To breed or not to breed?
BY C. L. BOTHWELL
There is a clan of Australian aborigines which is leaving this planet
and I'm going with them. I haven't told them yet, but I don't need to. I'm
sure they understand why I intend to join them, and I don't think they'll
object.
No, they haven't commandeered a Space Shuttle, and if their travel
agent has made regular contact with a flying saucer pilot, they haven't
talked about it. They don't plan to levitate, catapult, fling, fly or
rocket themselves into orbit. My fellow travellers and I are leaving by
the simple expedient of not reproducing.
In my case, I reached that decision 27 years ago, more or less. A
combination of my love of wild places, the devastating impact of Disney
World and its coterie of developers on my then-home of Orlando, and
stories about the impending population boom instilled a certainty that I
did not want to make babies. The world was too crowded and the pavement
advanc-ing too quickly. Native vegetation was being poisoned and
bulldozed, and auto exhaust burned my eyes. Many species were becoming
extinct and even the vast oceans couldn't swallow all of our industrial
sludge. There were too many of us already. I would not contribute to the
problem. I had a vasectomy three years later when I turned 21.
The aborigines were older and wiser, lived far from plastic mouse ears
and traffic jams, possessed simpler technologies and different myths, but
arrived at a similar conclusion during the same decade. Their explanation
is that mutants have taken over the planet and that it is time for the
real people to leave. You can read about them in a fascinating
autobiographical book called Mutant Message Downunder, by Marlo
Morgan. To effect their departure they chose celibacy.
It is no small thing to pack one's genetic tent and scram. That runs
against several billion years of a biologic inclination to self-replicate,
as well as the cultural bias to make more delightful People Like Us. It
has disappointed my parents, and will color my old age
no children
to help out or baby pictures to share. Extinction, of course, is not
unique to my family line or that outback aboriginal group, as Cole Porter
might have reminded us,
"Mastodons do it, wallabies do it, pterodactyls in the trees do it,"
and so on.
What sets us apart from others in the earthly menagerie is our
cleverness and enthusiasm for ignoring biological codes and limits adhered
to by the rest of the natural world. That willy-nilly willingness to
ignore limits makes us dangerous
"mutants" to
the Australians. No other creatures have insisted on exceeding the land's
carrying capacity or avoiding the food supply-predator-prey cycles that
maintain a healthy balance.
With agriculture we have bent vast ecosystems to feed us, with mining
we have harvested the mineral wealth of millennia to shield us against the
elements and with medicine we have thwarted the action of biologic curbs
to growth. Through all that we haven't paid much attention to our
procreation.
Not making babies is a clear acceptance of limits. This is it. This is
as far as this set of genetic information is going. Three score and ten
and I'm outta here!
I live in a small passive solar, photovoltaic house with a composting
toilet, recycle everything I possibly can, eat low on the food chain and
try to minimize my driving. I produce less than a third of the pollution,
waste and garbage churned out by an average American, but being child-free
is the single biggest contribution I have made to the environment. My
non-kids have me beat hands down on creating a low impact, sustainable
economy.
Maybe I'll print a bumper sticker that says "Proud non-parent of an
Eco-Whiz at Virtual More Science High." Hey, I could get rich selling them
to aborigines! Then I can get really rich when I sell the abos some
bumpers.
C.L. Bothwell hails from the other Carolina. Duck Soup is also
served up twice every Tuesday on WNCW-88.7FM.
It is no small thing to pack one's genetic tent and scram. That runs against several billion years of a biologic inclination to self-replicate, as well as the cultural bias to make more delightful People Like Us.
