The menacing population flood tide

Title

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XIV (No.9) September 1962

Year

1962

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

The human deluge poses a serious problem of birth and death controls

Fulltext

* Th * human dahig * potea a serious problem of birth and death controls. THE MENACING POPULATION FLOOD TIDE In biblical days, man was supposed to receive a divine order to grow and multiply. The earth was then a vast open space, much of it empty. But during the centuries that have elasped since those early times, the increase of the in habitants of the earth has been continuous and rapid. About 150 years ago a stu dious and observant English man was quite alarmed at seeing the growth of the po pulation practically in all countries. He was the Rev. Thomas Malthus who point ed out the tendency of popu lation increasing at a rate faster than could be provided with the supply of food that could be produce. And he warned that if allowed to continue unchecked it would result in widespread misery and even starvation. While the statements of Malthus set men to thinking about the population problem most people paid little, if any, attention to his ideas. The eminent scholar and scientist Julian Huxley tells us that as late as the 1930’s it had been quite customary to ridicule Malthusian fears. He said: "For one thing, the opening up of new land to agriculture, coupled with the introduction of better agri cultural methods, had al lowed food-production to keep up with population increase, and in some areas even to outdistance it. Ff>r another, attempts were being made to impugn the whole basis of Malthus’ argument. It was pointed out that he was incorrect in saying that food-production tended to in crease in an arithmetical pro gression, as against the geo metrical progression of popu lation-increase: food-produc tion during the nineteenth and early twentieth century did actually increase in a more than arithmetical pro gression.’’ But Huxley now tells us that "the nineteenth-century 54 Panorama spurt in food-production was a temporary historical inci dent: it cannot be expected to continue at the same rate, and indeed must slow down as it approaches an inevitable limit; and secondly that, though Malthus' particular formulation was incorrect, there is a fundamental differ ence between the increase of population, which is based on a geometrical or com pound - interest growth - me chanism, and of production, which is not.” Among primitive peoples some kind of control on population growth has exist ed as a result of famine, sickness, and war. At times infanticide, or abortion, or sexual abstinence over long periods are also practiced by them. But in more civilized countries there had not been any socially accepted system of population control until quite recently when the im mense increase of population and the growing difficulties of securing a sufficient and substantial means of support have started some studies to discover more acceptable methods of birth-control. The problem has become very- pressing as a result of the report on the survey of the population of the world which was first undertaken by the United Nations Con ference on World Population held in Rome in 1954. The UN statistics tells us that the world’s population today stands at the 3-billion mark. In the 1920’s, it did not yet pass the 2-billion mark; and in the mid-eighteenth cen tury, it was still in the 1-billion mark. Huxley writes that at about the time of Christ, the world population could not have exceeded onefourth of a billion or about 250 million. But this increase in abso lute numbers is not the only significant fact. What is even more impressive is that the rate of increase itself has kept on increasing almost by leaps and bounds. Human numbers have tended to grow not only by geometrical pro gression, as Malthus estimat ed, but by compound-interest rate. The prospect is, there fore, quite alarming. Population growth has not, however, followed a constant acceleration. The increase has taken place in upward jumps depending upon new discoveries in physiology, hy Sbptember 1962 55 giene, and scientific medicine which have cut down death rates. Where these scientific discoveries are fully applied, the expectation of life at birth has more than dou bled. In the days of the Roman Empire, the life expectancy was only 30 years. In this day this has gone up to 70 years in some countries in Europe and in the United States; and even in some lessdeveloped countries this in crease in life expectancy is noticable. Now that new methods of birth-control are discovered and being more widely used, the population problem is no longer solely a race between population and food-produc tion, but between death-con trol and birth-control, Hux ley says. But the case for birth-control has been made difficult by the opposition of the Roman Catholic church and coincidentally by Rus sian Communism specially during the Stalin rule. Catholic authorities have taken the stand that artificial birth-control is immoral, to say the least, and the Com munists have ridiculecl__ibe notion of overpopulation call ing it an invention of the imperialists and the colonial ists. But those who consider this problem of population objectively cannot disregard its serious aspect. In the Philippines today, the population is more than 28 million. This represents an increase of more than 3 per cent a year. If this rate continues in 15 years or in 1977, the popula tion of our country will ex ceed 50 million. With better means of production, im proved methods of- manufac turing, farming land utiliza tion, and scientific exploita tion and use of our forests, fishing, grounds, and other natural resources, the Philip pines may still have enough room to support that size of its population. But with that figure, a continued in crease at a geometrical ratio will mean a population with a size sufficient to bring down the standard of living of the people. Without birth-con trol, the nation may have to face serious difficulties in meeting not just its food and other physical needs but also its educational, social, and cultural needs. 56 Panorama It takes a Britisher, Mr. Gerald Wilkinson, who is a prominent businessman in Manila, to bring to the at tention of our public the menace of population explo sion to the Philippines as it is already felt in the other countries of the world. In a speech before the Manila Rotary Club about three years ago, W. Wilkinson made these statements: “The fact that most of Asia is in a worse plight does not reduce the urgency of the Philippine problem. For what is this mounting wave of population going to ex pect? The same standards of living as in the past? Are the children of today going to expect to have more or less things than their grand parents? “If the Philippine popu lation was under communist control, I suppose that coer cion, brain-washing and regi mentation might for a time induce our acceptance of lower standards of living, which in turn would curb the strain upon the economic apparatus of the Philippines. “But under our democratic processes, with a fret press, competitive political promises for a better life for everybody in every election campaign, and with commercial adver tising, the radios, the tele visions, the magazines, the movies and the billboards, all stimulating to everybody, everywhere, to expect the luxuries of yesterday to be come the necessities of today, surely the people of the free world including the Philip pines are being stimulated to demand more and not less things per person than they now obtain.” A large, steady, and rapid increase in population is bound to result in the ex pansion of the areas occupied by barrios, towns, and cities. More people require more residential sites, more busi ness and industrial centers. Recreational places, play grounds, parks, and other spots needed for cultural ac tivities will be either sacri ficed to'give way to the need for space for food-production or maintained at the expense of health and other material necessities. Julian Huxley puts this question in this manner: “The space and the re sources of our planet are limited. Some we must set September 1962 57 aside for the satisfaction of man’s material needs — for food, raw materials, and energy. But we must set aside others for more ulti mate satisfactions — the en joyment of unspoilt nature and fine scenery, the interest of wild life, travel, satisfying recreation, beauty in place of ugliness in human build ing, and the preservation of the variety of human culture and of monuments of an cient grandeur. “In practice this means limiting the use to which some areas are put. You can not use ploughed fields to land aircraft on, you cannot grow crops in built-over areas, you cannot permit ex ploitation or unrestricted “development” in national parks or nature sanctuaries. In the long run, you cannot avoid paying the price for an unrestricted growth of hu man numbers: and that price is ruinous. “It is often asserted that science can have no concern with values. On the contrary, in all fields of Social Science, and (in rather a different way) wherever the applica tions of Natural Science touch social affairs and affect human living, science must take account of values, or it will not be doing its job satisfactorily. The popula tion problem makes this ob vious. As soon as we recall that population is merely a collective term for .aggrega tions of living human beings, we find ourselves thinking about relations between quantity and quality — quan tity of the human beings in the population and quality of the lives they lead: in other words, values.” WHAT IS SELFISHNESS? Selfishness is the satisfaction of desire at somebody else's expense, so that the one’s gain is the other’s loss. It may be supposed that everyone, at some time or other, has done things of this sort; but no one can be a Machiavellian unless he makes such a behavior a rule of life. Panorama

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