I have finished yet another
mindblowing, conspiracy-driven masterpiece of Dan Brown which as
expected, has inspired me to write a long blog post addressed to zero
audience allowed me to collect my thoughts and revisit the ideas brought
about by Peter Joseph’s Zeitgeist.
However this time, a new element is added to Joseph’s framework---a concept I
have not realized until I had come across Sienna Brooks read Inferno.
While I am proficient at
hitting minimum word count entirely doctorate away from a TED talker discussing
world’s greatest issues, I would have to admit that at some point in my life, I
have asked same set of questions thrown out by the most intellectual
individuals on Earth as to how humanity could survive with replicating walkers
multiplying consumers depending on limited resources. Yes, we are looking at a
common situation here---scarcity. Earth is endlessly catering gatecrashers
evidently getting crowded, though in the place where I mostly spend my days and
nights, the total man count is trifling. But to give you enough visuals,
imagine making your way through the thick crowd in Manila or India metropolis.
We are facing largely-dismissed issue of the world today---overpopulation. I
would like to take it from the fictional character I wish was
non-fictional at all Bertrand Zobrist, Mathematics presents an appalling fact---global
population has been on the rise over the century. Statistics shows what people
are afraid to recognize…or are we just deliberately ignoring the figures as if those
will just downplay on its own?
The story progressed into
giving the idea of another apocalypse-themed plot black death in 14th
century that claimed at most 200 million lives, as luck would have it setting
off the balance in population, which contributed significant effects on human history
(most historians noted that the said plague gave way to Renaissance). Even then, I have reservations that another
plague would solve the problem, as people inherently like occupying
space. Until I reached the climax of the story, pointing its readers to a
probable solution, unexpectedly, Bertrand Zobrist Dan Brown may have
just proposed a simple but unsettling answer to the complex question---sterility.
In the novel, Zobrist, a genius genetic engineer, masterminded a virus that could
modify the human DNA, making it impossible to reproduce, randomly activating
the sequence on at least a third of the affected population.
While some of you if the
zero audience turned out to be one or two Glayreaders would definitely consider
such proposal demented or simply, evil---belying Genesis’s “go forth and
multiply”, what I see is the lesser of two evils, that the other evil would be
releasing another plague, killing innocent people in the process. Nobody is
killing somebody in the lesser evil. It is controlling the numbers, enough to be
accommodated by the limited resources.
Though, it is entirely based
on fiction and such advancement in technology is not even close to today’s
discoveries in genetics field, I am considering the fact that even so I would
not be able to reproduce and replicate my awesomeness, if it is
the key to humanity’s survival, I am all for it. I am all for preserving
humanity. I am all for selfless legacy. I am all for making the most of the
given chance to live life as I am allowed to…for there is nothing beyond the
time spectrum, but will to continuously set the balance in nature.
And so, that one element added
to Zeitgest---fixing human evolution at root level.
