The Wise Men of Chelm

In Jewish folklore there are many stories of a comical town, or shetl, inhabited entirely by fools. This legendary town was renowned for the foolishness of its adorable idiots, and the many stories of Chelm illuminate the universal folly of humanity. Once they tried to capture the moon by shutting its reflection in a barrel of water. You might ask how did this town of fools come about? Here is the story as told to me by a friend. “Well, as everyone knows, storks deliver babies as needed and expected. Every day they would fly around distributing infants. One not very bright stork had the job of making sure each village had its required idiot. This inattentive stork flew head first into another stork, and dropped all his idiots into one town…Chelm!”

Here is an updated Chelm story told to me by my friend that illustrates the kind of logic we have been using to deal with overpopulation… “Now Chelm happened to be situated at the bottom of a steep cliff where the road above town made a very sharp turn. Cars kept careening over the cliff, only to land at the edge of town with severely injured drivers. Something had to be done! After much handwringing and consulting with the rabbi, the wise men of town, in their great wisdom, decided to post an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff in order to hurry the constant victims to the doctor without delay!”

Using this kind of logic, we see the absurdity of treating secondary problems while ignoring the primary problem. The townspeople could have rerouted the road or built a strong guardrail and put up warning signs to avoid having people driving off the road in the first place. In the case of population, we have a multitude of secondary issues that arise along with the increase in population—adequate food production, water supply, housing, environmental pollution, and destruction of ecosystems being the most obvious. We have many good minds working on addressing these secondary issues, but to my way of thinking we have vastly ignored the primary issue. It is inspiring to see the creativity and inventive thinking that is now being stimulated to deal with the calamities we have created—developing alternative energy sources, recycling sewage, more efficient food production, and so on, but even as these developments are encouraging, technology cannot save us from ourselves.

Our growing presence has a significant impact on the world in which we live. And why is it so hard to look at the primary issue of population? This is one of the things I hope to explore. When you consider the simplest logic and reasoning, the question of our responsibility as a species to not reproduce at rates that threaten our planet’s health arises as the core issue. Do we not have a responsibility to leave a legacy worthy of our descendants right to health and happiness? Do we not have a responsibility to preserve the beauty, health, and integrity of our planet’s delicate ecosystems? How can we realistically perceive humanity as having a higher intelligence when we are so lacking in common sense?