The People Paradox
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"The most successful and complex species on the planet, and sometimes even the same person, responsible for such extraordinary acts of kindness, is also capable of extreme cruelty".

I call this the people paradox. It haunts me and motivates much of my life's journey. It is the reason I started World Vasectomy Day and the reason I often wake up feeling despair.

I understand that many people are frustrated with their own experience of life. Indeed, the disparity between our potential as conscious beings and the more humbling reality most of us live often leads to anger and humiliation. Shame is the hydrogen bomb of emotions and a man who feels little value in being alive, is less likely to care for the lives of others. Self-hatred projects into violence and self-pity into cruelty.

I have my share of bad days too and I know this feeling of despair. Still, I remind myself daily to look up at the sky to acknowledge my blessings. I figure, of all the ways that the matter that was launched as part of the big bang has aggregated in our expanding universe, there can't many as glorious as our own human form. Life is beautiful I say, even if there are times that our experience of it is not quite so stellar.

Is there sentient life out there? I would guess so. Is there a heaven? I don't know for sure, but given all we observe with the naked eye or even the imagined mind, life on Earth, be it Goddess given or mathematically manifest, is pretty incredible. We are blessed, but we could all afford to do a better job of honoring that blessing through greater displays of gratitude.

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Three million years ago our ancestors first appeared in East Africa. Upright and organized into groups of 75 to 150, we began walking our way around the planet. A small group species, adapting and forcing life to adapt to us, we were bound by principles of collaboration...and we thrived. We treated our enemies and rivals fiercely, but as concerned the members of our group, we had no choice but to work together.

As generations passed and this global walkabout progressed, we developed a collective mind that transcended time and space. We used language to pass knowledge and wisdom onto new generations. We turned dreams into Gods and faith into fortune. Our skillsets advanced and we learned to store calories and energy through agriculture, animal husbandry, and food preservation. The strength of small group species operating on principles of empathy defined a three million year evolutionary journey, as we transformed our nomadic existence into complex civilizations. And the common thread of history was passed on by stories that expanded with each telling, ultimately manifesting the world, as we know it today.

10,000 years ago, at the beginning of civilization, there were approximately 5 million people on the Earth. Within 8,000 years, at the birth of Christ, we hit 300 million. We reached 1 billion in the early 1800's right as the Industrial Revolution was kicking off.

As numbers rose, the challenges it brought raised fears for our collective future. One of the first to signal an alarm was 18th-century economist and priest, Thomas Malthus who predicted that exponential human growth would lead to the collapse of modern civilization. These fears did not limit numbers and over the next 125 years the population doubled as we surpassed 2 billion in the late 1920's. When we topped 3 billion people in the early 60s, Dr. Paul and Dr. Anne Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb reflected the angst-ridden world where a Cold War dominated and fears of nuclear annihilation were part of daily life.

From 1960 until today, about a billion more people were added every 13 years as by late 2011 there were 7 billion of us. And although global population growth rate is actually slowing, every year we still add an additional 80 million, and of these, 90% will be born into poverty.

Can the planet sustain 10 billion people? Can it sustain 12 billion or even more? Maybe, but what quality of life would we endure and how far divided will the have and have nots be by then? And just as important, how will our 'success' affect the other life with whom we co-exist and are co-dependent? And while most people sense that there are too many of us, this attitude is tempered by a feeling that no one experiences themselves as 'excess'. We must learn to share better, but what was possible with 75-150 becomes daunting when it must cross borders and boundaries.

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The People Paradox is our ultimate challenge. Limitless growth is not a forever possibility and difficulty in talking about how to manage the challenge, cannot mean we do not try. We take for granted our own connection to the infinite, but life itself is far from it. There have been five massive extinctions on the planet. The most recent was hundreds of thousands of years ago. What is happening today is being called the 6th extinction. Ten thousand species disappear yearly; infinitely faster than the rate of evolution and for every 1 million new babies born, there are 100 species that disappear forever. That's the story we're living.

Maybe it is because I witness so much deprivation, but I never forget how fortunate I am. So I take the time and the space to look up at the stars in awe, and into a child's face with love. I have no resentment or sense that I am owed more than I receive. Of course, I see the wrong in government, but I don't want to tear it down, I want to make it better. I can appreciate that someone has worked to assure that water arrives at my house or that electricity lights up my home or that the roads are safe and secure or that a soldier sacrifices his life for my freedom, or that a teacher spends hours with my children on a job I might otherwise do myself. And remembering how blessed I am to be alive on this planet, I am motivated to figure out how we got here and what we can do to stop the direction in which we're heading.

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World Vasectomy Day does not promote lowering population, but improving the quality of the life already here. We don't believe numbers determine our destiny, but we do believe that every major social challenge we face today is more difficult to resolve with a growing population. We don't need a billion more people on Earth we need to take care of the 7.3 billion already here.

So let's start doing it...by being conscious of how we bring life into existence and how we care about the life already here. And by joining us on World Vasectomy Day and before. Be part of the conversation. Share your stories. Your spirit and your purpose. Together we can re-imagine and re-make a more vibrant and empathetic planet.

This post originally appeared at the Good Men Project. Reprinted with permission.
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