The Restless Conquest

"Family Planning". This is the title of Dawkins´ seventh chapter, a chapter where he points out the clear increase in the birth rate of humans. Not only are we reproducing much faster than before, but the death rates have decreased exponentially through history. Thanks to medicine and other resources, the death average has gone up and people now live at ages that did not even seem like possible ever before. This idea brought me back to a novel I read about a year and a half ago written by Daniel Quinn and entitled Ishmael. It is truly a philosophical/reflective text, where a man is taught by a gorilla the ways of man and his mistakes. The biggest one, perhaps, was altering nature. Even believing in gene selfishness one has to admit that nature has found a perfect balance to everything-even to the desire of competition. In this novel it is argued that because we decided to domesticate nature instead of letting people die as they should, we have exceeded ourselves and, although we have resources, there is a limit to everything. This goes alongside Dawkins when he says that starvation eventually comes to children who just don´t fit. But what pushes us to want more, more of our species? Our own genes, because the bigger the population the more powerful and capable of overcoming others. This means that eventually our survival thirst will take us to our doom. It is definately a warning, one that many choose to ignore in a very selfish action towards the species.