Wednesday 13th August

Do you remember the game Lemmings?  I don’t play any computer games any more, but when they first came out I used to.  Pacman, JetSet Willie, Breakout, Solitaire and Minesweeper and of course Lemmings.  Happy days wasted on such trivia; as if we aren’t wasting our whole lives on trivia anyway.  It could be argued that anyone not actively saving lives or working for the improvement of mankind is wasting their lives on trivia.  So, Lemmings.  It was based on the popular conception that Lemmings threw themselves off cliffs.  What most of us failed to appreciate was that they were simply obeying  Malthusian principles, if in a somewhat strange fashion.  Malthus was the first to understand that any species’ (but he was mostly concerned with humans) population was controlled by the food source and space available.  In other words famine, disease and wars would regulate the World’s population to fit the food available.  An interesting theory.

I was one of the millions who not only enjoyed Live Aid, but were moved enough to donate.  One argument was that simply feeding starving people would despite solving the immediate problem (and who could fail to feed a starving child) only create a more long-term problem as those surviving children would have children who at some point in the future might also be starving.  Unless we change the politics and economics of poor countries we are simply exacerbating Malthusian principles.  And slowly there are signs that Africa is improving; there are still a few corrupt governments who steal aid and development money, there is still rampant Capitalism which makes our homegrown Employers look like charity workers but still despite this Africa is slowly improving.

The surprising news is that there is no need for lemming-like activity, voluntary or otherwise.  There is plenty of food grown on the planet to feed everyone.  The problem is ownership of that food and those making millions out of buying it cheaply and selling it dear.  Capitalism is the problem.  Without it none of us need be lemmings.