Tonight I was sitting at my computer, watching the final chapter (episode) of the OA, and I went on Facebook and inevitably fell into one of the articles about the women's marches that have been held throughout this weekend in different places.
I did not participate, I am almost embarrassed to admit, in the one held in London, nor the event held in Cambridge. It was down to pure apathy, I have to be honest about this. And it's not that I didn't care, it's that I didn't care enough to go. I was tired after a long week. It was easier to make excuses. But it doesn't matter. I didn't go and I wish I had, but I didn't go.
In any case, there I was, looking at pictures of signs, and what hit me was the amount of children in the marches, the number of little girls. Now, most of these pictures were taken in the US, meaning that these children, a lot of them between 4 and 8, will go through a significant part of the childhoods with Trump as their president. They and their parents may suffer because of this. They may have less access to health insurance (though it's important to note that many people's status as uninsured did not change under the Affordable Care Act), their parents may be persecuted for being who they are or for loving who they love. These children will grow up under a president and an administration that is markedly more divisive and more hateful than the one preceding it, and it's likely that people in the US are heading towards (more) dangerous times. This saddened me, but it wasn't what shocked me.
What shocks me is the ability that human beings have for abstraction, or rather, our ability to both see what's coming and simultaneously ignore it for our own happiness. This is, our own capacity for hope.
I've been wondering about this for a few years. I've always wanted to have kids. Three or so. Boys and girls if possible. When I was younger it seemed obvious to me that I would grow up and part of what I would be would be a mum. And I still want to be a mum. But I'm scared. I'm scared for my kids. Firstly, I am scared to bring a child into the world who may be plagued (like I am on occasion) by questions about their own mortality that I will not be able to answer, a child who may be scared of death and at the same time perfectly able to recognise that there is nothing to be done about it. That in itself would be enough to make me hesitate about having children. But if that isn't enough, there is more.
I was the child of a generation that grew up hopeful. That grew up in a time when living in the moon was a possibility, and where technology could only bring better things for humans. A generation that could conceive of a world where machines did all the work, and humans lived better. I on the other hand am part of a generation that is fearful. The world is overpopulated, we don't have enough land to produce food for everyone, we are contaminating the water we have, animals are dying at a rate unheard of since the last great extinction, climate change is wrecking havoc with the weather and likely will soon start affecting the places in the world where humans can live, reducing the area we are able to populate. The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Most of us are able to have a better life than the average person 100 years ago, but who knows how long that will last? Someone predicted at some point that during the 21st century the water wars would take place. I wouldn't be surprised if the land wars took place too. Or if, more easily, the richest will just buy up all the land that is livable and create their own society leaving the rest of us out. I should write a novel.
It therefore surprises me that people have children. The same people talking about injustice, and climate change, the same people who know to be scared of the future, are bringing other people along to live in that future. It might just be biological imperative: we want to have children because if we didn't we would have died out, and evolution through natural selection can't have that. But somehow I suspect that at least some of the people who are having children now are aware what they're setting their children up for, at least potentially. And so I wonder. Do they know something I don't? Do they see hope as inextricably human? Do they believe that deciding not to have children because of fear is purely giving in to the evil in the world, giving up on the hope that we may yet fix it? Or is it something less transcendent and a lot more selfish than that: is it that, despite knowing, they believe (we believe) that we deserve to be happy even if everything else and everyone else goes to hell?
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