What's the Point

The replacement fertility level -- the average number of children needed to be born per woman in order to maintain ongoing generational levels -- is roughly 2.1. Fewer than that translates to a shrinking population, absent immigration. This Member Monday we'll address the philosophical questions that arise by means of a thought experiment in which the actual rate were to drop to zero.

As far as existential crises go, this one is kinder, gentler. No doom porn here. View this exercise simply as a way to tease out one's sense of life and its meaning. We may start out at the more surface level e.g the climate change anxieties now become somewhat secondary, the on-going threat of wars and the attendant mass destruction likewise fade in context. This so-called infertility scenario in many ways suggests a refreshingly different perspective on the traditional parade-of-horribles. One may even embrace a world where our day-to-day existence is (perceived to be) less burdened by those conventional existential threats. 

Yet, a deeper sort of soul-searching would likely emerge from the dawning realization that the just-born generation would be the planet's last. This exercise -- the simple knowledge that "we are the last humans on earth" -- might offer some surprising insights, including reflections on the power of faith. We pondered five months ago various belief systems -- including those that centered around an afterlife (click, Shuffling Off This Mortal Coil). Meaning derived from a faith-based notion of life everlasting would certainly differ from the philosopher's reckoning centered around a finite terrestrial existence.

Enter the Humanist with the question: what is the intrinsic value of one's human experience given the absolute certainty that life, both one's own and that of humanity at large, will eventually end (focus article, click: The End Is Coming). Absent faith, a crisis of meaning would seem to loom with the awareness that all will (eventually) be lost. The author cites one scenario in which there might be a complete ethical and political collapse (e.g. the movie "Children of Men") -- a world filled with "equal parts catastrophe and indifference." 

Really? Our friend Joseph Campbell maintains we might stop focusing on the meaning of life and focus instead on the process of living ("What's the meaning of a flower?"). Still, so much of life satisfaction seems achieved with an eye to the future. Is that not the basis for the essentially selfless act of having children? A man plants a tree knowing full well he will be long gone before he could benefit from its shade. Would he do so with the knowledge no one else would either? The answer may lie in proximity i.e. a condition such as the infertility scenario quickly fades to abstraction with its perceived remoteness. 

Yet, as suggested, the End (however it reveals itself) is rushing at us from the future, a matter of time. "The last generation is going to have to be composed of people better and braver than we are now -- and it is our job to help them end up that way." 

That's the point.

(To access previous Member Monday introductions, click TOC)