The Cage Read online

lines of destitute refugees. And yet, despite the technology the ability of humans to understand biology and life itself has utterly failed to keep pace. In fact, I would say it is now worse than it was when the people you are referring to were alive. Those people had a far greater appreciation of the common sense lying in Darwin's theory that in nature only the fittest, the most adaptable, the most able, survive."

  The old man walked on and pointed to somewhere distant amongst the grey outlines of the distant high rise apartments, to where the afternoon sun was fighting with low cloud and haze. Once upon a time the grey stone spire of a parish church had been visible from this spot. Now, he thought, if it was still there, then it was hidden amongst the concrete, brick and glass of the crowded apartments and office blocks. Most likely, with no purpose left except as an ancient symbol of two thousand years of Christianity, it had been dismantled by a machine in a day to make way for more housing.

  Still pointing, he said aloud: "I'm sure they repeated the Lord's Prayer more frequently in those days and they would have asked for little more than to be given their daily bread. In return, they would have listed the ten commitments they made to the Lord to try to behave. The requests the overworked Lord began receiving a few generations ago were a little more demanding. A simple loaf of bread was no longer enough. Things in demand were more likely to be a honeyed ham salad on wholemeal bread, a choice of cheese, wine and beer or a bigger TV, a new car or even a holiday.

  "And in addition to these requests what did they expect from the Lord? That their human rights be respected. But what had happened to their own commitments or to their human responsibilities?"

  He shook his head. "And if He, the overworked Lord, failed to deliver on anything, then they got angry and took their complaints to the government or even a court of law. With that sort of quick fix they quickly realised there was no longer a need for a God at all."

  The old man tried to smile, but couldn't. He went on: "Hardship was once a way of life. They still laughed and they still cried. And I would argue that they were happier then than we are today. Happiness is another subject on which I have written a great deal, as you may know. Cheap, mass printed cards for a Happy Birthday, Happy Valentine's Day, Happy Mother's Day, Happy New Year. Then they have Happy Easter and Happy Christmas when they no longer want a God but prefer gifts. Happiness is a word like suffer. It needs defining but as it can't be defined to everyone's satisfaction perhaps it needs replacing altogether."

  "By what word, grandfather?"

  The response was immediate. "Contentment. The scientist in me could list a hundred criteria against which to define contentment. But tell me, who smiles the most? The child born into a poor but loving family living in a hut made of mud and straw and with the freedom to run, fetch water from a well and breathe fresh air, or the child born into a broken home on a crowded housing estate, fed a diet of processed food and given every plaything invented? Increased wealth - affordable and easily accessible food, water, fuel and material possessions to make the daily struggle more bearable - does not equate with increased happiness or contentment.

  "But there was a time, just a century ago, when food, water, fuel, healthcare and material possessions became so grossly underpriced that they were disrespected and taken for granted. Some argued otherwise but I said that taking such essential provisions for granted would only lead to a decline in society's standards and values, into uncontrolled population growth and even greater demands for so-called comforts. Humans, I said, would one day be so crammed together in towns and cities that society would no longer cope with supplying all that they wanted in the quantity they expected and at a price they could afford."

  The old man pointed once more. "Look across the road to as far as the eye can see. Hundreds of thousands are now living out there like animals in a vast, overcrowded cage unable to breathe fresh, clean air. And what you see right there is replicated in thousands of other cities across the world. But demanding direct action to reduce world population - because merely stabilising it would not work - was, as you well know, what landed me in trouble.

  "People in the west had become fearful of criticising, or even questioning, anything to do with population growth. It was, in many respects, a no-go area. I once criticised the trend for increasing human fertility by medical intervention but was told in no uncertain terms that to stop it would infringe the rights of those wanting to have the babies. And when I countered by suggesting that such rights would infringe the rights of future generations to live in balanced societies where supply met demand and quality of life from birth to death could be assured, one religious leader told me I was an evil extremist who showed no compassion. And whilst the subject raged, the already rapidly expanding masses, many with no jobs and living on social benefit systems were being encouraged to watch the daily antics of rich celebrities living lives awash with excess and into believing that such excess was not only achievable but vital for the so-called happiness they craved.

  "I said that any sense of personal responsibility was being lost by decades of shallow thinking, overindulgence and pampering while the more intellectually demanding understanding that standards of living and quality of life were slowly, almost imperceptibly, dropping went unnoticed.

  "If anyone did see problems like fuel costs rising, the mystical 'they' - the governments - were seen as both the cause and the solution. So what did they - the governments - do? They did the simple thing, of course. They handed out yet more unaffordable gifts to appease the masses because they hoped that this might make them popular and so help them get re-elected. Not one of them stood up and said enough is enough and spelled out that the basic cause of all the complaints - the shortages, the costs of living, the lack of jobs, the destruction of the natural environment - was overpopulation and that there should be a radical reduction in expectations or a return to self help and individual responsibility.

  "No, despite the hardship or perhaps because of it, the people that you referred to - the people of long, long ago - helped each other because there was no other sort of help available. Helping each other to stay alive is a strong characteristic of human nature. But it is both a strength and a weakness."

  The younger man looked puzzled. "How can helping each other be a weakness? It can only be a good thing."

  "It can be a weakness because gradually, as so-called civilisation has shown, no longer do only the fittest and most able survive but all who are born can survive - the weak, the strong, the sick, the young, the old. They are kept alive not always out of love but by technology and the legally enforced intervention of others."

  "But we cannot allow people to suffer."

  "Ah," he said resignedly, "There we have it again. Sickness, pain, discomfort, hunger - they are all an essential part of what it is to be a living thing. To experience pain and discomfort is to experience life. Do you want to remove the understanding of what life is by removing one of its key indicators?"

  "But saying those sorts of things and being an eminent scientist, a biologist, was exactly why they did not like what you wrote and what you said," his grandson said.

  The old man stopped walking, went towards his grandson and lay an arm across his shoulders. "What I wrote was that hardship is natural but that suffering is directly caused by the intervention of man. Think about that. Try to understand what I meant.

  "Towards its own kind, man is the most violent of all animals. Fighting and war causes suffering on a massive scale. Using more than your fair share of natural resources - food, water, fuel - eventually causes suffering to others. Having more and more children because of your own selfish desires and because there are now fewer healthcare risks and because there are state benefits to be claimed and because having as many children as you wish is tolerated by law eventually causes suffering to future generations due to the effects of overpopulation. Are humans so uncivilised that they fail to realise the real, long-term suffering caused by their selfish pursuits?"

  "But peo
ple are selfish, grandfather. That is their nature."

  "Oh, yes. I agree. They love intervention that enables more selfishness. They completely reject any intervention that might deny them the right to be selfish. And if you read what I said it was that it is not the role of governments or religious leaders to encourage, enable or make it easier to be even more selfish. Instead, it was their firm duty to stifle selfishness for a long list of sound long-term humanitarian reasons that I gave. But by their very words and deeds they engrain selfishness because that is the easiest route to popularity.

  "What is it that some religious leaders chant every day about forgiving trespass and not wanting to be led into temptation and being delivered from evil? I have always suspected that they are only referring to those currently living because they do not have the vision or scientific wisdom to see the effects of their preaching on future generations.

  "Governments and religious leaders should acknowledge that it is necessary that the people they represent should experience both good and easy times and bad and difficult times. Struggle and hardship is absolutely essential for the continuation of a species. If one generation finds ways to overcome