0649 - WorryWorry

After the ritual check of the drosometer*, the morning Staff meeting at the Objective Observatory opens by consulting the curious Forgotten Words calendar. A recent entry described an ancient Whit Monday celebration: "... the rest of the day is spent in dancing, mirth and merry glee." Readers, that was then. Now, as we look around the world just after Whit Monday, there isn't a whit of merry glee to speak of. The world is polluted and getting hotter; icebergs are melting and oceans rising; there isn't enough oil; religious crazies abound everywhere, ready to blow you up for fun. In the United States, the Administration is hyper-incompetent and subverting the Constitution, while the Congress is corrupt and childish; and, as frosting, the stock markets are panicking. Even Smiling Anguilla is suffering from over-construction, secrecy, and the first signs of community distrust. The list of subjects to worry about is full; take your pick. Bird Flu? Deficits? The horrid mess of Iraq? The new crazy in Iran? Terrorists in Toronto of all places? Let us see today if we can sort the real threats, and their real causes, from the silly claims so popular with pols.

If there is one root cause of suffering, conflict, starvation, and misery – and there is one – it is a cause that many are embarrassed to confront. We speak of over-population. There are too many people almost everywhere, so of course resources are being used up and the world stripped. Behind the OverPop, there are drivers. One is the ability of modern medicine to keep both young and old from dying. So, in more primitive places where the way to have a family when old is to produce the maximum of issue, you now have many too many people. Look at the population trends in Egypt, or Palestine, India, Bangladesh and Indonesia, Mexico and Central America. The OverPop makes for starvation, fighting over scarce resources, immigration battles, and, yes, terrorism. In the more developed countries, although contraception is usually practiced, modern medicine keeps the oldies around much longer, with the obvious rise in Social Security and medical care costs for the rising number of agèd.

Of course, there are many, everywhere, who are struggle daily, often in most evil ways, to decrease population. The idiots who blow up buses in Baghdad, their cousins who blow up buses in Israel, and all the advocates of violence do their part. In a more sophisticated way, we have those who fight against use of condoms, thus assuring more scores of millions suffering and dying horribly from AIDS. These evil types are found in the U.S., where under the banner of defending some strange concept they call "The Family" they oppose sex education, condoms, and generally anything that might make having sex safe. Just this week, when Merck got approval for its vaccine that prevents cervical cancer, the anti-sex crazies opposed requiring use of the vaccine because it might encourage premarital sex. We say to them: Feh! Go to Iraq!

Is there hope? Probably not with the selfish and stupid in charge worldwide. We well remember the Bushies (including the Chief one) who fought the Kyoto protocol, and mileage requirements for cars, and anything else interfering with pollution. And as for the Mullahs and their spiritual brothers everywhere who assert the right to kill anyone not subscribing to their pompous claims of being messengers of God, they may, one can pray, be over-populating their own special Hells. And those stupids who have persuaded themselves that gay marriage is the major threat, and their pandering Congresspeople – well, think about it, it isn't the gays who are over-populating the globe, now is it?

Next time: Estates [OO #650]

* An instrument measuring the fall of dew.

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