Old Jingleballicks

[greygirlbeast]

"Man has solved his problems," Old Jay went on. "Predators he has removed from the earth; heat and cold he has turned aside; communicable disease he has practically eliminated. The old live on, the young do not die. The best wars can't even balance the birth rate. There was a time when a small army could cut a population in half in a year. Starvation, typhus, plague, tuberculosis, were trusty weapons. A scratch with a spear point meant infection and death. Do you know what the incidence of death from battle wounds is today? One percent. A hundred years ago it was eighty percent. The population grows and the productivity of the earth decreases. In a foreseeable future we shall be smothered by our own numbers. Only birth control could save us, and that is one thing mankind is never going to practice."

"Broth-er!" said the patrón. "What makes you so damned happy about it?"

"It is a cosmic joke. Preoccupation with survival has set the stage for extinction."

Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck (1954)

Comments

[cause-catyljan.livejournal.com]

Nice. I like that...

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Drives me nuts that every once in a while "new" information about something like what Steinbeck mentions pops up, and much is made of this "new" data, yet there is nothing new about it.

It just gets ignored. Makes a headline. And gets ignored.

Sad, really.

[mellawyrden.livejournal.com]

that's a lovely quote

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

And of course modern birth control only continues the joke, as smart people are having fewer children than stupid people. Gah.

[jchappell68.livejournal.com]

Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

-- John Steinbeck

Wrote this one down years ago; I believe it is also from Sweet Thursday. But it's been so long since I read any Steinbeck I don't recall for sure; of course I didn't note the source when I copied the quote. Ah, silly youth ...

[blubeagle.livejournal.com]

I love Steinbeck.