Halloween & A Guest Post
Ever so often I see articles suggesting that eventually it may be possible to eliminate human death from “natural causes.”
That sounds terrific from an individual point of view — who wants to die involuntarily? But reading reports LIKE further convinces me that such a development would thoroughly ruin the human race.
Currently, just in our lifetimes, Earth’s human population has exploded from about 3 billion to well over 7 billion. Obviously that can’t go on indefinitely, by simple math. Room and resources are finite. Currently we have no other place to move to, nor way to get there at all, much less a way to move out vast numbers of excess inhabitants.
But if currently living people remained on Earth without their numbers being reduced by death, the only alternative would be to severely limit the number of births. That would skew population demographics quickly, so that peoples’ average age would jump dramatically. Currently the median age worldwide is about 26; it is expected to reach about 37 within fifty years (CLICK HERE). And that’s WITH old-age death. How stodgy, how moribund would civilization become if half its citizens — or more — were in their sixties or older?
The piece about Ms. Thunberg reminded me that idealistic young people are our race’s most valuable resources. They bring ever-fresh eyes to the world they will have to run, and disruptively ask “Why does it have to be organized this way, rather than that better way?” Sometimes their untested ideas don’t work, but then sometimes the old ones didn’t either. They shake us up! Without comfortably settled old people perpetually recycling to energetic innovative young people, the human race would devolve to compost. Go, Greta! Achieve the impossible because you’re too young to be sensibly daunted.
