0935hrs
25th April 2013, Thursday
Mapletree Anson, Singapore.
Consider: A hundred men and one woman does not spell a hundred babies, but one man and a hundred women does.
Isn’t this an astounding observation ? Read in the context of the rest of the novel Ishmael (from which this line has been extracted) it becomes even more thought provoking. Though everyone (including myself) might not agree with the novel completely, there are some statements such as these that drive you to look at our world with a new pair of glasses. So get a copy and read Ishmael now!
So what does this statement mean? In simple words it says that “a hundred males and one female ” have the potential of producing lesser babies than “a hundred females and one male” in a fixed period of time. With this insight in mind lets analyze some of the prevailing social conflicts in our world today. From here on I will refer to this insight as our basic premise.
Let’s first take the case of male-child preference in some cultures. Various reasons like inheritance, “tradition” and burden of dowry are cited as reasons for the existence of this phenomenon. Sometimes peer/societal pressure for a male child even leads parents to extreme acts – female foeticide and infanticide. I am not going to do a detailed analysis on either the various reasons or consequences of this phenomenon; but I would like you to think about this preference (without thinking about the extreme acts it leads to) with our basic premise in mind. I am sure the realization must have hit you by now – male child preference is a form of population control! More males than females lead to a lesser potential population than more females and less males. I am not sure if population control was ever a reason for the male child preference phenomenon – but I found this connection intriguing!
Our culture (excluding tribal cultures) over the last few centuries has been one that has encouraged population growth without regard for its adverse effects on other forms of life. We are actually stuck in a vicious circle right now – we produce more food (implies more agriculture, which means destroying habitats of more species, leading to ecological imbalance) in anticipation of a larger population; the larger food production encourages higher population growth, which in turn forces us to produce more food again and so on. In the last century itself we have grown by 5 billion in number! By no means is this sudden rise in population sustainable for the human race in the long term. Keeping this in mind, lets look at polygamy and our basic premise.
There are two forms of heterosexual polygamy. When a man is married to more than one wife at a time, the relationship is called polygyny ; and when a woman is married to more than one husband at a time, it is called polyandry. Polygyny is the more widely prevalent kind. Polygyny seems to be consistent with our lust for population growth but violates the need of the hour – population control. If indeed some pockets of society allow polygamy – shouldn’t they allow polyandry over polygyny?
Next, think about this – if male child preference continues it will lead to major gender imbalance and there will be only two choices – 1) Polyandry 2) Only some men get the privilege of getting married and having children.
I am not justifying male child preference or advocating polyandry here (since these practices may have other adverse side effects which I have not analyzed), but I am trying to document my observations on these issues in light of our population problem (based on the basic premise). Your comments and observations are welcome.
1110 hrs
25th April 2013, Thursday
Mapletree Anson, Singapore.
Mtheorydotstring's Blog 