Question #12: On Overpopulation

Embarrassed to Be Human's question: Dear Steve,  While it seems that it should be clearly obvious (even to a stupid person) that every problem on the planet today would be lessened, or go away completely, if the overpopulation of the human species was dealt with, not only do they just keep making more of themselves like some sort of freakish mammal/virus hybrid but they seem determined to willfully ignore the problem altogether. Any insight? Sincerely, ‘Embarrassed To Be Human’

Current mood: Richard-ish

That’s not very Christian of you, ETBH.

But I’m glad you asked for my input on the problem of human overpopulation. Quite honestly, I don’t get it either. Particularly since, from my non-human vantage point, I’ve observed that you don’t act like you like each other very much, and yet you keep pumping out more humans, I guess, so you can act like you don't like them either. The way I see it, if you can’t work your shit out on a small scale (i.e., your families), what do you think your rate of success is going to be on a larger scale? And still you say, “Hey, you know what the world needs? Another me.”

And so we have 6.5+ billion humans with bad gas and offensive body odor walking around on the planet stinking it up for the rest of us. That’s right, in addition to destroying our planet in too many ways to list here, you collectively smell very bad. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t have a strong sense of smell and enjoys dead things.

I think the issue of overpopulation is complicated, but I’d like to take a stab at making some sense of it. Here’s my two cents regarding the primary cause of overpopulation: Narcissism. You can certainly disagree with me (which would only prove my point), but as a species you seem to have no awareness of the impact your tireless efforts to reproduce yourselves has on our planet and her inhabitants. If you were to really look deeply into this, which would take courage, I’m confident that you’d find that your underlying motivation is nothing short of self gratification. And here’s a prime example: Countless dollars are spent in Western culture on infertility treatments to ensure that people who aren’t biologically able to have kids can have one . . . or eight. Can’t get more narcissistic than that. While I’m being controversial, here’s another example. There are reality shows on the TV celebrating large families. The parents of one of these families claim that having 19 biological kids is god’s will. My guess is that this small army of 21 Christians is marching into third world countries to spread the will of their god to those less fortunate. God bless ‘em. As an aside, none of the gods I know are invested in human procreation.

Now here’s the tricky part: Those who are narcissistic would never admit to it because the primary symptom of narcissism is poor insight/lack of self awareness.

This is truly a dilemma. But have no fear. The beauty of the natural world is that it operates on balance. The problem of overpopulation will be righted either by your own actions and/or by the Mother of us all who, as you know, is definitely not afraid to get out her wooden spoon and set us straight.

Afterwards, I'll meet you in the spirit world with a beer and some dancing girls and we'll come up with a plan for how to do it better the next time.