Forget the Birds... Let's Talk About Bees

This might be one of my more convoluted posts. We’ll see, I’m just gonna write and not edit a whole lot.

Hang on.

Time magazine is running a cover story about the demise of honey bees.  There are stories of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in which bees seem to simply disappear from their hives. Theories are bee mites, pesticides, and stresses to the bees from mobile pollination programs.  Some even say cell phones & towers play a role.  I don’t know the answer, I don’t even know the right questions.  All the way back into the late 80s & early 90s, my ex-father-in-law (RIP, who kept some bees) talked about mites & such.  Not a new phenomenon, perhaps bees are like a “canary in the coal mine” signaling our pending demise.

Whether you believe in a god or not... they are incredible and amazing creatures.

Debate that all you want, I am not an alarmist. I don’t think the world is coming to an end.  We grow food to feed people. We need bees to pollinate our crops. To pollinate without natural bees is going to be difficult, so we may need more bees, or less people to feed.  The bee “die-off” may be real, or it may be media sensationalism.

I don’t advocate killing people, and anyone who does is Hitler’s bed-buddy in hell. (Or imaginary hell, since I’m an atheist heathen.)  And I’m not writing this post to provide a bee solution. Rather, I’m writing to approach the problem from the other end.

It’s interesting how population curves change. Generally, in the Western world, they are tapering off. It seems that as people, women specifically, become more educated and have access to birth control, they have fewer children. (Gasp!)

Here, I’m going to rail against a couple of organized religions, and this is at least partly to blame for my heathen atheist beliefs. (Should it be heathen atheist or atheist heathen?  I think perhaps the latter due to alphabetization, but I’m not sure theologically?)

I find it difficult, nay, impossible, to believe that a supreme being, a creator, could want us to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28) to the point that we can’t feed, clothe and nourish our own. Or prevent wars, epidemics, and famine. Does the god of Genesis think so much of himself and so little of children that he must smite them, to allow them to suffer and die in agony, to demonstrate his imagined glory?

Anyway, the Roman Catholic Church is low hanging fruit, and easy to pick on.  But that church has yet to renounce its opposition to birth control. Condoms, pills, abortion, what have you. You get knocked up, you have the kid. No matter if you can feed them, clothe them, you did the deed, we wouldn't let you prevent it, your genitals are ours, so now deal with it. And maybe we’ll help you. If we can, but you gotta become a member of our club.  Renounce your own beliefs… you gotta be one of us, and after we're finished paying for our cathedrals and communion biscuits, we’ll see if we can help you.  Oh, and you're going to hemorrhage to death during birth? So sorry... but at least you died (waving fist pump...) for the cause!

(Full disclosure... I was raised as a protestant... so I'm already going to imaginary hell according to traditional Roman Catholics. So I might as well laugh at the Pope's hat.)

Magnificent human folly... cathedrals, forts, castles, big guns of battle, ships, instruments of religion and war... sometimes both.  Renaissance art, Gothic cathedrals... stained glass, I've seen them.  Perhaps they pushed us ahead in some manner, artistically, culturally. But I wonder if the money would not have been better spent on that poor woman struggling to bear and raise her kids?

 Magnificent Cathedral at Cologne, Germany... been there!

Interior of Cathedral in Luxembourg, been there too!

Abortion? Well, I personally am anti-abortion. So is my new wife. Even though we're both in our late 40s as I write this, we've agreed that if she (we) became pregnant, the baby would be carried to term. But I am also pro-choice, meaning that just because I feel that way doesn't mean you have to agree with me. I wish no one had to endure an abortion, but accidents happen, birth control fails, economics dictate, and finally… who am I to say that a woman’s uterus be commandeered for 9 months due to the beliefs or myself, or someone else?  Any woman is so much more than an incubator.

Islam? I am not a scholar of any religion, but orthodox Muslims seem to believe women to be chattel.  (Ring a bell, American slavery scholars? Easier to control ignorant masses…) And you certainly don’t want to educate your property. In fact, women are a commodity to be collected, depending on the belief and tradition… wow… I’m so glad I’m not a polygamist Muslim (or any polygamist, for that matter… the women I care about want attention, and sometimes I just want to BE ALONE and so do they!)

What DO I advocate?  I advocate for the liberation and empowerment of girls and women.  And boys & men.  What does that mean?  Well, for starters, every girl & woman should be able to study any career (and advance) in which she is qualified.  Women are approximately 50% of the brain power on this planet, to disavow is foolish, yet so many female voices and minds are unheard, and left behind.  Many in Western culture, and the numbers increase in the developing world, in my opinion.

(I've always heard that we use a small percentage of our mind, the numbers vary, say 20%?  But on a global scale...on the scale of humanity,  I think it's absolutely true, perhaps even less.)

Imagine where we as a race or species could be if each mind were allowed to develop free of cultural or sexual stereotypes, if each mind were allowed to soar, male and female ...

Wow.

I likewise think it should be OK for a man to be a stay-at-home parent. Social norms dictate otherwise in Western culture… but that should not be up to me.  It is up to each person or couple to decide their roles, and there is nothing wrong with upsetting the apple cart.

I’m running out of steam here… can we just say that an educated woman is an empowered woman? And that every woman should be educated? And if she chooses to have zero kids, or somewhere above… why is that tragic?

I’d actually like to see the population curve head downward… But I may not see that anytime soon. I understand the desire to reproduce, nature has instilled that into us, or god if you so believe. 

As of right now, if each couple had only two kids, the population curve would instantly flatten. Add in mortality, war, disease, infertility, the curve would head downward. I myself came from a family of five kids, my grandmother of over one dozen. So I don’t fault anyone for their family size, and if some choose to have similar sizes, while others have none… I am not judging. I think it will average out.

Back to my earlier point.  Education is power. Educated people (specifically women) tend to have fewer children.  Note I said “tend to.” That does not mean an individual woman with a PhD can’t be like the Old Woman in the Shoe.  But I’d like to see one interviewed, because I think that’s a rare instance.

(Woman + Education + Access to Birth Control = Fewer People to Feed) = Less Need for Bees

Which hopefully leads to Nature finding equilibrium without the need for pesticides.

How was that for a ride?

(Hope you've hung on… this was typed late at night and early in the morning after an evening at a local bluegrass fest.)

Thanks for reading.