, at least half of them have been touched by signs of hardship in the valley home. There have been dry years that could not be remembered and smaller herds migrating through, the forests are changing and vegetation that was as reliable as our fields of wheat and gardens are shifting and becoming scarce. For the first time in your imagined community's deep collective memory, the abundance they had come to rely on was exposed to be fragile.
In hard years, the elders are often found in heavy and serious conversations, and new mothers and fathers look tense and nervous at community meetings concerning these troublesome changes. The last five years especially have revealed a consistent trend toward drought and harder times to come. There has been talk from some of the brave youth to go beyond the familiar land surrounding the valley and search for a new home, if there is such a place that could be found. The elders try to temper this brash bravery, knowing from the infrequent extremes of nature they have lived through that what their valley suffered was likely to be found everywhere that their eyes could seek and legs could carry them. After a particularly hard winter when food had become dangerously dear, a few of the elders are prematurely lost to weakness, and even the infants still on the breast are listless and weak from the lack of nourishment their mothers receive.
It became necessary to make a hard decision: some are in favor of searching for a more fertile valley, or for splitting the community, some going to another valley a week's journey from them; others insisted on staying where they are and taking care of those living, but reducing their numbers through birth control, birthing no new children into the community for 10 or 15 years. Considerations and arguments are made for both, either option having its sense as well as its awkwardness and pain. Those who had explored the furthest around the valley are consulted about the land. No better site exists for a moon's journey in any direction, all other tributaries of the watershed that sustains them are equally endangered. And even if some of their number moved to this other valley, they would still rely on the same herds, the same shrinking grasslands and floodplains. No, they are better off together, striking out further only to gather resources: food, wood, and water they could carry back to their ancestral home.
And as far as sending some of their strongest and bravest families beyond a moon's journey in hopes of discovering a land that is not suffering the same changes, for a peoples whose instinct is to cherish and value life, whose education is to conserve rather than risk, the notion is insanity born from desperation. But the burden of staying together is a serious one, the injustice and possible conflict that could arise from forbidding a generation the natural desire to raise children, would bring its own hardship and changes to their way of life. It is not lightly and not quickly that this decision is made: they would stay, all of them, together, and they would do what was necessary to provide food, water and fire for all, and no children would be born for 15 years. This meant that the youngest children among them now, just climbing out of their mother's arms would be the next of their community to raise children of their own. Their community's ability to sustain itself depended upon the health and strength of these babes as they grow into their adult years. These children are to be cherished by them, one and all.
Now what does this mean to our young protagonist? Imagine being in her place: it is the spring of her sixteenth year, she is intelligent, passionate, the most imaginative and often the ringleader of the band of young people in her age group. She has the bloom of youthful desires in her heart and an obstinate optimism that wants to deny and ignore her community's imminent danger. She and a young man of similar vibrancy are in love, and intend to marry and raise children. Imagine her feelings at this decision. She allows for the sense of it, and she, as everyone was, given the chance to speak her mind and feelings about the course of action to follow. She sees the necessity of action, and she in no way wants anyone to go away from their intimate group. She dutifully repeats to herself the reasoning for this course: every year one or two are born into their community and one or two pass out through death. Over the last few generations there has been a slow increase of their numbers, as their resources have allowed. But they are struggling to support their number now, they have lost numbers more quickly than they are used to during the last five hard years, and yet they are still dangerously stripping the resources around them.
Our young woman is old enough to understand the life cycle they live within, how many of each type of vegetation to leave behind to seed the next year's crop and how many of they adult animals they can harvest from the herd without jeopardizing their numbers. They are, without doubt, beyond the limit of their safe and comfortable habits of living, not only are the changes in their environment reducing the herds and food crops, but their own large community is putting even more stress on the remaining resources, urging them to engage in unsustainable practices, which they know will deprive the future generations of the means of surviving at all in their valley.
She understands all this, but she also has lived long enough to watch her elder sisters and cousins move gracefully through the age she is approaching, watched them carefully through their pregnancies and labors. She has been helping the midwife at birthing time, she has held the newly born infants, longing for the day she would hold her own child. She has watched the new mothers suckling their infants and even held these babies to her own breast, imagining the drawing pull of a feeding child. She has observed the sweet smiles that inevitably draw around new mothers. And she has a love of her own, a young man with whom she has often imagined the contented and chaotic years of raising a family, as she has seen the example of amongst the young families of the valley. She has long looked forward to this expected period of her life, but now she can only envy it. Her mind understands, but her heart wants to rebel.
The midwife knows what to give the women of child bearing age, every morning they are given a bitter tea, this tea known to prevent pregnancy is usually given to women for whom pregnancy or childbirth would be dangerous, it now being dangerous to the whole community. It is indeed a bitter pill to swallow, for many of them, particularly for our young protagonist. A community decision has been made, but she still has a personal decision to make. Will she accept her new burden, her changed hopes, will she put the suffering of others before her own bitter loss? Or will she one day rebel, will she one day pretend to drink her tea and whisper to her young man her plan of conceiving his child regardless of the consequences? Will she convince herself that it is her right to have a child, will she convince herself that one more child could not burden the community, would not overstretch their already stretched provisions, would not take food from another mouth? Can she ignore the suffering on her old grandmother's face, whom she knows to be slowly starving herself to leave more food on the family table for her other granddaughter who is nursing the last born child in the valley? Can she force her community and the fragile environment around her to accept a further burden, endangering them all, and willfully assert her selfish desire?
Now imagine that this parable applies to our contemporary world. All of the dangers facing this imagined valley community are facing our earth community today. And the same two courses of action are being debated and argued: do we continue on our course of expansion, mining deeper for resources, stripping our reserves dangerously close to the point of collapse, imagining even that we may find another earth home somewhere out in space, when the day comes that we can no longer provide our children with the necessities of life? Or do we conscientiously reduce our burden on the living cycle that sustains us? For an ancient valley community such as one I have described, the only reduction upon their environment they can make is in their population, as they do not live a burdensome, extravagant life, as we do in our modern lifestyle. In North America and Europe, each one of us lives like ten or a hundred of the people in my story, we could make a huge reduction in our burden by living differently. But we may even have to give up our most cherished desires, and become used to a changed future, with hopes unlike anything we ever imagined. And it is unfair, unjust to our eyes to accept this burden, a burden that has, unlike my story, been placed willfully and blindly upon us by our elders, not just by an incidental change of climate.
I present this story as a sort of parable. We are facing a similar difficult decision, and our present society is much like a impulsive and passionate young woman who has been used to abundance, and expects a future as prosperous and peaceful as the one her elders have enjoyed. I write this parable particularly for those living in the first world. The danger facing our earth community, and the burden of suffering placed on the most marginalized, is not immediate enough to draw our action and emotion. We are too isolated from the consequences facing the future of the human race and the future of our precious home. If we looked into the face of hunger every day, like a grandmother at our table slowly giving her life so that we can live, we too would be moved to sacrifice, we too would take up the courage to accept changes and challenges we never thought we could bare. If we could see what remains of our natural resources on the planet as if looking into the storehouse of winter provisions, and see how close we are to depletion we would be startled into action, we would discern every inefficiency and waste in our daily lives, and budget out what remains so that there will be enough to carry us all through the hard times on the horizon.
I have never been a fan of state sponsored population control, it is too close to eugenics, but I have come ultimately to a decision to close my own womb. There are too many children going without, for me to add to this burden, 1200 children have died of poverty in the hour it has taken me to write this story. Imagine what a protest it would be to the world governments, for women of the first world nations to say that our wombs are shut until there is no more war, no more poverty, no more degradation of our planet and exploitation of marginalized people. Until these things happen, we will take the responsibility for each person, already born on this earth, is fed and freed from the bondage of our economic and ecologic Colonization. Each child we raise in the first world takes the same amount of resources to feed perhaps hundreds, or even thousands, of children suffering the burden of our extravagance.
Imagine living fifteen years in this ancient valley, the life of a passionate, confident young woman of this peaceful community. But during these 15 years, at least half of them have been touched by signs of hardship in the valley home. There have been dry years that could not be remembered and smaller herds migrating through, the forests are changing and vegetation that was as reliable as our fields of wheat and gardens are shifting and becoming scarce. For the first time in your imagined community's deep collective memory, the abundance they had come to rely on was exposed to be fragile.
In hard years, the elders are often found in heavy and serious conversations, and new mothers and fathers look tense and nervous at community meetings concerning these troublesome changes. The last five years especially have revealed a consistent trend toward drought and harder times to come. There has been talk from some of the brave youth to go beyond the familiar land surrounding the valley and search for a new home, if there is such a place that could be found. The elders try to temper this brash bravery, knowing from the infrequent extremes of nature they have lived through that what their valley suffered was likely to be found everywhere that their eyes could seek and legs could carry them. After a particularly hard winter when food had become dangerously dear, a few of the elders are prematurely lost to weakness, and even the infants still on the breast are listless and weak from the lack of nourishment their mothers receive.
It became necessary to make a hard decision: some are in favor of searching for a more fertile valley, or for splitting the community, some going to another valley a week's journey from them; others insisted on staying where they are and taking care of those living, but reducing their numbers through birth control, birthing no new children into the community for 10 or 15 years. Considerations and arguments are made for both, either option having its sense as well as its awkwardness and pain. Those who had explored the furthest around the valley are consulted about the land. No better site exists for a moon's journey in any direction, all other tributaries of the watershed that sustains them are equally endangered. And even if some of their number moved to this other valley, they would still rely on the same herds, the same shrinking grasslands and floodplains. No, they are better off together, striking out further only to gather resources: food, wood, and water they could carry back to their ancestral home.
And as far as sending some of their strongest and bravest families beyond a moon's journey in hopes of discovering a land that is not suffering the same changes, for a peoples whose instinct is to cherish and value life, whose education is to conserve rather than risk, the notion is insanity born from desperation. But the burden of staying together is a serious one, the injustice and possible conflict that could arise from forbidding a generation the natural desire to raise children, would bring its own hardship and changes to their way of life. It is not lightly and not quickly that this decision is made: they would stay, all of them, together, and they would do what was necessary to provide food, water and fire for all, and no children would be born for 15 years. This meant that the youngest children among them now, just climbing out of their mother's arms would be the next of their community to raise children of their own. Their community's ability to sustain itself depended upon the health and strength of these babes as they grow into their adult years. These children are to be cherished by them, one and all.
Now what does this mean to our young protagonist? Imagine being in her place: it is the spring of her sixteenth year, she is intelligent, passionate, the most imaginative and often the ringleader of the band of young people in her age group. She has the bloom of youthful desires in her heart and an obstinate optimism that wants to deny and ignore her community's imminent danger. She and a young man of similar vibrancy are in love, and intend to marry and raise children. Imagine her feelings at this decision. She allows for the sense of it, and she, as everyone was, given the chance to speak her mind and feelings about the course of action to follow. She sees the necessity of action, and she in no way wants anyone to go away from their intimate group. She dutifully repeats to herself the reasoning for this course: every year one or two are born into their community and one or two pass out through death. Over the last few generations there has been a slow increase of their numbers, as their resources have allowed. But they are struggling to support their number now, they have lost numbers more quickly than they are used to during the last five hard years, and yet they are still dangerously stripping the resources around them.
Our young woman is old enough to understand the life cycle they live within, how many of each type of vegetation to leave behind to seed the next year's crop and how many of they adult animals they can harvest from the herd without jeopardizing their numbers. They are, without doubt, beyond the limit of their safe and comfortable habits of living, not only are the changes in their environment reducing the herds and food crops, but their own large community is putting even more stress on the remaining resources, urging them to engage in unsustainable practices, which they know will deprive the future generations of the means of surviving at all in their valley.
She understands all this, but she also has lived long enough to watch her elder sisters and cousins move gracefully through the age she is approaching, watched them carefully through their pregnancies and labors. She has been helping the midwife at birthing time, she has held the newly born infants, longing for the day she would hold her own child. She has watched the new mothers suckling their infants and even held these babies to her own breast, imagining the drawing pull of a feeding child. She has observed the sweet smiles that inevitably draw around new mothers. And she has a love of her own, a young man with whom she has often imagined the contented and chaotic years of raising a family, as she has seen the example of amongst the young families of the valley. She has long looked forward to this expected period of her life, but now she can only envy it. Her mind understands, but her heart wants to rebel.
The midwife knows what to give the women of child bearing age, every morning they are given a bitter tea, this tea known to prevent pregnancy is usually given to women for whom pregnancy or childbirth would be dangerous, it now being dangerous to the whole community. It is indeed a bitter pill to swallow, for many of them, particularly for our young protagonist. A community decision has been made, but she still has a personal decision to make. Will she accept her new burden, her changed hopes, will she put the suffering of others before her own bitter loss? Or will she one day rebel, will she one day pretend to drink her tea and whisper to her young man her plan of conceiving his child regardless of the consequences? Will she convince herself that it is her right to have a child, will she convince herself that one more child could not burden the community, would not overstretch their already stretched provisions, would not take food from another mouth? Can she ignore the suffering on her old grandmother's face, whom she knows to be slowly starving herself to leave more food on the family table for her other granddaughter who is nursing the last born child in the valley? Can she force her community and the fragile environment around her to accept a further burden, endangering them all, and willfully assert her selfish desire?
Now imagine that this parable applies to our contemporary world. All of the dangers facing this imagined valley community are facing our earth community today. And the same two courses of action are being debated and argued: do we continue on our course of expansion, mining deeper for resources, stripping our reserves dangerously close to the point of collapse, imagining even that we may find another earth home somewhere out in space, when the day comes that we can no longer provide our children with the necessities of life? Or do we conscientiously reduce our burden on the living cycle that sustains us? For an ancient valley community such as one I have described, the only reduction upon their environment they can make is in their population, as they do not live a burdensome, extravagant life, as we do in our modern lifestyle. In North America and Europe, each one of us lives like ten or a hundred of the people in my story, we could make a huge reduction in our burden by living differently. But we may even have to give up our most cherished desires, and become used to a changed future, with hopes unlike anything we ever imagined. And it is unfair, unjust to our eyes to accept this burden, a burden that has, unlike my story, been placed willfully and blindly upon us by our elders, not just by an incidental change of climate.
I present this story as a sort of parable. We are facing a similar difficult decision, and our present society is much like a impulsive and passionate young woman who has been used to abundance, and expects a future as prosperous and peaceful as the one her elders have enjoyed. I write this parable particularly for those living in the first world. The danger facing our earth community, and the burden of suffering placed on the most marginalized, is not immediate enough to draw our action and emotion. We are too isolated from the consequences facing the future of the human race and the future of our precious home. If we looked into the face of hunger every day, like a grandmother at our table slowly giving her life so that we can live, we too would be moved to sacrifice, we too would take up the courage to accept changes and challenges we never thought we could bare. If we could see what remains of our natural resources on the planet as if looking into the storehouse of winter provisions, and see how close we are to depletion we would be startled into action, we would discern every inefficiency and waste in our daily lives, and budget out what remains so that there will be enough to carry us all through the hard times on the horizon.
I have never been a fan of state sponsored population control, it is too close to eugenics, but I have come ultimately to a decision to close my own womb. There are too many children going without, for me to add to this burden, 1200 children have died of poverty in the hour it has taken me to write this story. Imagine what a protest it would be to the world governments, for women of the first world nations to say that our wombs are shut until there is no more war, no more poverty, no more degradation of our planet and exploitation of marginalized people. Until these things happen, we will take the responsibility for each person, already born on this earth, is fed and freed from the bondage of our economic and ecologic Colonization. Each child we raise in the first world takes the same amount of resources to feed perhaps hundreds, or even thousands, of children suffering the burden of our extravagance.
In the midst of the First World, it is easy to forget that so many suffer of lack, and that their lack is directly related to our indulgence. Please do not forget, imagine their faces, their stories, use the tool of imagination, along with the tool of information made so available through the internet, to make it real for yourself. Do not forget these children and these grandmothers. Think of them in relation to every decision that you make.
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