St. Paul at Fraters Libertas had a thought-provoking review of the movie “Children of Men” yesterday. Some of those thoughts were responded to by Doug at Bogus Gold. Both people got something different out of the movie and both posts are well worth reading.
I haven’t seen the movie myself yet, but when I first read St. Paul’s reaction I moved the film onto my Netflix queue (it has not been released as on DVD yet). The story is set in the future and the premise is that for some unknown reason humans had become sterile some 18 years earlier. When a pregnant woman is discovered a desperate, secret mission is arranged to escort her through a violent, dystopic land to an island sanctuary where the hope for the future could be nurtured and raised. While I agree with Doug and St. Paul’s takes on the film, my imagination was turned more to thoughts of what life in such a society and world would be like.
From time to time my pastor has said that God hasn’t given up on mankind because He keeps sending babies. We all have ingrained in us a sense that time is going to continue and the future is ever before us and babies are a normal and accepted part of our existence and an intrinsic part of our frame of reference. Even though some individuals can fall into hopelessness, and certain segments of society can become nihilistic, the babies keep coming and — though it isn’t always obvious — the whole world is shaped by that awareness. What if, however, there were suddenly no more babies for anyone regardless of who you were, where you lived and how much money you made? How would our attitudes and cultures change?
Without the hope of children, what would happen to our notions of marriage, family stability and long-term relationships? What would we, as individuals and as societies, invest in? What would happen to schools and universities, real estate prices, farming, social networks and infrastructure as the population steadily ages and diminishes? What, despite Nancy Pelosi’s recent opportunistic and deep-as-a-dog-dish twaddle, would happen to our governments if everyone knew human existence was going to end within the next 75 years? What would our priorities become? How depressing would this be if you were 50 years old — or if you were 18?
It’s a pretty grim scenario and fortunately not a real one at this time, though the reproduction rate of much of the West is below the two children per couple replacement rate (which suggests that in terms of world domination the main difference between a radical Islamist and a moderate one simply may be a degree of patience) and business leaders are already having serious concerns about how they will replace their aging workforce over the next 20 years (a real problem that sheds some light on certain attitudes toward open immigration).
But what if zero — strike that, negative — population growth was the reality? The cultural changes would be dramatic and many would say even horrific — yet many of our actions individually and politically already suggest that we act as if there is no future. Many of us give up our rights and opportunities for self-determination in favor of selfish pursuits, trusting that future generations or the nanny state will bail us out. We max out our credit cards while our elected officials, regardless of party, spend more and more without even trying to seriously address the long-term needs of present generations (e.g. social security reform) while officially sanctioning the killing of future generations.
It’s not a new phenomenon; human history is a series of selfish, short-term decisions and actions miraculously overshadowed and overcome by the succession of generations who in turn got to make their own mistakes — whether you think it all happened by chance or by divine direction. What if it all was cut off at the spigot?
How much of what we do today suggests that we think there really is no tomorrow?
