In case you haven't heard by now, there are too many people in the world. Since World War II, the population has exploded, and it just hasn't stopped. Indeed, population growth has just kept plodding on like a bad day; We currently stand at over 6 billion people, and far from slowing down, growth is simply spiraling upward, far out of control. We all know it by now. "Overpopulation" has been a buzzword for many years. Yet far from stopping it, people's awareness of the situation seems to have had no effect upon it at all. Why is this? It seems that people's attitudes regarding childbirth have a lot to do with it. Many people, freely admitting that there are too many people in the world, have nonetheless had several children. If everybody would only have one or, at most, two children, the population could remain constant, because it takes two people to make a child, and if those two people make only two children, then the balance of things could be maintained (disregarding other relatively minor factors such as the fact that people tend to live longer these days). But many people go way beyond two children. Whether in America or in Third-World countries, there are many, many people who have had way past half a dozen children. Apparently, people believe that everybody should simply have as many children as they wish. "Children are wonderful and joyful," these people reason, "and therefore the good people of the world should enrich their lives with abundant families." While children are wonderful and they do bring joy to many parents' lives, the whole attitude that "Life is precious" is becoming counter-productive. What do you define as "living"? Stop and think about this for a moment. I've written several times before about what it means to really live (rather than just exist), but think about it in terms of creating new life (i.e. children) and helping those children to grow up in the kind of life you'd want them to live. While you're thinking about that, consider the phrase "Life is precious" as regarded by basic economic laws of supply-and-demand: Something which is rare is precious and valuable. Something which is common, found everywhere, is not valuable. Gold is a precious metal because it is not found in many places in the world. On the other hand, quartz is very common in the earth's crust, and as such carries very little value. If you found a quartz stone, you probably would not save it for its worth; There are millions of them right under your feet. In a similar way, human life is ubiquitous in most parts of the world. Just about anywhere you go, you can find vast communities of people; Indeed, too many people, consuming more natural resources than the world can provide for them, and creating pollution, in turn, to harm the environment. There are some places in the world where there is little life (deserts, for example), but if you apply the supply-and-demand rule to human life, one must conclude that in actuality, life is not very valuable at all. This is, indeed, verified by the vast throngs of unemployed, poverty-stricken people in virtually every major world city. Why are those people unemployed? Because no company could find work for them; The companies are already staffed with enough employees, and they do not need any more bodies to function. This is so desperately true that in many parts of the world, people slave away their lives in factories for obscenely small amounts of money, proving that indeed, you can put a price on human life, and that price is in fact tragically small. Life is so commonplace as to be virtually worthless; If somebody tried to sell you a rock, you would probably not buy it, because rocks can be found everywhere for free; Just pick one off the ground. Why pay for something that can be found sitting around anywhere? In the same way, if any of those factory employees quit their job, the company would not feel the loss, because the streets are so full of people who would eagerly take that worker's place that the void would be filled in an instant, without difficulty or great expense. Consider, also, how difficult it is to create life. In actuality, it is not difficult at all: Any two people, one male, and one female, having basic physiological functionality which almost every human in the world has, can create a new life. Nothing else is required to make another life; You do not need any money, machinery, or minerals. Just two people. Something so easy to create, then, does not seem very valuable under the laws of industrial manufacturing. A typical person would respond by saying that this is true, but the business laws of supply-and-demand do not apply to human life; It is not a commodity that you can (or should) put a price on, like lumber or wheat, but something which is measured in completely different terms. This may be true, but the question then stands: How important and valuable *is* life? How do you measure it, and indeed, *can* you measure it? The typical notion regarding life seems to be that we should create as much of it as possible. Many people are vehemently against birth control, equating use of condoms and birth-control pills with murder, because without those artificial implements, a new life could be created, but will not be, because of that condom or that pill. If this same logic is applied, however, people who do not have sex at all are also murderers, because they could be creating babies right now with what they have, but are not; If this same logic holds true, then every person in the world, as long as they have reached the reproductive functionality of puberty, should be having wild sex as much as possible to create as many babies as they can, for fear that an opportunity to create a new life might be missed. Are celibate people murderers? Are they against life? Far from it. They simply do not believe that they are in a proper position to create a family, at least not right now. Similarly, are people who breed pro-life? Are they creating wholesome, happy lives for themselves and their children when those children go into slave-labor factories and warehouses at the age of 10 and stay there for most of their lives? Is that living? We live in a world that cannot support all the people it carries. There is not enough food for them as it is; Yet we still try to accomodate them, maintaining that we must do what we can to keep them alive, because their lives are precious. As more people come into this world, it becomes harder and harder just to stay alive, let alone to have a meaningful, fulfilling life. And yet people still press onward, trying to feed the hungry, trying to clothe the naked, trying to medicate and treat the sick. It's only going to get worse, folks. I'm not saying I have a solution. I'm just pointing out the problem. We all know it's there. The best advice I can give is that it's time for us to stop our naive attitude toward human life, maintaining that everybody should have children because it's their "duty" the world somehow; Certain people are in a good position to have children, and some of them are not. I think that's a good starting point. And let's understand that while sometimes life can be very precious indeed, sometimes life on this world is as worthless as sand on the ground. It is an ugly thing to say, but it is true. Now let's live like our lives are worth something.