The Need to Control Population Growth

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The Need to Control Population Growth

Sadhguru, I’ve heard you speak in many videos about the problems of how the population has actually done a lot of harm, and I’m in a stage where I have to start planning a family, and I’m in a lot of confusion because I’m okay with having a child and I’m also okay with adopting a child and I’m also okay with not having children but I wanted to know what I could do best. And if I adopt a child I’m really confused for the child if my family can accept the child as much as I can. And I have a lot of pressure on me from different ends.

From whom?

From parents and elders. So I’m really confused.

Bearing a child, it is not that children are wrong. We were all children some time ago. It’s not about children being right or wrong, it’s a stupid question, it’s not even a thought, okay, it’s a silly thing, to think whether they’re right or wrong. It is just that, there was a time when a woman would easily have a dozen children in her lifetime. It was normal. Three, four of them died. Seven, eight of them lived. It was normal. Now, most women who have children here probably have two. Some of them slipped through and they became three. Generally, most women have, lots of women live, women who are over fifty, sixty years of age, the younger women, is there anybody who has four or five children here? Almost nil. Attempted?

But if you asked this question about fifty years ago, almost every women in the region of early thirties would have five children or six children. Somewhere you got your sense in place, you decided that instead of having six, let’s have two or one. So if your sense can work to that extent, right now we are in a place where, if we have to feed, clothe and offer a decent life for the seven billion people, we need, for the standards that we are thinking of, for the standards that most people are aspiring for, we need to outsource our resources from at least another three planet earths. We need at least three more planets. We could do that. It’s just that they aren’t there. If they were there, no problem, we could have gone and towed one planet close to us and used that planet.

But there isn’t any other, so, till we find such one, it’s good to hold your reproduction, till we find extra planets, where we can export our people. It’s good to hold back your reproduction. Otherwise, nobody’s going to live well on this planet. It doesn’t matter what technology you bring. It doesn’t matter what you do. Nobody is going to live well on this planet if you continue to increase.

When I say continue to increase, I want to understand the volume of increase that we have caused. In the beginning of twentieth century, we were only 1.5 billion people on this planet. In one century, in one hundred and ten years, we are reaching towards seven billion people, and, we are technology more capable than ever before. What thousand men could do, today, one man can do, because of the machines and other things that we have.

Now, United Nations predicts that by 2050 we’ll be 9.6 billion people. At 9.6 billion people, even if we leave at, even if the earth is exploited at its present rate, or much more, each one of us have to live with forty percent less resource than we are living right now. When I say resource, don’t think of some fancy things. I’m talking about food, water, air. These resources, you will have to live with forty percent less. That means, nobody’s going to live well. Yes? Just a few people, who control a few things, will be okay. All others will suffer, in an immense manner.

Just by individual fancy, going on doing things, humanity cannot afford it anymore. It’s time human beings functioned consciously, that just coming to zero percent growth is not good enough. We have to go into a minus. If they’re projecting by 2050 we’ll be 9.6, why not we determine that by 2050 we’ll be 3.5 or 4 billion people? Human being means doing everything consciously.

What is this compulsion about having a child? One thing it is biological. Biologically, having a child is not a pleasant experience. Let me tell you. If you don’t believe me, ask somebody who has delivered a child. It is just a fulfillment of being involved with something. It is the fulfillment of seeing something as a part of yourself. If you are willing, you can know this fulfillment with just about anything in your life. If you are committed and involved with something in your life, that fulfillment is very well taken care of.

This is not a campaign against children. This is a campaign for the future children. The future generations have to live well. We have to conduct our lives consciously. Conducting our lives consciously, one major part of it is right now, because you can’t expand the planet, you have to decrease the population. There is no other way. Either you do it, or nature will do it. When nature does it, it’s not going to be nice. It’s not going to be nice at all.