Population Problem

The past week was a fiasco. By "fiasco", I do mean complete and absolute failure. Lots of weird and bad things occurred, and today (being the end of the week), I'm actually feeling tired and irritated (complete with a splitting headache).

So there was a lot of coding to be done, and those were done, though not completed. The week itself saw a lot of strange events occurring online. Well, I made a few rants, shot a few people accidentally with caustic words among other things. I'm still sleep deprived, which is kinda weird in its own right; I have no clue why I am sleep deprived in the first place.

Anyway, no more stuff about me. More rants as I've just heard something interesting on a television programme on Channel NewsAsia, with regards to birth rates in Japan. Japan, as most of us know, is one of the fastest aging populations in the world. They are also among the most hardworking people, as characterised by the long hours that are put in by the working class. Most of the problems that Japan is facing now with regards to population is one that most of the developed nations (including Singapore) will eventually face.

An aging population is one where there is a larger proportion of people over the age of 60 as compared to the other people. Several factors contribute to this condition: the increase in the life expectancy at birth, a previous baby boom, and a subsequent fall in birth rates. Japan seems to have the factors outlined, as do some of the other developed countries. Population policies always seem to be at loggerheads at that of the economy; as the economy booms, more workers are needed for the sustenance, and the increase in the economy results in an increase in the cost of lifestyle, which completes the cycle by demanding that more workers be put into the workplace. With all these demands on the populace, it makes the idea of starting a family seemingly infeasible.

There are many things that are required in the starting of a family. Among the obvious monetary requirements, there are other "soft" issues that need to be tackled, for instance the nurturing of the child. Traditionally, children are often looked after by their own parents, with the mother staying at home almost full-time to ensure that her children gets nothing but the best love, care and concern from her. If, in the case of the existence of an extended family, it would be natural for the children to be cared by the entire extended family, especially since it was normal then for the whole extended family to be living under the same roof. With the rise of the "nuclear" family, such situations were slowly phased out, particularly in the developed world. The number of siblings that someone has now is much smaller than it was 50 years ago since the birth rate has been a steady decline over the years. Couple that with the nuclear family concept, what we have is not a huge cluster of extended family members, but rather many clusters of individually functioning family units.

And we know the story (since we practically grew up in it). Small family in a developed world means that both parents may need to be working just to be able to provide enough for the running of the household, which means that the child[ren] will need to have babysitting for the better part of the day, either by staying at a nanny's place or being sent to a child care centre. And this brings up a whole host of issues, from the lack of respect of the parents, to the over-reliance of the babysitter, to the gradual dissolution of the concept of a family.

Imagine a future, where couples meet, have children, and then deposit their children to some centre for the care of their children, probably state-controlled, but more likely to be privately run (considering the fact that capitalism will most likely be still in existence and in ample popularity). The parents will be a part of the greater economic machine, working all their lives to ensure their own survival, while their progeny undergoes a completely mechanised/methodological growing-up plan that was put together by the people who are in power. The children will spend 18 years of their lives in this incubation system, before they are released back into society to be a part of the economic engine that they were meant to be. Besides that, what else is a human for if not to power the economies of the world?

That scenario, is fast becoming a reality now. Already we are seeing parents resorting to the use of the said child care centres, and already we see child care centres turning into a systematic framework run by organisations which embrace the idea as a business opportunity. Already we are seeing the effects of the forefront batches of children who were largely taken care of by either their nannies or professional babysitters at the child care centres. Sadly, what I've observed does not seem to bode well for us. The younger children seem to be more insolent than before, always thinking that they are right (even when they might not be), and always making demands on things that they want.

Well, if all these "save the Earth" movements really want to make it successful, they are better off trying to educate the young than to stage massive concerts for a one-off high-return economic venture. The successes that we are seeking lies not the amount of pomp we can pull off, but the amount of humanity that we can teach to our children of the future.