I'm struggling,
struggling to find
a literary device
to dramatize my role in this world,
my role,
the part I play,
the biggest thing I hope to do,
for all humanity.
So,
here's a science fiction device,
musings of someone
1,000 years from now,
in the year 3012.
We're doing alright now.
Except for a few renegades,
here and there,
the whole world is mostly at peace.
The family groups
are free to migrate,
to avoid droughts,
when they drag on for more than
three years straight.
The wandering herders,
with their herds of goats and sheep
are always welcomed,
by stationary farmers.
The wind turbines
and solar panels
that each group has,
plus boosters for antennas,
are working well enough
so that everyone can communicate
with everyone else,
without a huge industrial base
for manufacturing
vast quantities
of gadgets.
Every family group
has a resident nurse
who can handle most emergencies there at home.
The one use for aircraft
is transporting those
who need more medical equipment,
although the hand held computers
folks used to call phones
have some types of scanners,
medical testing devices built in,
such as ultrasound,
for monitoring babies in the womb.
And, speaking of babies,
the writings of bigjac,
from so long ago, when added to Ehrlich and Malthus,
http://geography.about.com/...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
the three of them,
along with others,
tried to tell us,
but nearly everyone
essentially gave them a blank stare.
They tried to tell us,
Malthus and Ehrlich with blunt prose,
and bigjac with free verse poetry,
they tried to tell us
what should have been obvious;
too many mouths to feed
is
too many mouths to feed.
But they were mostly ignored,
and when anyone responded at all,
they wrote that there's plenty of food,
it's just a distribution problem,
or,
just educate little girls,
and,
magically,
the birth rate will go down
to just the right level,
and everything will be magically sustainable,
if you ignore the little boys,
and educate the little girls,
everything will be alright.
Any herd of livestock
is managed,
always,
to match the available pasture land.
The population must always match the land.
You cannot force the land
to match any number of heads of livestock,
especially human livestock.
And that poetry writing bigjac,
he kept writing that obvious truth,
and he wrote all the time,
and he had no hope
he could stop the famines,
and he was right;
billions died,
before it was all over,
before everything changed.
And now,
every year,
in June,
we celebrate the day,
June 10th,
when bigjac joined Daily Kos.
The day he started trying,
trying to save the world.
He failed,
but his words inspired those who succeeded,
centuries later.
Thanks for reading.