University Unitarian Universalist Society
Copyright © 1999 by Steve Helle. All rights reserved.
Living Within Limits – Part 2
Population Control and the UU Principals
By Steve Helle
Two weeks ago I attend the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Salt Lake City, Utah. The delegates had apparently had listened to my Sunday talk last month and as a consequence they chose as a Study Action Item for the next two years a very closely related topic "Responsible Consumption As a Moral Imperative". As much as I would like to take the credit, it really started with a UU Congregation in Oxford, Ohio who presented this potential study item through the Committee of Social Witness process last year. 8 or 10 other UU Congregations similarly proposed other issues.
Early this year each UU Congregation, including ours, was polled to determine on which ones were most appropriate to be considered further. We apparently ignored this ballot. However, many other Congregations did not. The list was shortened to five, which were considered by the delegates at the General Assembly. The Study Action Item involving "Responsible Consumption" was selected by a relatively large margin over other items such as the "A Liberal Alternative to the War on Drugs", "The threat of Global Warming", and " Improving the quality of Life for Youth" and "Advancing the Liberal Vision for Public Education".
There will be a lot of information and suggested activities proposed to UU Congregations in the next year on this topic. Most will come from the UUA. However, the idea and the selection process was not the UUA’s. The UUA is serving only as a facilitator to get the topic studied and the results reported. I believe that we have a misconception among many of us that things that come from the UUA are determined by the UUA. I learned at the General Assembly that this is not true. The UUA is truly an association of individual Congregations. Virtually everything that happens starts out in a Congregation, filters up, and is considered at the General Assembly. It is only administrated by the UUA, which is a service organization for the Congregations.
Now to the main topic for today. Last month, we discussed how it was necessary for population growth to ultimately sustain itself at zero and resource utilization to achieve a steady state or nature will ultimately cause those things to happen for us. If we wait for nature, it will result in wide spread misery for humans and other life forms.
Today, we will examine some methods of achieving population control with an ultimate goal of a zero or negative growth rate. Numerous population control methods have been identified and/or tried over the years. Some are friendly and some not. Today we will consider several of these methods and evaluate them to determine which ones show promise at achieving zero or no population control while being friendly to humans and the rest of the environment.
At this point, I would like to talk a little about some of my family’s personal history. My two grandfathers were both born in the 1880’s. My paternal grandfather was one of eight siblings in a Kansas farm community. Only, six siblings survived to childbearing age. My maternal grandfather was born in Holland and his mother had six or eight babies. However, my grandfather was the only one to survive to childbearing age. My daughters’ mother (my first wife) was born in Vietnam in 1955. Her mother had nine babies only two of which survived until they were of childbearing age. I suspect that many of you can tell similar stories about your ancestors. Since there is nothing very unique about those stories.
Let me tell you one other personal anecdote. I was born in San Francisco in 1947. In 1948, I had a bad case of pneumonia and had to return to the same hospital that I was born in. It is the only time I have ever spent the night in the hospital. There was a good chance that I would not have survived had penicillin not had been developed within the previous decade or so.
What do these personal stories have to do with population control? They illustrate the cause of the increasing population growth rates that we have experienced in the last couple of centuries. The cause is improvement in medicine, nutrition and safety practices. Increasing population growth has not been caused by a change in the reproduction rates.
Typically when one solves a problem it is necessary to determine the cause and modify or eliminate it. However, the cause of the population growth problem is something that none of us really want to eliminate or significantly alter. Nobody wants to get rid of our medical improvement, ignore nutrition and forgo advanced safety practices. We all want to have all of those so that we (and those around us) can live happy, healthy and productive lives. Therefore, eliminating the cause of the population growth is probably not a feasible option for solving the population growth problem.
What do we mean by population control? I define population control as "cultural or societal behavior which intentionally affects population growth rates and/or demographics". Today, we will consider how different social behavior patterns affect population growth and population characteristics.
There have been a number of population control methods either applied or envisioned by various cultures and thinkers. I can identify the following seven:
As I outline these population control methods I am sure that some of them sounded very comfortable to you and others you abhor. How can we effectively evaluate them to differentiate between which ones are effective and civilized and which ones are not? I believe that are Seven Unitarian Universalist Principles give us a very valuable tool in evaluating population control methods and other issues that have social, environmental and technical ramifications. For reference, the Seven Principals are listed on the reverse side of your program today. They include:
As an academic exercise I compared each of the seven population control methods with five of the Seven Principles. As a practical matter, two of the principles: 3) Acceptance of One Another and Encouragement of Spiritual Growth and 4) The Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning were not readily applicable. So I eliminated them from the analysis.
I have copies of this paper on the back table which include, as an Appendix, individual sheets showing my comments for each of these comparisons. In the interest of time, I am not going to go through each individual item but will summarize the more important results.
Mandatory Birth Control would probably be a very effective in the short term. However, in the long term it is likely to foster rebellion and backlash and ultimately fail. Probably the best known example of mandatory birth control is in recent history is what was tried in China were they limited the number of children to one under the communist regime. If a second child was born it had absolutely no rights in society.
The main negative with mandatory birth control is in the area of justice, equity compassion and the right of consciousness in the democratic process. It is not conducive to those principals. The long range propensity to set up rebellion works against world community of peace. It also can put control in the hands of the zealots that write the rules. Thus, effectiveness is ultimately only short term and not really a long term solution.
Voluntary Birth Control or "planned parenting" is not quite as effective in the short term as mandatory birth control. Depending on how well it is accepted in a particular society it will have some effectiveness however. In addition, in the long term there is a natural selection problem with voluntary birth control. Some people will still tend to have large families because it is what they want. Their genetic make up will be fostered into their children. Therefore, as time goes on a larger and larger portion of the population will tend to want to have large families. This will work against the overall goal of controlling the growth rate.
Voluntary birth control is very consistent inherent worth and dignity for people, justice, equity and the democratic process because it allows individuals to choose. In the short term it is very good and consistent with world community and peace and liberty. However, it the long term it will eventually fail and destabilize the peace and liberty and we will be right back with the environmental problems due to resumed growth.
Limited medical treatment and euthanasia will probably only have limited effectiveness in controlling the population because it only controls the portion of the population that is not that likely to reproduce anyway. Sick people, elderly and handicapped people who would be denied the medical benefits or choose to commit suicide are typically not the mainstream breeders in society. Also, it goes against human nature since people naturally want to help the sick. The limiting medical treatment violates the inherent worth of every person and the justice, equity and compassion if it is mandatory. Euthanasia, however, is somewhat consistent to those principals.
Allowing regional famine and limiting emigration works effectively for regional overpopulation in the areas of the world that are most susceptible to the detrimental effects of population growth. It essentially maintains the balance of resources and populations. However, on an individual basis this method violates the dignity of each person. It certainly violates compassion in human relations. I doubt that there are very many of us that could go into an area that is suffer from a famine and not want to help. Also, it encourages unrest and instability because hungry people are desperate and are not good candidates for creating good communities.
The fifth method is violent killing, wars, murders and genocide. This has worked in the past. The population was controlled fairly well during the crusades, and during the world wars. However, it is quite obvious that this method violates essentially all of the UU principles.
The sixth method is the "do nothing" method. Its projected effectiveness is not very good. However, in the short term it abides by almost all of the principles quite well. The one that it violates is the respect for the interdependent web of all existence, because our population has grown to the point where it is invading and significantly deteriorating our environment and the environment of our fellow creatures in this world. In the long term as we begin to get into what Malthus calls the misery area, it will also effect the other principles such as inherent worth, democratic process, compassion, etc. The world would probably move towards chaos.
The last method is education. What I mean by education is not just teaching about birth control and population control techniques but incorporating into our education system, the perspective and the reasoning for population control and steady state resource utilization. Eventually, this may encourage people to do the things that are necessary to control population and promote steady state resource utilization. Education is consistent with all of the UU Principals. However, some resistance will be encountered from certain religious and special interest groups. It is a way to proceed, but it may work.
I have done it again! I have gone through my analysis, predicted the dire destruction of the world society as we know it now and not come up with any single solution. However, as I look closer at the analysis, I think that there is combination of two of the methods that can work very well together. The two are education and the voluntary birth control. The voluntary birth control will have some immediate effects and the education will enhance the effectiveness of voluntary birth control. The "planned parenthood" methods makes the tools available to make a material difference in the short term. As the planned parenthood starts fading due to the larger families the education component will hopefully take over. It is this combination of methods that I am going to focus my personal energy in supporting.
Population Control is a very controversial issue in our society. It is one that many Unitarian Universalist's are very passionate about. In order to keep the passion and liveliness going in our discussion session I would like to throw out the following hypothetical population control scenario for your evaluation with respect to the UU principles:
Each woman is allowed to have as many children as she would like, but can only have one daughter. We have the technology to know the sex of the baby during the early parts of the pregnancy and we have the technology to abort babies. This method would allow large families to occur, if desired, but the population would not grow because each woman is replaced by one other woman at the most. It is the number of women that ultimately control the population. However, society would become unbalanced with significantly more men than women. Your comments?