Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family

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StAnastasia said:
Thanks – it was gorgeous today at the dress rehearsal. We have an augmented choir of twenty voices, plus an early music chamber ensemble of 3 sackbutts, 3 violas da gamba, cornetto, archlute, and Renaissance drums. I suggested we make a CD for the parish from the performance, and the choir director was warmly receptive to this.

I suspect we will see more of this community music making as the end of affordable oil and a shrinking population brings people into greater local contact with less far-flung travel. Les media saturation and more sacred music!

StAnastasia
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Go for it!

Yes, I see the pendulum swinging back to a more community-neighbor frame of mind… in many areas of ones life. As living has been more of movement far and wide for accommodating our social and financial concerns, it is now (little by little) becoming closer to where one is again. And the ‘nicest’ community is of course, the Church, and these have maintained a local area population over drawing from far and wide. The family will be more gathered too, although most families are much smaller now and can gather in a house, rather then a Church basement or barn as in the older days. This, even in the bigger cities, and already in the smaller towns and communities.

For me, it seems the family can get so far apart and then the ‘rubber-band’ pulls 'em back toward each other again. This also is true with neighbors and community… it’s the static element between so-called independence and heritage… where one came from and also where they belong and have roots. Understanding the deep needs of social interaction, even with family and the Church… one finds out that being an island is lonely and that ‘rubber-band’ pulls one back… like gravity.

So, yes, I do see hope for the Family… all sorts of families, even the one you participated in with ‘heavenly voices’. These types of ‘nooks’ are out there, maybe close enough to touch you if you’d notice then, and not be so busy with one’s life that it is not even seen or considered. The community as a whole should lean in the right direction for interaction on the personal scale, and start to heal as well. And if one more comes back into the fold, that is one less out in the wild… one by one, it will happen…
 
Geremia,

Thanks for posting those links. It shows the ‘interlinkedness’ of things. How something intended for betterment can actually effect the reverse. To me, it kinda shows how smart/dumb we are really about how it all works together when we throw the monkey-wrench into it.

It’s like that saying: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Another one I like: “Give a person a fish and they will eat for a day. Teach them to fish and they will eat for life.”

And, what all does the person need/want in living life? Food and challenges for all the body-mind-soul that makes up the whole person. Prioritizing one part puts other parts on the back-burner… how long will the ‘whole’ person not feel that something is amuck, that balance is missing… and seek to pay-attention to the missing elements?
 
This quote from pope Benedict:
“the World Bank wrote a report indicating that **economic growth could be used to seduce a society **into accepting demographic suppression. If the Bank wants to work in countries that do not accept population control as the rationale, it must base its population program on a broader and more flexible set of principles. This could **start from a recognition that the overall objective is promotion of sustainable development in living standards **…”

reminds me of how Dr. Bernard Nathanson, founder of NARAL, said they would try to sell abortion to the public:

, "“We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal, enlightened, sophisticated one,”

Nothing changes under the sun. What is old is new. We are constantly being bombarded and manipulated by agendas, especially now with the world turning more and more animalistic, more pagan. Our God is an awesome God. Don’t diminish Him. Believe. He is in control and asks not not to worry about tomorrow. Act prudentially? Yes. Worry to the point of killing His greatest creation, mankind? Absolutely not. Shame on us.
 
Michael_David said:
Yes, I see the pendulum swinging back to a more community-neighbor frame of mind… in many areas of ones life. As living has been more of movement far and wide for accommodating our social and financial concerns, it is now (little by little) becoming closer to where one is again. And the ‘nicest’ community is of course, the Church, and these have maintained a local area population over drawing from far and wide. The family will be more gathered too, although most families are much smaller now and can gather in a house, rather then a Church basement or barn as in the older days. This, even in the bigger cities, and already in the smaller towns and communities.
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Michael David, the concert was splendid. I was late to the final dress rehearsal, because our neighbor’s garage caught on fire in the afternoon, and as we were fist on the scene I was fighting it (in my dress clothes) with my high-pressure garden hose until the FD arrived, and then we found our street was blocked off by all the fire engines! Many from our parish community came to the concert, generating a wonderful sense of community. Lots of Medieval and Renaissance sacred music.

With the end of affordable petroleum that supports our high-flying, long-commuting lifestyle and our petroleum-dependent agriculture, both our population will contract, and our lives will relocalize. What worries me most is populations in places like Denver, Southern California, and other areas where people live thirty or fifty miles from work. What happens to their house values when it is no longer affordable to get to work? What happens to their far flung communities when people can’t hop in their SUVs and drive twenty minutes to a soccer game? Our entire life is premised upon cheap and plentiful oil, and that is about the come to a discomforting end in a few years.

We need the churches more than ever to help us to rethink our priorities.

StAnastasia
 
StAnastasia said:
Michael David, the concert was splendid. I was late to the final dress rehearsal, because our neighbor’s garage caught on fire in the afternoon, and as we were fist on the scene I was fighting it (in my dress clothes) with my high-pressure garden hose until the FD arrived, and then we found our street was blocked off by all the fire engines! Many from our parish community came to the concert, generating a wonderful sense of community. Lots of Medieval and Renaissance sacred music.

With the end of affordable petroleum that supports our high-flying, long-commuting lifestyle and our petroleum-dependent agriculture, both our population will contract, and our lives will relocalize. What worries me most is populations in places like Denver, Southern California, and other areas where people live thirty or fifty miles from work. What happens to their house values when it is no longer affordable to get to work? What happens to their far flung communities when people can’t hop in their SUVs and drive twenty minutes to a soccer game? Our entire life is premised upon cheap and plentiful oil, and that is about the come to a discomforting end in a few years.

We need the churches more than ever to help us to rethink our priorities.

StAnastasia
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First: isn’t it interesting how helping a ‘neighbor’ became a priority, even when a nice, good thing was planned? It is good to have gotten there to taste some of that ‘good ole music’… I remember those songs too, but do not hear them very often. You had both ‘cake’ and ‘frosting’… what a blessing.

Have you never heard of ‘desert towns’ that were mere buildings when the trains went a different route? They were deserted by the people as they went elsewhere. Even Moses was told to leave his ‘then’ home for the land of milk and honey. The fisherman where asked if they wanted to follow Jesus… they left what they had and were doing to do just that. It is not a new thing to do such things. How many moved west in their wagons in search for something better… then of course came the gold rush. It will happen in reverse too. A few here and there that are paying attention, and more as they catch on… but there are always those that for some reason or other have different priorities and will not follow even if Christ Himself would ask them. Ours is to not look back as we may be turned to stone.

And lastly (but maybe first), the Churches are there waiting for us, in the neighborhoods they have always been in. Does the Church know something? Look at breathing… inhale (youth)… exhale (aged)… can one whole life be ‘as simple’ as taking one breath? If a day is like a thousand years, and visa-versa… can one breath be like a thousand, and visa-versa?

Yes, when the drive for enough funds relates to living and working closer to ‘our circle’ of family, and money is a mere necessary evil rather then a greedy pursuit all by itself… then one finds they can live on less and be even more happy then when they had more money… but who controlled who, what controlled what; wasn’t the pursuit of the almighty dollar in control… not you? There is the image that one had to maintain also… and that cost plenty. And it grew on itself more and more… where does it end?

Perhaps with the Church… with the family… with the neighbors… with the community.
 
StAnastasia said:
That depends on your definition of “overpopulated.” If four or five billion die of starvation over the course of the next century when fossil petrochemicals become exhausted, perhaps we could say in retrospect that the earth was overpopulated with respect to resources.

A good example of how delicate the population-to-resources balance is may be afforded by the case of Tikopia, an very small island in the South Pacific, of only a couple of square kilometers (less than one square mile). Incredibly, Tikopia sustained a stable population of 1,500 humans for 3,000 years. The population had to be at ZPG, and this was achieved through infanticide and suicide by canoe (the elderly would sail off alone in a canoe to certain death).

No one relishes the Tikopian solution to population pressure, and fortunately we now have alternatives.

StAnastasia
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This supports the idea that we as humans are nothing more than (intelligent) animals. This would be true accept for the fact there are many people who are able to live chaste lives, married and single, through prayer and self-control. Our population in the United States is stable, many people that only have 2-3 children, which is just enough for a sustainable population. Our poplulation does not need to be controlled by the government; if we are aware as individuals of the results of our actions. What parent in their right mind would have kids that they could not take care of. Contraception, Surgery, Abortion are all human solutions that do not work or allow us to have life in all it fullness. There will always be room for another child to be born. Especially if you believe that God will provide us with everything we need if we seek him first.
 
liberalcatholic said:
What parent in their right mind would have kids that they could not take care of.
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One’s that don’t think of the consequences of sex I’m guessing.

"United States statistics for 1987 showed that of “5.4 million pregnancies among American women, about **3.1 million (57 percent) were unintended **at the time of conception. Of these, about 1.6 million were aborted”

Cohen, J (1996) Ten myths of population
Discover, April 1996 v17 n4 p42(5)
 
liberalcatholic said:
There will always be room for another child to be born.
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By the same logic, there will always be room in a lifeboat for one more swimmer. There will always be room in an elevator for one more person. There will always be room in a Volkswagen for just one more college student. There is always room in the stomach for just one hotdog! There are no limits anywhere.
 
redhen said:
One’s that don’t think of the consequences of sex I’m guessing.

"United States statistics for 1987 showed that of “5.4 million pregnancies among American women, about **3.1 million (57 percent) were unintended **at the time of conception. Of these, about 1.6 million were aborted”

Cohen, J (1996) Ten myths of population
Discover, April 1996 v17 n4 p42(5)
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So, of all the pregnancies in 1987, 23/54 were deliberate? That’s higher than I would have thought, since there weren’t as many infertile childless couples then. I usually assume most pregnancies are unintended and unexpected, but that parenthood is a growing-up experience and part of growing up is learning to cope with the unexpected.
Apparently, coping is a dying skill, if a majority (16/31) of surprise children a generation ago were killed.
 
I’ll admit abortion statistics are always suspect. Their method of bringing the birth rate in line doesn’t seem in line with Catholic teaching.

Asia, the most populous region of the world, has the largest total number of abortions (17 million legal and 10 million illegal), followed by Europe, with eight million (most of them in Eastern Europe), Africa (five million), Latin America (four million), Northern America (1.5 million) and Oceania (0.1 million). Asia accounts for 59% of the world’s abortions, and Northern America only 3%.

Do you remember when we were running out of gas in the 1970’s? I really think the only right thing to do is use it up and be done with oil (only partially cynical).
StAnastasia said:
Example and education. When children in Thailand were educated to the consequences of large families in a finite country, the birth rate came to to a replacement rate. When people are educated about the end of affordable oil, they may be led to recognize that incessant prolifgeration of the human speices is unsustainable.

StAnastasia
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