Human Misery Cannot be Eradicated
The Sad Truth...
Many people ask "Why is there so much suffering in the world?"
...And there are countless plausible answers, many of which discuss inept and uncaring governments, human greed, a dearth of decent values, incurable diseases, exploitative corporations, addiction, warlords and organized crime, etc, etc.
I would like to present one more plausible answer - one of which I have yet to see echoed elsewhere:
As long as humans continue to reproduce in areas where there is a scarcity of resources, or an over abundance of harmful agents, human misery will persist. It is inevitable. This holds true for any living organism and humans are not exempt from this rule. A population will exist in an area unless the conditions are so unfavorable that even a small proportion of that population cannot survive until the child bearing age. So there are countless environments in which we will find both people and animals suffering.
With this, I don't mean to imply that it's useless to donate to charities or futile to volunteer to help the less fortunate. Humans that are in such unfortunate circumstances deserve to be helped and ought to be. But is the overall situation of Human Suffering helpless?
I would say, not completely. It would logically follow, based on the aforementioned observation, that we need to curb the amount of human reproduction in areas that contain high levels of such suffering. I'm not advocating anything approaching forced sterilization, however, it is quite obvious that safe and readily available means of contraception are as important as food and water to people living in areas of high and unrelenting suffering.
To deny people adequate access to healthy means of contraception is to deny them the basic human right (or what should be a basic human right) to protect their progeny from the most horrible and intolerable conditions known to man.
For now, contraception is the closest thing we have to a cure for world-wide human suffering.
