All my life the big bug-bear of Social Policy was “Overpopulation.” “Overpopulation! Overpopulation!”, the T.V. would scream. Pundit after expert after scientist after politician absolutely certain that our resource-limited world would shortly be filled with too many humans. Too many humans who would, naturally, destroy the environment, kill the animals, and turn the oceans into giant, stinking cesspits of plastic goo. “A Cancer” they called the human race. “A Virus.” “A Plague.” This was Truth. It was Fact. This was, indeed, the Almighty Consensus.
And then… about three years ago… a lot of them decided the exact opposite instead. Actually, Not Enough Humans. Fertility Crises. Civilization threated by a rapidly approaching, baby-starved collapse.
Nothing means anything.
Be free.
I give you permission.
You don’t need it but, if you think you do, I give it to you.
Some people think they do.
Like the ant-colony in T.H. White’s “Once and Future King”, Western Society does its dead-level best to inculcate its members with the idea that “Everything Not Forbidden is Mandatory.” In my experience most people, grown, ostensibly free adults, constantly feel like their being watched. Like they need permission. Like their every action is being tallied by some sort of Invisible Hall Monitor. Every moment of their lives has been constrained by “company policy” and, as a result, something approaching deathly terror occurs in them if you stray off the path in a national park or go for an impromptu swim in a stream because “it might be somebody’s property.” They don’t start businesses because no one has told them they’re allowed to do so. They don’t read The Classics because they feel unqualified without a degree. They’re afraid to have a dissenting opinion lest they run afoul of the experts or the consensus and be pilloried in the public square. In my experience, the “Land of the Free” is in fact, not very, and it’s not much better (and sometimes worst) in Canada and Europe. On paper, maybe, these people have freedoms.
Not where it counts though.
Not in their minds.
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