Endoxic Method: Population Growth is Good
It is generally accepted by our culture that population growth is a sign of healthiness. We can see this in our comparison of population sizes—the United States’ 300 million far outweighs France’s 60 million, which has been a point of pride. On the other hand, China’s 1 billion population poses a threat to the U.S. on an economic basis. Population decline is perceived as a symptom of cultural failure: Japan is the prime example, with Western perspectives believing the nation’s decline to be attributed to cultural homogeneity or postmodern self-deprecation.
So we may take the assertion “population growth is good” as a common truth for our global culture. However, one can read on a daily basis that our senses tell us something different: We complain about overpopulated cities, soaring housing prices, shortages of products, long lines at bureaucratic institutions, disgust with parents of several children, a yearning for small towns or rural vistas, a fear of unfamiliar people on the street, or the indignance of children receiving impersonal education in packed schools.
Despite all of these fears, woes, and wants that are a product of population growth, it continues to be a common truth that “population growth is good” and that we should continue to perpetuate it at any cost, whether at the cost of the environment, over-worked agriculturalists, or communities that do not have enough food to comfortably grow at a rate deemed “healthy” by our global culture.
Because I have found that the common truth of population growth being “good” runs counter to our collective physical senses, I must conclude that either the interpretation of our senses is faulty, or that population growth is not good. If the interpretation of our senses is faulty, it must be that overcrowded schools and cities, soaring housing prices, product shortages, and long lines are in fact a positive, and that we must modify our culture to accommodate how we perceive these phenomena. If population growth is indeed not good, then our senses might be picking up the symptoms of rampant population growth. Does this mean that population decline is good? No. That must be the focus for another time.