World is not enough was the title of a movie from the James Bond series. Indeed, for people who want to do great things, the world is not so big. And what is even sadder, there aren’t so many possibilities as it may look at a first sight. And this is not about natural resources, technology, etc., it is about the most valuable resource of the planet: the people.
Especially in the developed countries, but in Western culture in general, there are organisms which try to sensitize the public opinion to problems related to wasting natural resources, destroying the environment, the disappearance of species. But nobody tries to sensitize the public opinion when it comes to wasting the most important resource of a country, and of the planet: the people. There are some who complain about overpopulation. It is absolutely true that overpopulation is a problem in some regions, because of the limited resources. Malthus is the first who signaled the problem of the too fast increase of population against the increase of natural resources that are necessary to a human society. Malthus, who considered war a solution for the problem he had signaled, was answered that except him nobody was in excess on the planet. Maybe some Westerners, who are worried about the overpopulation of some regions of the planet, which are not overpopulated, like Africa which is in fact underpopulated, should be answered similarly today, that except them, nobody is in excess.
The reduction of fertility and the increase of reproduction age phenomena in the spirit of the human evolution.
There are some who complain about the population’s aging. And this is really a problem in certain regions, especially in Euro-Atlantic. Birth rate decreases, as a result of some cultural changes caused mainly by prosperity, which also led to increasing the hope of life. From the evolutionist point of view, I believe we have no reason to worry about the low birth rate, but we should worry that the hope for healthy life, which is related to productivity and social costs connected to aging does not keep up with it. Unfortunately, although the aging phenomenon is studied, and the age pathology research costs millions of dollars, there is a certain skepticism related to the possibility to treat or prevent the aging. At this moment, there is no method of slowing or stopping the phenomenon of aging for people. All the products of rejuvenation, of slowing the aging, are just false. The lifestyle is still the only method to preserve a healthy life until old age.
But if decreasing birth rate was correlated to a proportional increase of healthy life duration, we could speak about a new stage of human evolution, a new stage of humanization, an idea that was presented in Civilization of famine. Man stands out from the most kindred primates by a low fertility, doubled by his long duration of life. Human life is very slow, meaning that his development, his maturing is very slow, his childhood is very long, the period of child dependence is unusually long. Human being is a species with slow and long life within an order of animals with long and slow life: primates. They also have lower fertility than other mammals. Generally, there is a positive correlation at mammals between the life duration of a species of mammals and the size of the brain compared to the body, and a negative one with fertility. There is a theory about the origin of this connection in Civilization of famine. The evolutionist answer to the increase of life duration is a lower fertility and a reproduction age even more advanced. The fact that people chose to have children later, especially the educated people, is the result of our species´evolution. We may say that our evolution takes another step forward, in the same direction.
A longer life, with a more advanced reproduction age, is less economical for a species. The interest of a species is that its genes be the best represented at a certain moment. If this is done through a longer life of the members of this species, and not through a shorter life and a bigger investment in reproduction (type of strategy), considering that reproduction is an expensive process from the energetic point of view, the species is put to advantage from the energetic point of view.
I am one of those who consider that something can be done for increasing life duration of this species; moreover, I consider this a duty for our evolution. It is unfair that a person, be it a tram-driver and not a scholar, artist or businessman, live so little. Any individual is an institution, who can offer more.
The hope of logical thinking and free feeling in present
There is a problem that most of the people nowadays do not survive so that they reach their natural genetic potential. The hope of life of a girl who is born in Africa is approximately 50 years. In some countries, the situation is much more serious, for example Botswana, where, because of AIDS, the average life duration is 36 years. Access to normal education, to logical thinking, decrease the chances of manifesting the genetic potential of a person who is born in a non-democratic country of the Third World. Millions of people who are contemporary with us, millions of children who are born now, are condemned for life to not having water access, proper food, medicines, and proper education and free thinking. There are millions who have access to food, shelter, medicines, but who are lost for society because of education. Millions of people who will never invent, discover something, although some of them have the intellectual potential for that. Millions of people who are wasted, whose brain is full of superstitions (for example in Africa), who have difficulties in assimilating the simple principle of cause-effect, which is the basis of Western science. Other millions of people are transformed in wrecks from the viewpoint of rational thinking by religious indoctrination or the equivalent (communist, situation of North Korea). Millions of male children condemned to be misogynists, millions of female children condemned to be self-conscious and inhibited become incapable of having a family and social life considered normal in our culture, children who irrespective of their sex they will never assimilate values like human rights or democracy (in Muslim fundamentalist countries, but not only). These children will not have the chance of a normal, free life, they will not have the chance to really express themselves. The war against terrorism should have been made on this plan, not with guns. These people, within globalization, not only they are lost, but they become a threat for our way of life.
Unfortunately, in Western culture there are many who discriminate others from different populations or cultures, whose ability to invent and create important things is denied. The question for these shallow Westerners is whether they can make inventions, discoveries, create masterpieces. If they knew how these things are done, how important education, free thinking and feeling are in the process of creation. But it is much easier to put a label than try to understand a phenomenon. These people are similar to those whom they deny the possibility to do great things for progress. What is even more interesting is that there are some people for whom the present human races are not enough for their ability to discriminate, so they use prehistoric people to satisfy this necessity. The man of Neanderthal was also subject to these racial discriminations.
Beyond the Neanderthalians’ intellectual ability to develop technologies, to create art, we face the problem of present people, from which very few really can involve in progress, because of the societies in which they were born. Moreover, taking into consideration the present outlooks of many cultures, almost every social relation of a rational person with common people becomes dangerous.
