"Apocalypse in Slow Motion" - More Thoughts (Part 2)

Who is this masked man?

Is he scared? He looks scared. Maybe he's a germophobe. Or maybe his eyes are bugged out because the thing is wrapped so tightly on his face. Or, maybe he's just goofing around.

Most likely, it's goofing around. The expression, that is. He did seriously go out in public dressed like this.

It seems he wants to be a good citizen and a decent fellow, and he has no compelling reason to disagree with the law requiring masks in public places. From his point of view, it seems like a sensible and not excessively onerous precaution. So he has covered his face.

But with what?

What is he actually wearing? The fact is that he lives in a fairly rural area and doesn't go out in public very often these days. He goes out open-faced when he's alone, walking and enjoying the local scenery (and did quite a bit of that during the Spring) but he has only gone out to public gatherings a few times since March, only on Sundays since the churches reopened.

Being both too distracted and too cheap to buy a mask, he has made his rare sojourns wearing a clean dish towel. It seemed humorous to him, going to church looking like a bandit or a bank robber.

But now, Summer has arrived, and, man, this thing makes you get hot! So, looks like it's time to buy a mask.

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I was born in 1963. The population of the world that year was about 3.1 billion people (which was more than double the population at the beginning of the century).

Now in this year of 2020, the world's population is about 7.8 billion.

In my lifetime so far (I do hope I have some time yet ahead, God willing) the global population has increased by 4.7 billion people!!

I'm not citing this fact in a negative way, nor do I advocate using unnatural means to "control" population growth. I am in favor of people. I believe that the creativity of people - working in an integral ecological harmony with the resources, energies, and fruitfulness of the natural world - will make it possible for many more to thrive on this earth.

If we live with wisdom and generosity, we can flourish in a world of beauty and diversity. It's not numbers of people who threaten the earth. The threat comes from material cupidity, that drives people (in whatever numbers) to do violence to the world and foolishly strip its resources in an insatiable lust for power and possessions.

Size of population doesn't really increase this danger, because the vast majority of the population - whatever its size - is poor. Whatever may be their particular incoherence in relation to their immediate environments, the poor are inevitably subject to the few who actively possess power to manipulate material reality. What is crucial is that power be used with wisdom.

All of that being said, I want to just marvel at this stunning fact of my own lifetime: 4.7 billion more people in the world! Wow!! It's another feature of the truly epochal historical period we are passing through.

7.8 billion people in the world. Every one of them a person, precious, loved, created in the image of God, possessing inestimable value. Up with people! The ecological measure for the human community (and along with it the whole earth) is justice and love, wisdom, self-restraint, and generosity.

This is an ecology that acknowledges God.

What is the alternative? That the few continue to rape and pillage the earth in order to indulge their lust for power while the multitudes are sterilized?

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Another "Father's Day" has come. I had a good day with the family. But I miss my own father, and have fond thoughts of my youth - indeed of the days when he was quite a bit younger than I am now.


This is my Dad and Mom and their boys, circa... oh, I'm guessing 1977-1978. So he's 42 and she's 39 and we're teenagers. (I needed a haircut!