Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Mankind's tenure on the earth has been brief but vigorous. In just a couple hundred thousand years we've transformed most of the land mass of the planet in ways that suit our desires, changing the environment in ways that many consider harmful. Most scientists attribute mankind's extraordinary impacts on the environment to his intelligence - a trait unique in the natural history of the world. There are now indications that intelligence in humans may be a self-eliminating trait. The key to the future of intelligence in the human gene pool lies in the paradox of population growth and fertility rates.

The critical problem of human overpopulation has received a growing amount of well deserved attention, and some intentional efforts are starting to show results. But there's another dimension to the problem. Not only must we find a solution to the overpopulation problem, but it must be a solution mankind can live with after the original problem is overcome.

An analysis of population trends reveals some disturbing indications that barring significant changes in the attitudes of the next couple generations, all of the problems that so occupy our attentions today may become irrelevant. The basic concepts that we've embraced with such pride over the last century may contain the seeds of destruction for our current image of modern society. Most threatened and threatening are the changes in the lives of women brought about by the emancipation movement. We tend to think of the emancipation of women as originating in this century, but similar changes in the status of women may have contributed in a similar fashion to the downfall of previous civilizations.

Fertility rate refers to the total number of children a woman will bear over her lifetime. While the world has too many humans at the moment and significant population reduction is needed, the fertility rate trend line for American women has been in a fairly steady decline for the past 200 years, starting down long before there was any concern about overpopulation.

There seems to be a strong connection between the status of women and their fertility rate. Perhaps the most statistically significant factor is education, although most of the traditional women's rights issues such as economic situation, political rights, etc. contribute some influence. The consistent trend across all racial groups has been the more enlightened and emancipated the woman, the lower her fertility rate.

While the problem of declining fertility rates has been most often portrayed as a first world vs third world issue, a closer look indicates a far different character to the problem. The same pattern affects every racial group around the world - lower fertility rates among the most successful individuals, while the least successful maintain higher rates. So the issue becomes not one of preserving diversity or east vs west, but rather one of eliminating the best and brightest out of all ethnic and racial groups.

Assuming intelligence has something to do with success in the technological world and the adoption of enlightened social structures, we're creating a situation where intelligence is an endangered characteristic of the species. No other species in the history of life on earth has ever survived by selecting out its most successful members and allowing its least functional to dominate its gene pool.

If we do nothing, success will be its own downfall. We will progressively select out of the human gene pool first the ability to further evolve our modern technological civilization, and then to even maintain the current state. The descendants of those population sectors still producing higher than replacement fertility rates today will someday tell tales around their humble campfires of the "old ones" who could do magical things like fly in the air and construct buildings so tall they touched the sky. The humans of the not too distant future will look upon the relics of our world with the same dumbfound awe as the decedents of ancient pyramid builders who today are convinced "someone else" must have built the structures.

Considering the consistency of the effects of raising the status of women on fertility rates in current population groups, it seems reasonable that previous civilizations likely suffered a similar fate. The best and brightest who build their civilization were removed from the gene pool by their own success. Eventually those that were left lost the ability to continue and their world fell apart. Those civilizations that survived over an extended period of time show substantial variations in their technological skills, with most having a "golden age" that was imitated but could not be equaled by later generations.

This time might be different. There are at least a few participants in our current civilization who see value in mankind's intellectual achievements and the emancipation of women, and wish to see them continue unabated. Mankind has traditionally turned to artificial social structures and technology to overcome natural obstacles, and a similar approach may be appropriate for this problem as well. We can change the natural direction of our decline, but it will take conscious modifications to our social structures and attitudes, as well as the likely involvement of technology in human reproduction.

Some predictions show total population peaking in another generation or so, with the current 5.7 billion humans expanding to around 8.3 billion in 2025. Most of this growth will occur in the developing countries. Total population is the sum of a number of factors such as increasing life spans, residual effects of the post war baby boom, decreasing rates of child morality, the age at which women marry and have children, birth rate (number of children born this year), immigration and emigration, etc. Once we get past the distortions of the postwar baby boom and life expectancies stabilize, we'll start to see the real effects of declining fertility rates. One of the most obvious factors will be the graying of the western world - with only 2 young workers slaving to support each aged retiree.

Regardless of any efforts to improve the fertility rates of the most successful, we must continue to encourage reductions in the fertility rates of the less successful - at least until the overpopulation crisis is past. The simplest and most benign way in which the we can help reduce the excessively high fertility rates in the third world is to teach women to read. Literacy is the single most effective population control measure known.

Statistically a minimum fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is needed for each generation to replace itself. While birth rates carry an immediate and obvious impact on total population, fertility rates are the critical factors in long term population trends. Most important for the future of the species, fertility rates will largely determine the genetic mix of the post overpopulation crisis gene pool.

For an example of the long term effects of low fertility rates, consider the Italians. Popular culture stereotypes the Italians as all having large families. In reality the Italians currently have the lowest fertility rate in the world with only 1.27 children per woman. If the Italians maintain this rate, in 50 years there could be 1/3 fewer Italians in the world than there are today. Some projections indicate Italians could disappear entirely as a people over the next hundred years.

What causes even more concern about the future impacts of declining fertility rates is that the decline occurred independent of the overpopulation problem, responding not to an intellectual decision but to other influences that will continue to influence fertility rates long beyond the resolution to the overpopulation crisis.

It took generations for the changes causing the current trends to become established in human society, and it will take at least a generation to adopt the changes in attitudes that will shift from reduction to maintenance once the overpopulation crisis is past. Most solutions appear to involve significant changes in societal attitudes and practices that will likely take at least a generation or longer to become accepted. The logical end result of a continuous below replacement fertility rate is of course extinction.

It would appear reasonable to assume that today's liberated women are not likely to relinquish their freedom and equality and return to their previous status. This is of course an assumption - as an unrepentant male of the species, I'm on the wrong side of gender gap to speak with any real authority. I suspect at least half the human population considers the changes in male/female relations over the last couple hundred years progress, and would require preserving these changes as a primary criteria for their participation in any solution. So just restoring the "old way" is a non-starter and we'll have to consider more innovative alternatives.

A partial solution might be achieved by restoring the societal status of full time parents, with recognition not for the preliminary biological function of having children, but for the successful raising of well adjusted citizens. This change would likely not only improve fertility rates but also reduce many of the other problems of society.

Accelerating the development and implementation of technologies like telecomuting, virtual presence, Internet commerce, entrepreneurship, etc. will allow more men and women to work from home, enabling parents of both sexes to be home for their children and still maintain their careers. Americans spend 1.8 billion hours/year stuck in traffic jams - time they could better spend paying more attention to parenting their children. Reducing the number of people physically commuting to work would also solve a number of other societal problems like traffic congestion, pollution, business overheads, etc.

One widespread characteristic of lower fertility rates that must be addressed as soon as possible is a tendency to favor - or even artificially select - male children. Many cultures place a higher value on a male child than a female, and faced with restrictions on the number of children in the household, practice selective abortions or infanticide to eliminate unwanted females. Intelligent males must have intelligent females with which to create intelligent offspring if their genes are to be preserved into the next generation. It is the females that most heavily affect fertility rates. Eliminating females out of any population group compounds the problem of maintaining a replacement level fertility rate. We must enhance the perceived value of little girls or there won't be enough women to go around.

But the above will only offer minor improvements. In order to make significant progress on the problem it appears we're going to need solutions that are currently impossible because of cultural, religious, and traditional obstacles. We'll have to first solve the age old problems of involving technology and conscious intervention in human reproduction.

Vesting a nameless faceless bureaucrat type human with power over the reproductive rights of other humans will always be a recipe for tyranny, so a more automated nonpartisan feedback system is needed. In the past each generation had a direct interest in how the next generation was raised. Parents cared for their children with the knowledge that they would be relying on their children to care for them in their old age.

Perhaps we could evolve a system where the retirement funding of parents is tied to the results of their parenting - a comfortable life of ease if they raised productive citizens who make a positive contribution to society, crusts of bread and brackish water if they raised violent monsters who burden society with the costs of incarceration. Restoring the link between the quality of later life with the quality of one's offspring, coupled with advances in genetic engineering and reproductive sciences, might well restore through free market forces an impartial mechanism to encourage improvements in the human gene pool - a necessary long term function governments have made such a mess of in the past.

But regardless of societal incentives, successful women are unlikely to maintain a sufficiently high fertility rate to overcome all of the effects of emancipation, increasing acceptance of alternative life-styles, and other compromising factors. If mankind ever does become a space faring species, we'll need even more top quality children to fill colonies in near earth orbit, on Mars, the asteroid belt, etc.

When voluntary incentives fail to achieve the needed fertility rate, we must prepare ourselves for the wholly artificial reproduction of humans. A brave new world doesn't seem so bad when the alternatives are even worse. Most particularity, if we are unable to change the cultural preference for male children, we may be faced with the need to artificially create female children to fill the shortfall. It would be ironic that those who will bring natural fertility to the next generation might themselves need to be created in the sterility of the laboratory.

Imposing solutions by force has a long history of failure. Subtle influences started today that will only reach fruition after a couple of generations may have better results. Future generations will need a variety of tools we deny ourselves in order to overcome the extraordinarily complex and difficult problems they will face. The best we can do is start the process of making these tools available by the time they're really needed.

Developing a rational reproductive strategy for the whole of humanity will become increasingly necessary over time. The potentials for disaster await us whether we implement an effective strategy or not. If we do nothing, the human gene pool is guaranteed to degrade, filtering out the genes of at least all those intelligent enough to care about such things. The looming extinction of the best and brightest, coupled with at least a generation to investigate and come to terms with alternative strategies, ought to provide both the motivation and the means to solve what has always been mankind's most intractable conundrum.