There are many reasons to believe that, because of the relentless advance of technology, the future for humanity looks very bright indeed.
Already, mechanization has massively reduced the amount of crushing physical labor required to sustain a very high standard of living and a very high level of material consumption – and both are increasingly global phenomena, not regional or class-restricted. The imminent introduction of humanoid robots and enhanced artificial intelligence, which in the foreseeable future may be capable of doing virtually all the work now performed by men and women, should render most material wants obsolete. Meanwhile, the opening of the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and other heavenly bodies to mining and other forms of commercial exploitation promises to provide vast new quantities of minerals and energy for industrial uses, and vast new frontiers for human settlement. At the same time, as most endemic diseases are eliminated or gradually tamed, life expectancies may continue to increase – or, if the aging process is halted, or consciousness is digitized, we may even see the abolition of death itself.
And we have not even mentioned what has arguably been the most awesome human achievement to date. Hunger, which stalked humanity for almost all of its existence, killing hundreds of millions, has been, in the last couple of generations, essentially eradicated. Instead, modern crop yields are setting record after record. Perhaps it would be more accurate, though, to say that famine has been abolished, since food scarcity, caused by imperfect distribution and social inequities, remains, but the achievement of a permanent, reliable food supply is more than sufficient to fulfill the needs of the entire human population is a feat unmatched in all of history.
Despite all these positive developments, there is one trend that bodes ill for humanity and may even threaten its survival. No, this isn't the rise of malevolent supercomputers, which is a purely theoretical possibility at this stage, or the looming danger of climate change, which, while potentially disruptive, is a manageable challenge, and may even be a boon to more temperate regions. The worst specter we now face is discretionary, as it turns out: low and declining fertility. In essence, humanity is and has been for some time now, deciding not to reproduce itself, and every discernible trendline suggests that this problem will intensify, not just in the developed world, but everywhere.
Numbers can capture some of the dynamics of this historic turn away from procreation, even if they can't convey the stakes. Average global fertility, even 60 years ago, was around 5 children per woman – meaning that the average husband and wife would have five children, and thus the global population would inexorably rise. And it did rise, steadily enough that many sage observers worried that the Earth would exceed its carrying capacity and famine, war, and social collapse were around the corner.
However, as societies urbanized and industrialized, as modern education took hold, as rampant consumerism reduced the appeal of childrearing and family life, as women acquired new rights and opportunities, and as birth control was popularized, the fertility rate fell. In some countries, like China and India, the trend was accentuated by government coercion. The overall result was stunning: global fertility was cut from 5 births per woman to the current level of 2.4, and many of the world's most economically and socially developed countries now have fertility levels way below the “replacement” level, meaning that their populations are already declining, or soon will.
The transformative impact of this sea change was driven home by a news story this week about a major Japanese diaper manufacturer that, because of the precipitous decline in the number of babies born in that country, will henceforth market its diapers exclusively to adults. Japan is, indeed, at the leading edge of this trend of low fertility. Its aging population is imposing major costs on the Japanese economy and public finances, while every ingenious government program designed to convince young Japanese to procreate at higher rates has been an abysmal flop. The problem is so acute that some experts are warning that the viability of Japanese economics and social structures may be threatened.
It is a bitter irony that, at the very moment in human history when we are becoming masterfully adept at producing every material item we could want and are thus conquering many of the practical challenges that have beset humanity for the vast majority of history and prehistory, we are losing the knack for producing the one thing that humanity definitively requires to perpetuate its existence: humans themselves. The fact is that the ongoing decline in fertility reflects, in the main, neither a physical necessity nor social compulsion, but choices, i.e. highly personal decisions about what is valuable, meaningful, and desirable in life. In effect, nowadays too many people doubt that babies – little, incipient humans – are good, and too few of us seem to want one (let alone two!).
What does it say about a species awash in resources, and frankly quite enamored of the, uhh, performative aspects of the first stages of sexual reproduction, that it nonetheless chooses not to reproduce itself? To me, this suggests that humanity may be flourishing materially, but it is struggling psychologically and spiritually – and, perhaps, that success in the material domain may even be in inverse proportion to our psychological and spiritual well-being.
Will humanity meet its end in an epidemic of procreative apathy? We won't know for sure for another century or so, but the signs are not encouraging.
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.