Well, it’s official…
As of this week the population of this big, blue marble we call home hit seven billion people. Seven billion. That’s a lot of human beings. Close your eyes and imagine seven billion people. Having trouble wrapping your head around that? Imagine a Jimmy Buffett concert, then. That’s what, ten thousand people in ugly shirts with shitty taste in music, all drunk and sweating and gyrating and singing about cheeseburgers? Now imagine millions upon millions of those Jimmy Buffett concerts all going on at once, all across the globe, and you get a good idea of what an utter nightmare the idea of seven billion people sharing this planet really is.
If you needed proof that we are truly a stupid, stupid species – proof in addition to the whole Jimmy Buffett thing – then look no further than our soaring population numbers. We’ve somehow managed to collectively figure out that you don’t put too many fish in a small tank, but we’ve been unable to grasp the idea that maybe we need to restrict our own population growth. Oh, sure, the idea has been broached in China, home of a significant portion of that seven billion. They suggested a forced program, if I’m not mistaken, limiting births. What was the response across the globe? Utter horror at the idea that someone would actively restrict our own suicidal urge to breed like rabbits. Look, I’m not saying it’s a great idea, ok? Then again, it’s easy to disagree with the idea when you’re not Chinese, and therefore aren’t forced to live rubbing up against all those other people. Mostly I think it’s that people hate being told what to do, even when it’s for their own good. The fact that they don’t understand that it’s for their own good just reinforces the idea that maybe they need someone to tell them what to do.
In a perfect world, humanity would remove their collective heads from their collective asses and realize that we’re breeding our resources, our planet and ourselves into extinction. Then again, we’re all painfully aware that this isn’t a perfect world. Even more obvious is the idea that human beings are remarkably pig-headed, destructive and seemingly incapable of thinking beyond their immediate needs and desire for instant gratification. We’re destroying ourselves in a hundred different ways every day, yet we’re blinded to this fact by the desire for a quick buck and the need to keep polluting the planet with endless iterations of our spawn and, in some cases, a sincere belief that a bronze age book of fables gives us carte blanche to fuck this world up thirty ways to Sunday. If you step back and look at this mess – which I heartily recommend, as it’s an eye-opener – you can’t help but scratch your head and ask, “Are we really this short-sighted and stupid?” Well, kids, the answer appears to be a resounding, “Yes! Yes we are!”
So as we pass seven billion, pausing only momentarily to register this number before we move on to Dancing With the Stars or the Kardashian divorce or making sure Herman Cain isn’t standing behind us, we more often than not fail to see that this is really just a stepping-stone to our own demise. We’re so preoccupied that we don’t pay attention to a harbinger of our own inevitable doom. We’re sliding towards extinction, and we’re doing it to ourselves and nobody seems to really give a shit. Much the same way we’re destroying our environment to scrape out every last drop of a finite resource, instead of spending our time and brain-power on figuring out ways to make clean, renewable energy that doesn’t fist this rock into oblivion. We don’t give a shit the same way our forefathers rode west and killed every single buffalo they saw, with nary a thought that maybe we should go about this in a way that ensures we always have buffalo. They just didn’t give a shit. Sustainability? What the fuck is that all about? It never occurred to them. “Let’s just kill them all and leave them rotting on the plains, and we’ll worry about it later.” That seems to be our mindset. Let’s rape the planet and make the money and shit out eight kids that we don’t see because we’re busy making the money, and we’ll worry about the consequences later. Poisoned water? Filthy air? Dwindling resources? We’ll worry about it later. By the way, did you see the new 423-inch 3D TV I got? It’ll look great in my 67,000 square foot house that costs more to heat than the GNP of Belize.
I’ve always said that what is going to bring about the end of humanity isn’t a nuclear war or a rogue meteor, but overpopulation. I’m convinced that we’re going to kill ourselves slowly, with starvation and disease and a lack of water, as we “search for answers” while continuing to exercise our right to crap out more kids than the planet can sustain. We’re going to live in miserable denial, until the Earth is reduced to a buffalo, rotting on the plains.
Am I too pessimistic? Maybe. I hope so. But so far I haven’t seen anything that makes me rethink my position. In fact, I’ve seen a recent re-commitment to raping the planet in the name of greed. I’ve seen a bizarre deification of a family that has 19 children. We’re continuing to celebrate the very things that are slowly but surely killing us. Maybe we should just pray for a meteor, after all.
