I like the Dan Brown books ok they're very easy reads (this is not Literature and they rely very heavily on familiar archetypes) and I'm a classicist and I'm interested in Renaissance era art so it's fun to read about the art/art history (shout out to angels and demons, which is focused on the works of Bernini, who is my fave) and sometimes I learn new things or a throwaway line may inspire me to do research on something (embarrassingly I had never read about nor considered the impact of the bubonic plague outside Europe, but of course it was not contained to Europe; did you know there were multiple epidemics in China throughout the 14th century that killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million people? There is/was a theory that the bubonic plague originated in China and that theory is widely disputed. Doesn't that sound familiar) and I picked up a used copy of a book I hadn't read before and just finished it.
And what's interesting to me about this one is that the plot is centered around the impact of overpopulation on the world. 20 years ago every edgelord and tech bro was scared shitless about overpopulation. Sure we produce enough food to feed the world (with much of it rotting while people starve) but in the process of all that production we are depleting the world's resources at alarming rates. Mining for the core materials that make all these electronics (which are designed not to last, thus requiring constant production of new pieces intended to be thrown away in 2 years or less), commercial logging, fracking, overfishing, we are stripping the earth for parts, and the greenhouse gases omitted by all this industry are boiling the planet. Plant and animal species are disappearing at a terrifying rate. There are people who believe that curbing the world's population is the only way to save the planet, to save humanity itself - bc how we will survive on the barren husk that will remain once we're done destroying it?
But these arguments that were so recently fashionable, that smart people and people who fancied themselves smart used to endorse whole heartedly, have in recent years been replaced by the exact opposite claim. Now you can't look at your phone without some edgelord or tech bro or politician yelling about how we're not having enough babies. Twenty years ago the worst guys you knew were saying no one should have any babies, and now that same genre of guy is talking about forcing women to give birth for the good of society.
It's an interesting shift but I think the two things are related. Industry is destroying the planet, and if we want to slow it down having fewer consumers is certainly a way to do that. But. Industry is destroying the planet bc of greed, and those greedy fucks need consumers and workers to maintain and even outstrip our current pace in the pursuit of wealth. And now those voices of avarice are the loudest. The people worried about overpopulation didn't go away or change their minds; they're being drowned out by the very same forces they're trying to fight.
I'm not a fucking specialist, or anything, but it seems to me that it's industry, not the number of living humans, that's killing us. The world could support us, if we were not actively tearing it apart. But how are we supposed to stop this machine? How does the entire world roll this back? Because that's what it would take, the cooperation of the entire global population. And the "problems" of overpopulation are only going to get worse while we continue down this path; as weather patterns change our ability to feed and sustain ourselves is changing, too.
The book ends with a release of a virus that alters the world's genetics so that 1/3 of the population is now sterile, and will remain so unless someone invents a way to counteract it. The book's hero isn't especially horrified; he's heard the arguments about overpopulation and while he thinks this Bad, he also thinks maybe the perpetrators have a point, and maybe this is a humane way to address the problem. Not killing people, just stopping them from being born. He's a scholar of Renaissance art and most people believe that the sudden reduction in the European population brought about by the plague is one of the reasons the Renaissance happened in the first place; when people aren't desperately vying for resources they have more time and energy to create art, and sustain artists. And when you look at the current state of work in the US you can kind of see their point; people who spend the vast majority of their time at Work do not have the time or energy to create art.
And of course the "we need more babies now" guys don't want us to have the time or energy to make more art. To breathe, to really live. They want us working, all the time, to make more money for them. Not that they're using all that money to make or fund art, or truly enjoy their lives; they're caught up in the race, too.
I don't have a conclusion here, really. I don't know what the answer is; I won't endorse death camps or forced sterilization, but I don't know how we curb the appetites of the human race. Sure, take your bezos and your musks and your thiels and everybody like them and lock them up for crimes against humanity and break up their companies the world over, but then what? What about the governments, all the boards of shareholders? How do we get countries that have too much to share freely with countries that have too little? How do we stop the very human vice of greed on a global scale? I don't think we do. I don't think we can.
Isn't that a pleasant thought for a Sunday morning.
