It’s time to rethink call to ‘go forth and multiply’

At current growth rates, nine million babies will be born this year, and four million people will die. It doesn’t take Charles Darwin to conclude that we can’t keep doing this forever.

What Darwin, and others of his ilk, did teach us is that we are not “above” nature; we are part of it. One of nature’s inviolable rules is that when creatures become overcrowded, their behaviour deteriorates into aggression — both against others and against themselves. Fights over territory, food and shelter, combined with self-destructive behaviour, become common when there are too many rats in the cage, or people on the planet.

Back in the days when my wife and I were spawning our three kids, that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Indeed, back then, couples who failed to produce were looked upon with suspicion; we wondered “what was wrong with them,” even opining, if only in private, that if they were “able” to have kids and chose not to, that was pretty selfish.

But today’s truth is self-evident: There are enough of us. Likely too many. And if there aren’t too many now, there soon will be.

I’m not offering to leave just yet, and I’m not suggesting you do, either. But it is time for the global community to reconsider the ancient divine ordinance to “go forth and multiply.”

Historically, some religious communities have made bearing children into a religious obligation. Astonishingly, some continue to do so!

Around the world, many other factors have contributed to the desire for large families: poverty (many hands make light work), attitudes toward women (keep breeding till you have enough sons), ethnocultural concerns (let’s be sure there are enough “pure laine” francophones in Quebec), and nationalist interest (we need young men for cannon fodder).

The answer is not legislation, as China’s failed “one-child” policy makes clear. The answer lies in addressing those factors that propel people to large families. When sustainable and affordable machines become available, there is no more need for six sons to work the fields. When girls are truly as precious as boys, there is no need to keep “trying for a son.” When we finally accept that national boundaries are ultimately arbitrary, and racial purity is more curse than blessing, we will stop worrying about whether there are enough of “our own kind.” And when religious communities move beyond deification of ancient texts, and actually listen for an authentic divine word for our time, I suspect that word will be “Enough, already!”

Until then, maybe we can stop judging those couples and individuals who choose not to spawn their own replacements. That’s a place to start, at least.

Toronto Star