Never Ending

Okay guys, time for a throwback post. When I reflect on the history of my blog, and really my writing in general, it's clear to me that it all started off very political and motivated. I was young and energized and I communicated my thoughts, ideas, and opinions with a forceful, sometimes offensive vigor. This was mostly conversations with my immediate family and, as I grew older, friends. I remember, as a young boy, being told many times that things would make more sense when I was older. I remember being told, always with a soft chuckle, "I used to be like you." I made a promise to myself that I would never say something like that to a child, something so thoughtlessly damaging, so quietly dehumanizing. So far I've kept that promise, but I try to remain aware and vigilant, for in my current role as a teacher I stand at the precipice of a chasm of influence, toeing stones into the void, and its very deep and the consequences will rattle through the years long after I've died.

The advent of online writing represented a sea change for me. It gave me a platform, bathed in the comforting glow of anonymity. I could say anything I wanted to, and there was the exciting, almost promiscuous promise of anonymous readership. Anyone could be reading what I wrote, at any time, from any place on earth.

Now, in reality, very few people read what I wrote, whether in the form of my earliest website or in the current incarnation of this blog. And truth be told, I'm okay with that. I've grown comfortable in this routine, the simulacrum of conversation, the empty walls echoing. The closest I've had to real interaction from this and other blogs have been the dappled-eyed awestruck chords of an occasional lover who, upon researching my name and online presence, has stumbled upon my writing and then proceeded to bring it up in conversation. Many times this has resulted in a conversation, perhaps the defining conversation of any romance I've ever had that has failed, the conversation of writing as occupation. It presents a seemingly irresistible allure to so many of the people that I have met. Almost all of my relationships, platonic and otherwise, without exception, and sometimes ever so briefly, at one point or another, have stumbled through the mire of that conversation, complete with the awkward period at the end where I struggle to explain why I write, why I have failed to follow that course in my career or my study. Why does it exist at the fringes of my life. Why not make it a central part. It is my journal, my diary, my sacred cathedral of personal reflection, pointless if full of people. Why write online at all? I guess it all comes back to that perverse sense of reverse voyeurism.

So, here's the throwback post, a post about issues of politics, of global economies, of human suffering and aspiration: Let's talk about childbirth.

This sacred ritual is enthroned in our society, the pregnant mother held up against the sunlight, child held in arms at stomach level, cast in bronze, left to glow in a leaf-dappled square somewhere out in the half-civilized wilderness of our collective national conscious. She is sacred because she enables a continuation, a generation to succeed. The baby is corrupt, we have seen it a thousand times. Humans become horrible as they grow older, but until they are born, they are shrouded in promise and secrecy. Literally pregnant with potential. In spite of my decidedly liberal leanings regarding women's health and other topics, my Catholic upbringing always rears it head, ever briefly, during these moments of introspection.

It is birth that has, for millions of years, represented the saving grace of our species, of really any species. It's genetic, the urge to reproduce. And while I've learned enough about evolutionary biology (and certainly spent enough in tuition and textbooks) to understand that only a certain percentage of a population will feel a desire to reproduce, high in some species, low in others, and always changing, it still represents a shared social goal. We are too altruistic of a species to be capable of instinctively casting a disparaging eye on this process.

But it is childbirth that is sinking us. Population increase will be the catalyst that forces our hand on this planet. It is unquestionable. The rolling tide of humanity, increasing every year, very slowly in the developed world, but astonishingly rapidly in the developing world, will eventually break over the seawall of this fine place and leave everything in ruins. Now, obviously, it is the poorest countries that are the locus of this problem. When you have eight or ten children, and 75% of them survive to adulthood....well you can paint the rest of that picture. And also, perhaps even more obvious, it is clear that only by empowering these poor people economically can we ever hope to reduce their birth rates. Much of this economic empowerment, maybe all of it, must come from a reduction and restructuring of the global wealth system, starting with us, the people who have everything. Most people who have witnessed crippling poverty first hand can never quite shake the feeling that our economic system is unsustainable in the long run. Something will have to change. But with a rapidly globalized economy, and the ever increasing effectiveness and, can I say this, near-miraculous nature of new technologies, I believe that the sacrifices will neither be as deep-reaching nor as widespread as some may say.

No, it is not the developing countries who are the focus of this post. Why would they be? Not only do I feel removed from them in a practical sense but also in a moral sense. I cannot cast judgement or aspersions on a society that I don't live. Neither can I beatify or pile up platitudes. I simply don't possess the appropriate volume of empathy required for that. Instead, I will focus on the world and society that I do live in. The United States of America, home of the free et cetera.

Here's my thesis: If you live in America, and if you graduated from high school and (lets winnow the excuses as much as we can) you attended college for at least two years, and demonstrated at least a rudimentary appreciation of basic concepts of social science and life science, and you proceed to have more than two biological children in your lifetime, you should be considered a criminal and locked up because you have failed to treat this planet with the respect that it deserves. That's it. Have more than two kids (knowing of the consequences), boom, locked up, key thrown away. I don't want to share my country with people like that. I just don't! And it's not intolerance, no more than someone who grimaces when observing someone throw trash out of the window of a moving car. It is wrong, objectively wrong, to have more than two children in this day. Not when the stakes are as high as they are. It is selfish and short sighted. It represents the slimiest of human characteristics and also represents a disturbing lack of awareness and altruism. And unlike verifying the origin of every purchase you make at the grocery store, this singular act of humanistic responsibility is rather easy to make. If you can't sit down with a clear head, after having two children, and say "Whelp, that's it. No more for me or for this planet" then you are a person of the most foolish and self-entitled category. And you're taking advantage of an institution that puts childbirth on a pedestal in order to continue to contribute to the process of environmental destruction through over population. And, also, if you even begin to articulate an argument that starts off, "If we don't have enough kids, America might lose to other countries..." then please clear a path because I've already stopped listening to you and I need to go home and take a shower and try to scrub my brain clean of the memory of our conversation.

I want to make it clear here, at the end of this long ramble, that I'm not talking specifically about women, although, upon re-reading this post, it certainly may seem that way, and so I apologize in advance. My guess is that, if you assumed that I was talking specifically about women, you probably stopped reading a while back, so I'll just say goodbye to you and then finish up this post. Men share a responsibility, absolutely they do. In many relationships (most relationships?) the man certainly holds more control over the reproductive process than the women. Only recently has attention been called to the issue of redefining sexual abuse to give a more accurate representation of the kinds of lopsided power struggles that occur behind countless closed bedroom doors in America. Women and men are both entangled in this mess, and I also acknowledge that the choice to have children or not have children is never as easy as it may seem from an outside perspective. But it is obviously worth thinking about. It will be the greatest struggle of this century, and I am certain that childbirth will be the issue that determines the trajectory of our species past that point.

Of course, as someone without children, who I am to make these claims? "You'll understand when you're older." That's something else that they used to say to me.




Here's a photograph I took near my campsite in the Keibab National Forest.