Why we must choose life
by Gavin Ashenden, Catholic Herald:
It sometimes helps to see the wider topography of an issue by broadening the context in which we look at it. I was reminded of this listening to Jordan Peterson reflecting on population levels.
He was discussing the way in which, in contradistinction to the constant media driven anxiety about over-population and sustainability, he thought we faced a wholly different kind of crisis.
The biggest problem in fifty years time will be not that there are too many people on the fragile skin of the earth, but that there won’t be enough people. We are at the beginnings of a population collapse. The numbers are falling off a cliff as all Western nations’ fertility rates fall below replacement levels.
And, in particular, there won’t be enough young people. That will matter especially because not only do the young provide the manpower and mobility, but they also provide the energy for risk-taking and innovation.
The Christian tradition has given a good deal of thought to this quality of life. It was St Iranaeus of Lyon in the early second century who wrote so compellingly that the glory of God was a human being fully alive.