Birth Control- All or Nothing

It is well known that the Catholic church disapproves of birth control.
It is less well known that Orthodox Jews, some Protestant groups and elements of Islam are in broad agreement.

It is also obvious that most of us disagree- even most Catholics, in private.
And yet birth control as it is currently practised, may be the most damaging long term phenomenon of our time.

We are using a social advance irresponsibly.
In fact, we are NOT practising birth control at all.

This post is going to enter uncomfortable ground. Uncomfortable ground, because we must come to terms with a shadow that hangs over much of twentieth century political debate.

I said before that one of the problems with Nazi Germany, is a blanket abhorrence of any idea that came to fruition in that society.
This is often called the 'reductio ad hitlerum'- the rejection of any idea, on the simple grounds that it was the advocated by the Nazis.

Well, the Nazis advocated a lot of things. And whilst many of them were plain wrong, we have tacitly adopted motorways, rockets, and a host of other Nazi ideas which actually turned out to be advances. Whatever else you say about them, they were advanced in terms of science. Often, in misusing it, but use it they did.

And one of the most worrying features is, how Nazism, by its misuse of science, killed stone dead, a very important socio-political point.

Planned birth control.

Shock horror.
Before you turn away in disgust thinking I'm justifying something appalling, let's look at what the Eugenics movement was saying, before the Nazis hi-jacked it, and turned into a plan to breed lots of Aryans and sterilise all Jews and black people.

Please remember Marcus Garvey supported Eugenics too.

Darwin's laws of evolution state that life is a battle to survive. Each human couple may produce eight-ten children. The population booms until resources die out. War, famine and disease take out those elements of the population on the whole less equipped with the necessary skills to survive such hardships.
In other words, simple existence is its own birth control. If you don't mind living in such a brutal world, then one thing you can be sure of, evolution happens.

Nature red in tooth and claw.

Up until last century, human culture had pretty much followed the ancient laws of survival of the fittest. On the whole the strongest, the handsomest, the cleverest, were more likely to pass on their genes than their less talented brethren.

But this happened because in poorer families, the majority of births didn't make it to adulthood.

Would I be here had I been born two hundred years ago? No. I'd have lived for a few minutes.
Nature would have consigned me to its waste basket.

On the whole therefore, it is probably true to say that during recorded history people have, on average got cleverer, stronger, more sensitive, better communicators, etc.

Now, modern science removes that.
We are able to create a world without war, famine and disease.

The disease, because we eradicate it, the other two because we are better able to control the circumstances that cause such situations.

The majority of children born CAN reach adulthood, and can themselves breed.

Now left to itself, the population would spiral out of control, and undoubtedly, though disease would still be less likely, war and famine would return to the equation.

So birth control, is undoubtedly a good thing.
To a degree...

People go on about the virtues of the nuclear family. I maintain it no longer accords with our social needs. It cannot work in a society which has discovered birth control.

Because here is the deal we offer.

Get a degree, get a good job, be two responsible people, with much to offer society, every child you have will eat up a large portion of your efforts for twenty years. Each one will cost you about £100,000.



Be completely useless, the state will deal with it.

Darwin's laws in reverse.

Because the very people who in nature would provide the largest share of the next generation, choose not to breed.
And those who, for the most part, would contribute least to the gene pool in nature- due to their elimination- now provide an ever increasing share of the human genetic stock.
Unpalatable, but undeniably true.

This isn't positive birth control. What we are doing is asking our brightest and best NOT to breed, so that the human population can be restocked by those who's genes wouldn't be being passed on if the competition really was as brutal as nature made it.

Now let's face it, birth control is a good thing. But it HAS changed society. In one sense, it has rendered obsolete old sexual taboos. I know some love to cherish them, but fact is, we just don't need them. Sex really CAN be just for fun. It need have nothing to with love or relationships- or reproduction.

The problem is, we still have STDs on a large scale- notably AIDS- and whilst that remains, it skews our thinking.
But expecting that ultimately ALL STDs will be a thing of the past, is not unreasonable.

And then, where does that leave birth control?

We can't use one bit of the knowledge we have, and not others.
We have taken away the survival of the fittest aspect of life. Now, everyone can survive to live long, happy lives.

So in that case, we need to always ensure that we plan that the size of the next generation, will fit expected human capacity to provide for such population.

And there are two responsibilities in my view, we need to bear in mind.

Firstly, we should never use our ability to restrict population growth, as an excuse for attempting equilibrium. Thankfully, I don't think that will happen, but the need to feed an ever increasing number of human mouths is a powerful incentive towards social and technological advance.
I can forsee in the future birth control allowing for substantial jumps in the size of the next generation it allows for, on the basis of advances such as say, the terraforming of Venus.

Secondly, if we are agreed that we are GOING to limit the birth rate by artificial means, we can't allow this to be random.
Natural selection decides who has sex. It doesn't decide which sex results in pregnancy. And right now the people having sex who would probably produce the most talented children, decide that their lives are better off without them, or with only a tiny number.

Again, this is another advantage of communal living. Reverse the deal. Allow the best to breed by society taking over the responsibility for bringing up the children it wants to see born.
It's not much of a step- we're moving there anyway. The point is to make it so that no one feels that having a child is a burden- but that everyone understands that bringing children into the world is a big thing.



Ultimately, the test of nature has been removed as to who survives and breeds, and what we have in its place is a system which basically says; if you're responsible, don't breed, or not too much, if you aren't, breed like rabbits.

Now that isn't sensible. But putting the genie back in the bottle will lead to Argeggedon.
So like it or not, one day we're going to have to sit down as a society and work out criteria for issuing licenses to breed.

That doesn't mean licenses to have sex- but licenses to produce children.
And to make that work effectively, there should be no disparity shown in the responsibilities of the parents of lawfully produced children towards their offspring- or the support offered by society as a whole.

Because by guaranteeing that every child born lives to breed, and by making sex without childbirth possible, we have nullified the laws of nature.
And we have to take responsibility for that.

It makes for a nicer world. A world without war, famine and disease.
And where sex can be something much more beautiful than just a breeding mechanism- it can be a carefree expression of affection, it can be an unfettered pleasure, it can be a powerful expression of love.

But we need to be responsible for what having these abilities means.

If we have cut the apron strings of nature- and we have- on something so fundamental as the reproductive process, then we need, as a species, to do the planning nature randomly did.

We need to take control of planning the species of the future.

Or the future will be Wayne and Waynetta Slob.