On Finity
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
- Edward Abbey
In my capacity as editor of a business magazine, I hear about growth constantly. Managed growth. Sustainable growth. Inevitable growth. It’s all bullshit. Managed growth and sustainable growth are oxymoronic. Inevitable growth is self-deceptive. Growth is only inevitable if we allow it to be. The phrase is tossed around in business and economic circles as if we have no choice. We have a choice and it’s a simple one. I did not say it would be an easy one.
The inevitable growth many of our communities face is the result of too many people. Science has given us the capability of controlling our numbers, all we have to do is put it into practice. Yes, this goes against the injunctions in several religious faiths to “be fruitful and multiply.” Those injunctions made sense when the world was sparsely populated. Somehow, I doubt that the Creator intended us to multiply to the point of destroying Creation. We seem determined to do just that.
We humans seem to have trouble grasping the concept of finity. I lay claim to a certain expertise on the subject since I have lived on several islands. You’d think that anyone who lived on a small island could grasp this concept, since it should be as obvious as the surrounding water that an island is finite. It can only support so many people. Once that point is passed, Malthusian nightmares begin.
People on Bainbridge and Vashon Islands, where I lived here in Washington, glimpsed part of the idea, but not all of it. Those who moved onto these island havens immediately wanted to “raise the drawbridge” so that no more immigrants could threaten their paradise. That’s treating the symptom, not the disease. The islands needed to make a choice, which they still have not done. They needed to draw a line in the sand, saying this far and no further. Until that line is drawn, they risk destroying what made those islands attractive. Most of us don’t find Manhattan Island fit for human habitation.
There is a constant debate in my present community of Bellingham over how we’re going to accommodate thousands more people in the next few years and still preserve the quality of life that draws those folks to move here. The answer, again, is simple. We can’t. Beyond a certain point, more people will only degrade the quality of life. We may have already passed that point. Agricultural land is being gobbled up by developers at an alarming rate. This despite a statewide Growth Management Act that very demonstrably disproves its own purpose.
Agriculture and forestry have destroyed the once bounteous salmon runs in most of our rivers and streams to the point where most species of salmon are now considered endangered. Why? To satisfy the voracious demands of all those people.
Those islands and this community are microcosms of the planet we live on. Did no one grasp the true meaning of those photos depicting our globe floating in the vastness of space? It’s just a bigger island.
We have been so thoroughly brainwashed by our religion of consumerism that we find it easy to ridicule visionaries like Ernest Callenbach who propose a stable-state economy.
It is time to trash the despicable fiction that growth is inevitable or even good. It’s only good for those who can see no farther than next quarter’s bottom line. It’s certainly not good for the generations that will succeed us. If they survive the environmental hell we are preparing for them, they will quite rightly condemn us as criminals and fools.
The natural world provides a system of checks and balances that we humans have cleverly subverted. When the population of mice grows too great for the carrying capacity of the land, the population crashes until balance is restored. It works all the way up the food chain until it gets to the top. Our end run around this process is only temporary. Sooner or later balance will be restored. We’re seeing the effects already in the form of wars, poverty, starvation, disease, the depletion of finite resources, and the poisoning of land, sea and air.
The Chinese are beginning to figure this out and are limiting their numbers. Their methods may not be very subtle and they may have come too late. At least they’re trying. Here in the jungle of savage capitalism, any mention of slowing or halting growth is treated as the ultimate blasphemy. If that doesn’t work, they call in the religious fundamentalists to further obfuscate the issue.
I’m no fan of abortion, but it is better than forcing women to bear unwanted children who then grow up abused and impoverished. When they predictably turn to crime and finally kill someone, then their lives become somehow less precious than they were when they were embryos. If you don’t like abortion, then support birth control and sex education. Those who preach sexual abstinence simply reveal their own ignorance of human nature and the demonstrable ill effects of celibacy.
In the long run, it doesn’t matter at what point we interrupt the breeding cycle. Either we do it or nature will eventually do it for us. That this planet is finite is growing more obvious by the day. The longer we refuse to accept the concept of finity, the less our chances of survival. Theoretically, our brains make us superior. We will see.
9:35:26 PM 
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