Our Children, What of the Earth Will They Really Inherit?

This article is another mind-meandering conversation still in draft. As always, I humbly offer no solution - only food for thought for those of us who are in thinking-rethinking mode.

Psalm 127:3-5a - Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!

There was a time when having children was a noble pursuit.

There was also a time when having children was seen as every citizen’s duty to bolster their country’s population to add to its workforce and military - in short, to add to its power.

There was a time when birth rates and death rates balanced each other out, keeping the population growth stable. Back then, people had more children than now, but a large number of them died before their fifth year.

The lifespan of adults was quite shorter except, of course, for the ones of Moses’ era said to have lived long and fruitful lives well beyond their 100th year.

Over the past 50 years, in spite of controllable pregnancies, and presumably controllable insemination, world population exploded roughly from 1 billion to 7.4 billion. The projection is set to reach 8.1 billion by 2025.

The birth rate worldwide exceeds the death rate by far.

Away from our eyes, more and more rural areas are abandoned to wars and drought. More and more land is bought by corporations to build human habitats of one sort or another, even in third world countries.

Damaged farmlands and waterways dotted across the globe are clogged up by pollutants. Severe food shortages can be expected here, there and everywhere.

Yes, of course, we will be in it together. But, our children’s children, what will they inherit?

Since the industrial era began around 1760, our more recent ancestors found themselves poised on a sort of moving walkway.

Ever since Science's takeover of all aspects of human life some 150 years ago, that walkway picked up speed and, by now, it seems clear to most that this state-of-the-art walkway is proving to be unreliable.

Worldwide, millions of users have already lost their balance. The number of ‘expandable’ casualties grows daily.

Just as the vast majority of our ancestors remained actively passive on the continuum provided by that walkway, so have most of us since the late 40’s and 50’s and all the way through to this day - today.

Each time we accept as normal and necessary another statement of ‘progress, health and wealth and separation from all that is beyond our personal needs’, we collectively buy into what our ancestors, as ignorant of the future as we appear to be, accepted for themselves and transmitted downstream to the next generation.

Be that as it may, although the generation known in the west as the Baby Boomers has reached an age where they can be renamed Elderly Boomers, clearly, the survival of our civilisation is not at risk.

However, the consequences of dramatic overcrowding and diminishing, irreplaceable, natural resources will put human life at great risk.

There will be worsening complications for which there may not be any sustainable solutions besides cutting loose, forsaking city-living and getting behind the plough, literally, with a couple of rifles slung across our backs as we enter the Period of Consequences.

And so, our children’s children – what will they inherit?

A long, long time ago, we were individuals, yet we knew we belonged to a clan or a village community. We intuited that we all belonged to something much greater than the world we perceived with our eyes.

Today, just about every ethnic group from every culture said to be ‘primitive’, the last of the remote bastions of connected living has been lured away from a practice of wholeness.

People with ancient spiritual knowledge and we, who are struggling to regain a semblance of some, have been lured away from our heart-mind connection and to our connection to the Source, the Cosmos, God or Soul by the shimmery appeal of two fool’s gold premises:

Money equals comfort equals happiness.

More money equals greater happiness.

Interestingly, the promise of happiness through money and comfort has had the same effect on all of us who accepted the status quo, tribesmen and urban dwellers alike, as the driven discourse of missionaries promoting Christianity in foreign lands.

Having said that, one main difference exists: to achieve the lofty aim of saving heathen souls, legions of missionaries, those who exhibited sociopathic tendencies, used the dogma to perpetuate abject brutality in the name of their god.

To that effect, they destroyed spiritual artefacts.

They destroyed families in a number of ways.

They killed, whipped, maimed and raped until, under duress, folks capitulated or pretended to, while others, enchained, were shipped to the missionaries’ homelands.

Admittedly, others embraced the new way of thinking, the Christian way, such as it was presented to them.

The point to keep in mind is that whatever tripped inside these missionaries’ mind is the same as what trips inside each and every one of us, day after day, under the veneer of politeness and social awareness.

Bottom line:

Once we no longer tap into a discriminatory process, the moral compass warning us that what we are thinking and/or doing is lame, dangerous or immoral in the eyes of God or a Higher Consciousness, our single-minded aim exists on its own and becomes more important than the whole cosmic dimension of our existence.

So, it pays to isolate our single-minded aim and get to its roots.

Today, we face the consequences of the materialistic reality we have co-created face-to-face and remotely, here, there and everywhere over the centuries.

We have learned to expect longevity. Such is our fear of Death and of the Afterlife that we wish to extend our life even further - at any cost.

That, combined with the ever-improved comforts of life that ever man, woman and child demands, also points to an eventual and irreversible depletion of resources as vital as clean air, drinking water, health care and transport, which will inevitably lead to urban unrest.

Here, there and everywhere, in varying degrees, chaos will become the new normal.

How will our children’s children fare in that new environment?

Anyway, for us, dwellers in the lands of the free, the tantalising lure away from our centre of gravity has simply been a steady progression from wholesome connection to separation, from self-sufficiency within our community to total dependence on an ever-growing armada of providers.

We accepted to follow that path as willingly as herds of wildebeests off on their great migration.

Today, we face the consequences of the materialistic reality we have co-created face-to-face and remotely, here, there and everywhere over the centuries.

Longevity, combined with the ever more exigent quality of life that every man, woman and child demands, also point to an eventual and irreversible depletion of resources as essential as clean air and drinking water, health care and transport, which will inevitably lead to urban unrest.

Here, there and everywhere, in varying degrees chaos will become the new normal.

How will our children’s children fare in that new environment?

Reality check #1: for many families, here, there and everywhere, having more than two children becomes an emotional, physical and economic burden.

Reality check #2: not every girl or boy, man or woman between the ages of 15 and 50+ was cut out to be a good parent – one who is actively protective and actively nurturing in the right degree – one who is able to teach a child the difference between self-based materialism and self-less wholeness.

Reality check #3: beyond one’s need/wish/craving to have a first child, a second one or a tenth one, there are karmic reasons for infertility, just as there are karmic reasons for miscarriages and for cot deaths, just as there are karmic reasons for every perceived setback and for every death, regardless one’s age and gender.

The need for self-development from the inside/out is always reflected in karmic outcomes.

Beyond that, honestly, isn’t it already quite a demanding responsibility, when done from the heart, to truly love/accept/respect one single child - from the inside out?

So, now that these mind-meanders have gone full circle, would it be an odd thing to suggest, here, that all government factions worldwide should actively legislate for ‘voluntary’ population control as a way to solve, within a couple of generations, the most pressing challenge to life as we know it ... today.