You are making an assumption that a lower birth mortality rate is a good thing. In the short and medium term its an easy sell, parents don't want their child to die in the short term (thanks in art to contraception and abortion) and anyone currently making their living/fortune off an excess of cheap labour loves the medium term outlook of extra babies. But long term there is a reason why all animals have a high mortality rate in their juvenile stage. I guess one could argue that soon we'll be genetically engineering super babies to make even that point moot but realistically that will only be available to the wealthy and wealthy people don't have a lot of kids. So rather than stay strong our gene pool will continue to be watered down with defective genes for lack of a better word.
Secondly I would argue that a life expectancy of 45 is an artificial number. A life expectancy of 45 is achieved in one of two ways - Dickensian slums (represented today by third world tin shack slums) or by adding all he dead babies into the average. For example Amish people have the same life expectancy as the rest of the United States without the need for global markets and industrialized consumption.
At the end of the day homo sapiens is just another animal and no amount of science will change that. We will learn to live in harmony with our environment and all the incumbent horrors, sacrifices and limitations it imposes or we will lose.
1 comment:
Four points.
1) Did not expect to get called out like this for my comment. Feels kinda cool! I have decided to unanonymize myself as a token of my appreciation for making me famous (on your blog, at least). LOL : )
b) Remember that conversation we had this summer about travel? Escape from / to? Similar to then, I think our difference of opinion here is really just a difference of perspective. I'm arguing local is too limiting because it contributes to poor outcomes in many parts of the world. Poor as compared to here, that is. And it makes me sad to think we'd think locally, act locally and let those places go on struggling.
I think you're arguing that the struggle is normal. That we should be struggling too.
I worry a small and local approach here = turning off our obligation as global citizens to do what we can to help those parts of the world that are struggling to live longer lives and not have to watch as many infants die.
You think small and local here might solve the problem in other ways (by, as it were, narrowing the outcomes gap by knocking us back into a more natural struggling mode).
iii) I just don't think that's realistic in the (overly) developed world. At least, doubt it will ever naturally develop beyond the individual level. Some sort of unforseen and giant shift would be needed to force societal wide change. Like, maybe a poorly managed natural disaster? In which case, you should embrace big, ineffective bureaucracies. They just may help you get your wish one day.
4) In the meantime (which could be a long time) I say humanity should keep doing what we can to reduce struggling in those parts of the world that aren't doing so well. That's my only point. Wasn't trying to bash local or anything : )
Post a Comment