My site is flagged as general reading, so I will pop in this disclaimer. If you can't handle blunt trauma factoids or statistical projection, stop reading.
This piece is in honor of the Nashman, who sees reality better than most of us and isn't afraid to point out, in a simple sentence or two, that the king is naked. The queen ain't dressed so well, either.
In the United States, almost everyone knows of the Donner Expedition that got trapped in a snowstorm atop the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. You drive over Donner Pass and shudder. This is where it happened, where hungry people, trapped in snow ate each other to survive. There is a little memorial sign there, but no bones are left. I looked around.
People who have no other source of food will do what they have to do. It is not nice by modern standards. Pragmatic is a little understated, but I don't have a better word for it.
I figure Filipinos will turn cannibalistic in 2063. Only five things can stop it:
Massive disease or a humongous natural disaster will wipe out most of the population. Maybe a volcano will pop up on Roxas Boulevard, solving the problem with the VFA at the same time.
China will nuke Manila over the Spratleys.
The masses will engage in a chaotic slaughter of one other, a self-determined, riotous, vicious culling of the herd, probably over a blown national election. There is no need to buy any more guns; we have plenty.
Birth control will be introduced, no matter what those becloaked wise men of the Catholic Church say. The longer the delay, the more likely it is that abortion will be included as an acceptable alternative to eating each other.
The Philippines will conquer Australia and relocate its swarming, antlike masses there, causing Benign0 to run shrieking to the outback for one giant leap off Alice Rock.
I got to this point statistically, not by any exercise in religious faith or moral turpitude (don't worry, I don't know what that word means, either, but it popped out of my head and the spell check didn't flag it). It is simply a mathematical calculation, the point at which the Philippines reaches the astounding figure of trying to support 2,000 people from each arable square kilometer of land.
Today I peg that figure to be about 600 people, and we know rice is already in short supply. We are buying it from Viet Nam, fer crissake, that Asian heartland of agribusiness might. And the mountains are already cleared and planted so there is no where to go to plant more. Outside Manila, houses are mowing down the rice land like so many mushrooms erupting across the fetid swamp. So I figure the cork will pop out of the champagne bottle at precisely 2,000 mouths per sq km in June 2063.
Cheers, and pass the Cebuanos please! Or the priests, even better. Most of them are plump.
That 2,000 mark allows some room for wealth-generation and food imports to build, and for mechanization and farming methods to generate more crops per acre.
Alas, rising seas are likely to work the other way, subtracting arable land. But we don't need to be too precise here. What's a decade either way? When the ketchup runs out we can just use salt. The way many families eat their rice today.
What is the foundation of my calculation? Well, the population is doubling every 25 years and the volcanoes aren't spewing enough lava to add any more space. Each woman, on average, is hatching 3.27 new babies, relentlessly creating small mouths that become big appetites. And not enough people are dying.
So there you go.
Sorry to break the news.
Sharpen those knives and replace those broken molars.
I am inclined to ask - begging your pardon for being so curious - where is it best to place one's faith?
God's church or man's reason?
The Church, I might note, is the place that makes up neat little stories about giants and parting seas and snakes that give out apples and really really old men who live in whale bellies. Or one sect even swaps virgins for the murder of innocents, even neater. Another opposes birthing education and condoms. These guys look forward to the end of the world because it justifies their preachings, that we are all sinners with no redeeming character at all. You leaning that direction, are you? You going that way for your logic and the future of the Philippines?
God save us and pass the horseradish please.
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