Chapter 29 The population Demons
This chapter is also available in pdf
"Rare is the felicity of the times, when you can think what you like, and speak what you think". Tacitus. Histories. 1.i
29.1 An open letter to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations
Dear Mr Annan,
Figure 'X' is the epicentre of the population problem that we humans have. It's taboo. It's taboo to demographers, to development economists, and to all the UN agencies. Nobody dare think about Figure 'X' , or discuss it, or write about it - except Chapter Two of this book - "How many children?" - which stares it straight in the eye - and sees 'disentrapment' as the only alternative to massive starvation and population-driven violence. The Delegates of Oxford University Press argued hotly before they eventually cleared this book for publication (subject to the agreement of the Assessor, see below). Their heated argument - ' benign uproar' - which is anything short of actual violence, must now continue globally from the humblest villager down to George Bush himself - and including, most importantly, all the organisations of the UN.
We hope therefore that you will ask the UN agencies, including particularly UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme, to report to you, and to the world on what they intend to do about Figure 'X', and to produce a preliminary report within one month.
The Rev Thomas Robert Malthus wrote on population early in the 19th century. He was worried by the possibility of population increasing faster than food supplies. A 'Malthusian outlook for Africa' is therefore one which expects starvation.
The taboo on this problem has a name - the Hardinian taboo - after the Californian ecologist, Garrett Hardin, who has long been describing the ways in which we humans avoid dealing with our population problems.
This taboo is at its tightest over 'demographic entrapment', a term which I did not invent, although I did need to invent 'disentrapment'.
A community is demographically trapped, if it exceeds the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem (too many people and not enough land), and there is nowhere for people to go, and the economy produces too few exports to exchange for food and other essentials. What happens then is abject poverty, stunting, starvation, and population-driven violence.
A community is also trapped, if, because its population is increasing, it is expected to be in this unhappy situation before long.
For an updated definition See
As you will see from the graph, what is really worrying about demographic entrapment is its scale In 1977 I asked Jack Caldwell, the most eminent demographer of Africa: "How much of Africa do you think is trapped?" "Most of it..." he replied. Figure ' X ' supports him strongly. Although we are mostly interested in Africa, there is also concern about the entrapment of parts of Asia.
I remain, yours sincerely, Maurice King.
Box 29:1
A legion of Demons
A 'Demon' is anything which prevents the Hardinian taboo on demographic entrapment from lifting, and which causes intense argument ('benign uproar'), and eventually behaviour change, as it does so.
Disturbing the Hardinian taboo, by requiring that entrapment be recognised, requires change in all the 'Demons' that hold it in place.
(1) The inability of us humans to control our population numbers, as pointed out by Garrett Hardin.
(2) The fear of heated argument - 'benign uproar'.
(3) The argument is that if the South has to reduce its fertility, the North must modify its resource consumption. This threatens the economic foundations of the global society, its materialist, consumerist, market economy, driven by the diabolical processes of advertizing to promote ever more luxurious and unsustainable lifestyles.
(4) The means of employment that the Northern lifestyle provides, in that to alter it, unless other radical and difficult changes are also implemented, will increase unemployment.
(5) Northern food habits, which are integral to this economy and lifestyle. þ(6)The many problems of 1-child families.
(7) Current notions of human rights, especially as they relate to human reproduction (largely dominated by the US) .
(8) Some aspects of 'The feminist agenda' (also largely US).
(9) The attitudes of many religious fundamentalists, Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim to abortion.
(10) The Holy See's attitudes to most methods of family planning.
(11) The cultural attitudes of the South that favour high fertility.
(12) 'The Iron Age Taboo' (2.17).
(13) The high status of the child in Western liberalism.
(14) The metaphysical position of modern man ('What are we here for anyway?').
(15) A dread of the future, in that abolishing the Hardinian taboo acknowledges that an anarchic 'population future', which is now approaching at nearly a billion a decade, is already upon us.
(16) 'Political correctness'.
(17) Peer pressure.
(18) Institutional conformity.
(19) Despair, apathy loss of hope, "What can we do about it anyway?"
(20) Self interest, inertia, and 'loss of face'.
(21) The corruption of demography and the 'policing of the lockstep' by the US Department of State.
(22) Friendship - we don't like quarrelling with our friends.
(23) Fear that even to mention entrapment is to incite racism.
(24) Fear of uncontrolled immigration.
(25) Fear of being considered a Malthusian. Etc.
29.2 Why is entrapment so taboo?
Mama Mbewe our very bright and increasingly learned Malawian village mother, with whom we have had much discussion in earlier pages: " What do you think about Figure 'X'?"
Knowledge EngineerMy reaction is MY GOD! - and to sink prayerfully to my knees. A demographer confessed to me (privately!) that she finds the population situation in Africa terrifying, but you will never catch any demographer saying this publicly! Mostly, they taboo it completely - they just refuse to discuss it - see Tim Dyson . The prospect is the situation in Rwanda and Malawi on a continental scale. With Africa in increasing food deficit, the process of entrapment is already well under way - NOW! The challenge is to stop it where it is not already too late.
As to why entrapment is so taboo, a devout friend remarked: "There are many Demons!" (Devils) So what had been the 'factors' (things) causing the Hardinian taboo, have now become its 'Demons' - all 25 of them, as listed above. The first demon - Demon 1 - is a special case, in that Hardin has suggested that there may be something 'hard-wired' (fixed) into our psyches (minds) which prevents us humans from controlling our population numbers. If so, there is not much we can do about it. This however is not true of most of the other 24 Demons. A Demon of this kind is anything which prevents the Hardinian taboo on demographic entrapment from lifting, and which causes intense argument ('benign uproar'), and eventually behaviour change, as it does so. The Delegates Of Oxford University Press disturbed the Demons as they cleared this book provisionally for publication, and benign uproar was the result.
An obvious Demon is Demon 6, the problems of 1-child families. Nobody likes 1-child families, but they are better than the alternative, which is starvation and violence. Lifting the Hardinian taboo releases this Demon with much benign uproar, and the eventual expectation of smaller families. As Section 2.15 shows, the dialogue on 1-child families can open in Africa.
Demon 3 is the first really critical Demon - if the South has to reduce its fertility, if necessary to 1-child families, to avoid starvation and violence, the North will be expected to reduce its resource consumption, and live sustainable lifestyles - which indeed it/we should!
"Disentrapment in the South can only take place as part of a campaign for sustainable lifestyles and reduced resource consumption in the North"
Since the C02 (carbon dioxide) produced by burning the fossil fuel that is needed to support these lifestyles is changing the climate of the world, the benign uproar caused by the release of this Demon is greatly to be welcomed - particularly since forecasts of global-warming have recently been revised upwards. If this ever causes the Arctic permafrost (frozen earth) to thaw, so that it releases its trapped methane (a very efficient greenhouse gas), this may start a positive feedback loop (more methane, more warming, more methane...), in which Earth may become incapable of supporting any life whatever. In the words of the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, Earth may indeed "start boiling like Venus". {106} Global survival alone, therefore requires the release of Demon 3 - and its transmutation (change) into a supremely beneficent (good, useful) agent of change. As this happens, it becomes an Angel - the opposite of a Demon.
This applies to the other Demons also. Provided they remain undisturbed, they lock the Hardinian taboo in place. They allow Africa to proceed to starvation and violence, while Northern lifestyles destroy the Earth. However, once the Hardinian taboo starts to lift, there will be intense benign uproar, as ideas and lifestyles start to change. As this happens these other Demons will also ultimately become beneficent Angels of change. Mercifully, there are signs that this is beginning to happen. Since these demons can only be exorcised by benign uproar, all known ones have been enlisted in the Legion, and are discussed on later pages.
Mama Mbewe"Now I understand. 'Exorcising' means 'getting rid of' or 'making harmless'. It seems that benign uproar does more than make Demons harmless, it turns them into Angels. As long as the Demons remain hidden in the Hardinian taboo, they can continue to act. But if only the taboo can be lifted and the demons recognised, they will act as powerful agents of beneficial change - and hope. Only liberation of the Demons followed by vigorous discussion ('benign uproar'), globally, can save us - as you say, we are all in it together - North and South. This is why The Devil's legion of demons could become God's host (team) of Angels - very argumentative Angels, but Angels none the less.
"A legion of Demons becomes a host of Angels"
Knowledge EngineerYes, you have got it right. If nobody discusses entrapment, the Demons remain undisturbed, there is no benign uproar, and the Hardinian taboo remains firmly in place. As long as it does so, Africa proceeds to starvation and violence, and Northern lifestyles destroy the world. However, once the Hardinian taboo starts to lift, the Demons will start to be released, and benign uproar will begin. This is already starting to happen. As it happens on a wider scale, people's ideas will change, and what they do will change. For example, we can expect that fertility will fall in the South, and lifestyles will change in the North. This change is beneficial - for the good. This is how the benign uproar caused by lifting the taboo, turns Demons into Angels.
Demon 3 has a further consequence. It is that any campaign for disentrapment in the South can only take place as part of a campaign for sustainable lifestyles and reduced resource consumption in the North - these are but two sides of the same life-saving coin. And who is most threatened by Demon 3 ? The United States - Demon 21.
WHAT SCIENTISTS SAY ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING. "...The likelihood of many of these [catastrophic] changes in earth systems is not well-known, but is probably [my italics] very low, however, their likelihood is expected to increase with the rate, magnitude, and duration of climate change...". {134} "It is precisely because the responsible scientific community cannot rule out such catastrophic outcomes at a high level of confidence, that climate mitigation policies are seriously proposed." {135}
29.3 The case against Demon 21
I will deal with Demon 21, at some length, because I have come to see it as the critical one, and have been asked to provide detailed evidence. It is the deliberate attempt by the US government to keep entrapment taboo - and demography corrupt. I never set out with this extraordinary thesis, which incidentally, some politically incorrect US citizens consider so obvious as to be hardly worth discussion. They point out that, what would be remarkable, would be for it not to be happening! When it eventually occurred to me after seven years of study, I found that, quite unintentionally, I had already collected the evidence to support it, much of it complete with the necessary documents.
I will discuss it under the headings of:
The motive.
Demon 21 - a statement of political intent -The 'George Kennan culture'
In 1948 George Kennan, head of the US Department of State planning staff until 1950 wrote, in a document recently released under the 50-year rule:
"We have 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population... In this situation we cannot fail to be the at object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will commit us to maintain this position of disparity without possible detriment to our ultimate security. To do this we will have to dispense with sentimentality and day-dreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We had better not deceive ourselves that we can afford ...the luxury of altruism and world benefaction... The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans the better..."{87}
It is not easy to know which combination of Demons is operating under which circumstances. However, I argue that, if demographic entrapment was being discussed, for example, by Henry Moseley's Department of Population Dynamics at Johns Hopkins University in the US, it would now be being discussed everywhere else, and all the other demons would now be severely embattled (troubled). How could his students, including those from trapped communities, imagine that demographic entrapment could exist, if they were never taught about it in one of the world's best universities?
In 2002 that superb Quaker, Stan Becker [his reward is in Heaven!], invited me to lecture at Johns Hopkins. I pointed out that, by suppressing the discussion of entrapment, demography, development economics, and several UN agencies must now be declared intellectually corrupt, and that there are powerful US political interests keeping them so - and nobody disagreed with me! However, I had a clear impression that the US demographic establishment is very worried that 'the cat is now out of the bag' - its deception has been found out. I was not popular! Even so, one senior academic indicated that 'I was her blue-eyed boy' (favourite). Mercifully, even Hopkins has its dissidents!
The present climate of extreme 'political correctness' (Demon 16) is necessary for the operation of Demon 21 - because Demon 21 could not operate without it! There is now an extraordinary unwillingness to 'stick one's neck out' (say what one thinks) on almost anything. This appears to be a new phenomenon - and a very sinister one. For example, the director of a British family planning agency said, on visiting China, that, Unlike India, he saw no poverty there - but would not let me quote him, even for this innocent observation - presumably lest his political correctness be 'disturbed'. He also wanted me to write to a letter to The Economist pointing out the demographic entrapment of Ethiopia, since he was unwilling to do this himself. Anyone in any position of seniority - and all in those who aspire to it - now maintain the strictest political correctness, and will not say anything which could be interpreted as criticising the political status quo (the present situation).
For some obscure reason this correctness is particularly acute when it comes to criticising the US. In academic circles unwillingness to criticise the US is indeed remarkable. For example the Assessor that Oxford University press appointed to clear the manuscript would not allow any criticism of the US - so I have had to publish it myself. The distributor of this book (TALC Teaching Aids at Low Cost) wanted all mention of the US and Demon 21 censored out of the version that it is distributing!
Needless to say, entrapment is totally taboo to The Lancet, which is 'deep in the US pocket' (wanting to make money there) - see the Epilogue. If therefore these thoughts are to appear on paper, it has to be in a book that one publishes oneself - baited with another one which will encourage readers to buy it - see Moliere's madness.
The mechanism by which 'The Superpower' and its think-tanks have managed to establish this most advantageous and extraordinary political invulnerability is obscure and sinister (evil).
However, the moment of truth did not come for a further seven years, until, in 1996, I read a paper in the Population and Development Review by McIntosh and Finkle {65} which described what had happened at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. I went to the conference, it was a splendid 'bazaar', in which it was impossible to know what was going on. In their analysis of what did go on, McIntosh and Finkle pointed out that "...historically, the State Department has considered population in the light of US and global security...", and also that "...once formed, the US position [at Cairo] was advanced with determination and skill through every available channel..." This was abundantly confirmed by what had happened to me there.
In Cairo I had been interviewed by Charles Cargille of the International Population and Family Association, since defunct, which I can only assume had been a front organisation for the CIA. I remarked on this subsequently to a representative of UNFPA, who replied: "I know Charles Cargille, I am not at all surprised". Cargille had invited me to address a fringe meeting at the Semiramis hotel. When I got to the hotel, there was no fringe meeting. I knocked on Cargille's door. When I entered, a member of the US National Audubon Society, a green activist group, was being interviewed behind a table in front of a video camera, and being asked what various things implied for the interests of the United States - and looking very uncomfortable! When he had gone, I said to Cargille: "I know exactly who you are!" Cargille's jaw dropped and the look on his face instantly gave the game away. I refused to be interviewed behind the table, so during my interview I sat in an arm chair. We then went out to lunch - accompanied by his factotum, whom I took to be a marine from the US Embassy deputed to look after him. Such then was my political naivety at the time that the entire significance of this interview was lost on me until I read McIntosh and Finkle's paper.
The CIA. Deputy Director Frank Wisner proudly referred to the CIA’s worldwide propaganda machine as “the mighty Wurlizer” (juke box, music machine) ... “The CIA own dozens of newspapers and magazines the world over. ... It is clear that the CIA regards the space between your ears as one of its most important battlefields...” {162}
For yet more evidence see also an earlier unpublished paper which overlaps this one.
In short, the case against Demon 21 is absolute.
What is arguable is the influence of particular Demons on particular occasions. However, I argue that, if entrapment was being discussed by US demographers, it would now be being widely discussed elsewhere.
Mama Mbewe Even one of these examples would be difficult to explain away - for example, Nils Daulaire's need to escape his CIA mentors before discussing entrapment. Together the evidence is damning!
LOCKSTEP’ is a way of marching very close together, with one’s leg under the leg of the person in front. If anyone changes his step, the whole squad falls over. Nobody here ever discusses entrapment. Demography is therefore intellectually corrupt, as are the disciplines and agencies dependent upon it. If ever any one of them were to discuss entrapment, everyone else would have to discuss it too, so that the lockstep would break up.
IPPF is the International Planned Parenthood Federation - the co-ordinating agency for all the world’s family planning organizations.
Note. This is intellectual corruption and has little to do with money. It is failing to face up to something because it presents difficult intellectual and ethical problems - not because it is difficult to understand.
The Assessor appointed by Oxford University Press to clear this book for publication refused to clear this figure. He argues that demography is merely ‘misrepresented’ . I argue that ‘corrupt’ is the only word to adequately describe demography’s total refusal to discuss demographic entrapment. I have therefore had to publish this book ‘from my empty garage’.
29.4 The 'population policy lockstep'
The effect of Demon 21 has been what Jason Finkle has called the present 'population policy lockstep', in which all the universities, and all foundations, as well as all the relevant UN agencies, and NGOs, stick to the same population policies, and in particular maintain the Hardinian taboo on entrapment. So too does the World Bank, which has no valid long-term policies for Africa.
The failure to courageously confront entrapment, and particularly Figure 'X', that results from the lockstep, has left an enormous vacuum in international health and human affairs, and a grave fault in the global dynamic. As the result of the lockstep, and especially of Demon 21, the population debate in the world as a whole has never been more silent than it is now - despite Figure 'X'. The lockstep ensures that alternative population policies, particularly those needed for disentrapment, are never discussed. Although there may be the beginnings of a change, {156} demography has never been more anti-Malthusian than it is now. Malthus is supposedly dead - see Argument 15. It is widely believed that, with over 60 countries (of nearly 200) at or below replacement fertility, the family planning battle has been won. My concern is where it is being lost - particularly in Africa.
It should therefore be no surprise that The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) which was expected in 2004, ten years after its predecessor in Cairo, is not now to take place because the donors (especially the United States) don't want to fund it. If the purpose of the United States is to keep entrapment taboo (Demon 21), why fund a conference which might discuss it? This conference must take place.
IPPF The International Planned Parenthood Federation, is the coordinating agency for all the world's Family Planning Associations. As such it could have a crucial role to play in the demographic disentrapment of Africa - in preventing the starvation and violence shown in Figure 'X'. Nevertheless, it remains firmly 'lockstepped'. Its Director, Steve Sinding, a US citizen, refuses to discuss entrapment - or the role that IPPF might have in treating it.
29.5 Demon 21 gets its 'Genu robustum...
So what can possibly be done about Demon 21? It is a political threat, so it needs a political answer. But what?
What it comes to is that the demographic welbeing of the world, and particularly Africa, is the grip of what can only be described as the overpowering evil of the 'soft power' of the United States - 4.6% of world population. The 'George Kennan culture' within its Department of State, with the assent of some senior academics, dominates the thought and the welbeing of the remaining 95.4% of us - by allowing a continent (Africa) to proceed to starvation and violence, without its predicament being recognised, and without the assistance that might rescue it. Even worse, Earth is deprived of the stimulus that might stop it from boiling like Venus. And all this because the United States, which is now the fattest nation on earth, {157} does not want its luxurious lifestyles questioned. No more heinous evil than this could be imagined.
Mama Mbewe This puts even Hitler in the shade!
Knowledge Engineer With the Nazis, one man was mainly responsible, here it is a fairly small group of people, many of whom know one another, and who maintain 'the George Kennan culture' over the years. The US Senate has never debated 'the lockstep policy', and I doubt if George Bush is even aware of it. Paradoxically, all this is nothing new. Entrapment has been discussed privately by the cognoscenti (those 'in the know') in demography and development economics, over coffee tables for at least a decade. The cognoscenti are less numerous than you might think. Mostly, they appear to be the senior professors in the best US universities, who set the political correctness in respect of entrapment - Henry Moseley at Johns Hopkins, for example.
Nevertheless, the 'political correctness' originating in this culture is able to keep demography corrupt and the population debate silent with the most devastating efficiency - even though most US citizens are completely innocent and unaware of it. So, incidentally, are most demographers. John Cleland of the London School of Hygiene thought that I had invented the term 'demographic entrapment'. Elizabeth Cooksey, deputy editor of the Journal Demography had never heard of it. It is remarkable that, even among demographers and development economists, a narrow clique (group) should have kept demographic entrapment so secret for so long.
Mama Mbewe I think that you are being unfair to the US. The year before George Kennan made the statement in Box 29:2, the Secretary of State George Marshall, proposed the Marshall plan which gave Europe $12 billion to repair the damage of the Second World War.
Knowledge EngineerYou have to realise that US foreign policy is very complex, and has many conflicting strands. Demography happens to have encountered a particularly bad one.
Mama MbeweThe US has spent many millions of dollars on family planning programs in the past. Why should it not want to control population growth now?
Knowledge EngineerI am sure it would like to see population growth fall in the South, but not at the expense of having its own resource consumption criticised - which is what the recognition of entrapment implies - if the South has reduce its fertility to avoid starvation and violence, the North has to modify its lifestyle - Demon 3.
Paradoxically, the 'heinous evil' of the 'soft power' of Demon 21 as it is applied to demography and therefore to human welbeing, is a 'risk factor' so large that it is largely invisible to the various disciplines that it spans.
Although the direct effect of Demon 21 in maintaining the taboo on entrapment is bad enough in that it prevents disentrapment in the South, the indirect effect of Demon 21 could be immeasurably greater, in it silences the argument of Demon 3: If the South has to reduce its fertility to avoid starvation and violence the North has to modify its lifestyles.
Since the effect of an unmodified lifestyle is continued global warming, with the possibility, even the probability, that Earth may end up boiling like Venus, Demon 21 is "risk factor" not only for starvation and violence in the South, but also of barely imaginable disaster for all rest of us, and our children. See and see. We are cooked, both literally and metaphorically. Demon 21 is thus it risk factor of "super - mega - colossal" proportions.
Only exceptional steps could control it. So what might those steps be?
I argue that, if it is necessary to ban cigarettes to prevent carcinoma of the bronchus, it is necessary to mount a political counter-attack on the political activities of Demon 21 - to prevent the massive poverty, starvation and violence that result from demographic entrapment. Is it enough merely to say "Jolly bad show chaps"? And if not, what kind of political counterattack against 'the George Kennan culture' can the rest of the world possibly mount, because this is what is wanted? What affront to the persona of Uncle Sam (the US) would be most appropriate? A rap over the knuckles? A slap in the face? A kick in the shins? A kick in the arse? I suggest: 'Genu robustum ad inguen gentes superantium acerime applicandum' - "A bloody good knee to the geopolitical crotch of the current superpower" (Demon 21).
'Genu robustum...' is likely to be a most useful piece of political code. 'All the more strength to your elbow' now becomes 'all the more strength to your knee'. Paradoxically, the fact that it is modestly obscene is just what is necessary. It could be that, all it needs to lift the Hardinian taboo, and break the population policy lockstep, is a 'genu robustum .... 'It could also be that this book is just that. It is after all a metaphorical 'bloody good knee...'Considering the consequences of silencing the population debate and keeping entrapment taboo, I think that Genu robustum is immensely charitable! After all, Bernard Shaw did say that: "All great truths start as blasphemies". {161}
Incidentally, although it is a most deserved psychological affront, and is painful, a 'Genu robustum...' is harmless. The testes slip out of the way, and the anterior urethra remains intact!
The Assessor would not accept that demography is corrupt, nor would he sanction Genu robustum... I consider both these so important that I have felt obliged to publish this book myself. It has therefore been printed at The Spiegel Press where PDF files go in one end, and books come out at the other, at maximum speed and minimum cost, unexamined by any assessor, and subject to no clearance for political, or any other kind of correctness!
Considering that the Assessor has been a notable population activist for 40 years, it is remarkable that he refused to accept the critical political step in the solution of the politics of the population problem.
Illustrating Genu robustum as a political cartoon so greatly increases its acceptability, as to make one wonder what all the fuss is about? I argue that, whereas there are many organisations 'wittering on' (talking) about 'overpopulation' - and getting nowhere - what is now wanted is a frontal attack on entrapment and its Demons, the hardest nut to crunch being 'Archdemon 21'.
We are, of course, inside a taboo, and there is great resistance in coming to terms with it - and with the distasteful political action that this requires. In the 19th Century the German medical establishment (the top people), including even the famous pathologist Virchow, rejected Semmelweis' theory that puerperal sepsis (25.6) was the result of infection, and could be prevented by clean hands and an antiseptic. {163} Such then is the resistance of establishments to changes in their ideas. There is great resistance to the idea that powerful political pressures are preventing the recognition of entrapment, however obvious this may be - and even more resistance to confronting it - politically!
Mama MbeweA good translation is impossible, Chewa does not have words for 'geopolitical', or 'superpower' or even 'crotch' in the way you intend it, which has nothing to do with sex. The best I can do is: "eee koma ndiye kuwapweteka mumpechepeche weni dzikowo".
Knowledge Engineer'Gentle reader' What is it translated into your language? Fill it in here:...... .... .... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ..... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ..... ..... ...... ...... ...... ...
I argue that there are corrupt disciplines, agencies, and institutions, but no corrupt individuals. Such is the power of the Demons that no insider can break clear of them. Only an outsider can begin to do this, over many years, with much good fortune, and, since they are Demons, only by the grace of God.
"...and, since they are Demons, only by the grace of God".
Mama Mbewe I think that you are being too kind when you say that there are no corrupt individuals, and that there are only corrupt disciplines, institutions, and agencies. What about Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard for example? He writes " "...only a shrinking subset of poor countries seems to be stuck in the demography - poverty trap..." {156} He is a frequent adviser to WHO. Why does he never discuss entrapment there?
Knowledge EngineerI leave the judgement of individuals to the Almighty. The Demons do make it difficult - but perhaps not impossible!
Jim Sunnucks (a friend who suggested the term 'Demon', see also) "I am not sure that I understand all you have written, but it seems to me that the point of St Mark 5.9 is that evil takes many forms, and is often multiple by nature. If this is so, one can only try to deal with the more obvious forms of evil at hand, and if one tries to fight it all, one is bound for confusion and failure. I am very fond of quoting "He who would do good, must do it by minute particulars (small pieces)". {176}
"He who would do good, must do it by minute particulars (pieces)" {176}
Knowledge Engineer "Multiple it certainly is - all those Demons. Your point about trying to take on too much is well taken - see 'Moliere's madness', However, somebody has to describe what it happening and say what he thinks about it. Considering the size of the task, this book is indeed a very 'minute particular' - published privately from an unheated coal cellar.
Mama MbeweYou don't tell us who the Assessor is. He isn't John Guillebaud, by any chance, is he?
Knowledge Engineer Do you really think that I would really put anyone on the front cover who had refused to clear this book for publication by Oxford University Press, so that I have to wheel it to the post office in my wheelbarrow?
Basil King. I am slightly surprised that the majority view is that politics does not belong in textbooks - if nothing else politics can enliven something that might otherwise be rather dull. But your writing is never dull!
Mama MbeweI see that you are wearing your gardening trousers as you deliver your Genu robustum. English gentlemen like you should at least be properly dressed for such an important ceremonial an occasion as this. Where is your beautiful tie of the Royal College of Surgeons of England? Uncle Sam is wearing tails and has polished his shoes. Besides, he has a very smart shirt with stars on it. Look at you, you are in your gardening trousers!
Knowledge Engineer CS Lewis said that evil does not like being laughed at. There cannot be greater evil than this. These things are far to serious to be always dealt with seriously. TS Eliot said 'Human kind cannot bear very much reality'. {172} Figure 'X' is very, very real.
Incidentally, the kind of banter (light argument) that we are having could not happen in the Population and Development Review, it is much too staid (sober). This is one reason why it is so difficult for that journal, which is demography's flagship (leader) to discuss entrapment.
Mama MbeweHow much effect do you think your Genu robustum is going to have?
Knowledge Engineer I don't know. This book might have almost no effect, or it could have so much in that the response will be destructive. It is most important that whatever response there might be is constructive. Wherever the book went in manuscript argument was intense - from the Delegates downwards. Intense argument is a sign that attitudes and eventually behaviour will change. So we should all have great hopes of it.
Mama MbeweIt seems to me that, considering the implications of Figure 'X' for the health of Africa, and considering the present highly anti-Malthusian stance of US dominated demography, the discovery of the pathological role of Demon 21 is the most important advance in tropical medicine since Laveran discovered the malarial parasite in 1882 - especially since that the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine refuses to discuss the disentrapment of Africa, and The Royal Society also.Knowledge Engineer That is what you think !
29.6 'Things fall apart...'{173}
...and need to be put together again in a different way.
The curious thing about a taboo is that nobody ever says "This is taboo". We absorb the idea of what is taboo from other people, as we grow up. Taboos are not accidental - they are fundamental to the structure of society. For example, the taboo on sex which all societies have in various ways, is necessary for the stability of the family. (4.6) As it weakens in response to the US dominated media, families fall apart, as they are presently doing all over the world - to the enormous disadvantage of human welfare. I argue that the taboo on sex urgently needs to be replaced, albeit in perhaps another way, but that is another story...
The Hardinian taboo on demographic entrapment is important 'glue' to global society - as it now is - it holds it together - to the great advantage of the North. If the taboo is lifted, the North has to modify its lifestyle, because the South has to reduce its fertility (Demon 3). This is very destructive of the present Northern lifestyle. But then the Northern lifestyle is destroying the Earth anyway. So what do we in the North do? Do we close our eyes, do nothing, and hope the problem will go away? Or do we attack it for all we are worth, and try to promote constructive change? Much depends on what we think we are here for - see Demon 14 , and 'Moliere's madness'.
International health' is now constrained by a narrow epidemiology, which refuses to look at Figure 'X' and its consequences for human welfare. Entrapment dwarfs AIDS as a threat to the health of Africa. In its turn 'medicine' is dominated by molecular biology and the human genome. Meanwhile, there is yet other an other unrecognised threat to human health - the manipulation of human behaviour by advertising and marketing - always in the direction of unnecessary, unsustainable, and often unhealthy economic consumption. We have begun to control the advertising of tobacco, and are beginning to control advertising to children. But this must only be the start to a much wider control of the deliberate manipulation of human behaviour - and the much extended reach of public health. But that again is another story...
There is yet another Demon, (Demon 3a?) which is implicit in the market economy itself. 'The market', 'money', and economic growth are 'God'. Susan George {98} points out that, at present, there are 2 billion 'haves', and 4 billion 'have-nots'. By 2050 there will be a minimum of 9 billion people in the world. If all 9 billion become 'haves', the carbon dioxide produced by their fossil fuel-driven lifestyles will have destroyed the world ecologically. If they remain 'have-nots', they will destroy it by violence. 9/11 (the destruction of the US Trade Centre in New York) is a portent of what may follow. Somehow, 'the market' has to be controlled...
29.7 'Demon' as a scientific term
"... philosophers do not have the resources that enable them to legislate on the criteria that must be satisfied if an area of knowledge is to be deemed ... "scientific".... there is no timeless and universal conception of science or scientific method... we cannot legitimately defend or reject items of knowledge because they do or do not conform to some ready-made criterion of 'scientificity'..." Alan Chalmers. {144}
The concept of a ' demon ' or 'daemon' is in many religions and goes back to Zoraster 628 BC. A Demon is a 'spiritual being, power, or principle, that mediates between the transcendent and the temporal realm.' (Heaven, Hell and Earth) and is usually malevolent. {159} If it is argued that 'Demons' have no place in science, I reply that, although science is supposed to be completely logical and objective from end to end, and the science of demography uncorrupt and rational, this is not so. Alas, since demography and development economics are gravely corrupted by at least two taboos (the Hardinian and the Iron Age Taboos), it is necessary to use the appropriate terms to explore what is actually going on. Such an exploration confronts such subrational and highly emotive entities as 'racism' (Demon 23), the 'soft power' of the United States, and its deliberate corruption of demography (Demon 21). These entities, which are indeed diabolical, are best described as 'Demons'.
Besides, 'Demon' implies an ethical and even a spiritual or diabolical dimension, which some Demons certainly have. Most 'Demons' are more complex than mere 'epidemiological factors' or 'obstacles to the recognition of entrapment'. Also, maleficent 'Demons' can be transformed allegorically into beneficent 'Angels'. In addition, if this usage ever becomes current, 'Demons' will have a shine and a visibility that mere 'factors' never could. Moreover, it is useful to preserve the insights of a more devout age.
Not all the factors that prevent the reduction of fertility are necessarily Demons, in that they prevent the lifting of the Hardinian taboo, as described above. For example, the competitive breeding of rival communities in same country, can take place whether or not that country is trapped. Competitive breeding is thus not a Demon as defined here.
How many Demons there are is unknown - I suggest 25 recognised ones. Their numbering is arbitrary. Although listed separately, some have much in common. For example, 'political correctness' (Demon 16), 'peer pressure' (Demon 17), and 'institutional conformity' (Demon 18), are not easily distinguished. Ranking the Demons in order of importance is again somewhat arbitrary
It is far from clear how these Demons act. Presumably, they seldom act alone. They are more likely to act together in complex ways. It would be useful to know which Demons operate under which circumstances. It might be possible to design psychometric tests that would explore this.
A major problem is that one has to overcome all the Demons in oneself, before one can lift one's personal Hardinian taboo, and encourage disentrapment, with the need for 1-child families where necessary. For example, one might find onself prepared to radically alter one's lifestyle (Demon 3), have no problems with the feminist agenda (Demon 8) or human rights (Demon 7), etc., and yet, if one is a Catholic, one might be much concerned by Demons 9 and 10 - abortion and the full range of family planning methods
Demons 1, 3 and 21 have already been described. Here are the others.
Demon 2 The fear of uproar. Few people like intense argument. It is however a necessary prelude to the radical behaviour change that is so urgently necessary North and South. Wherever this book went in manuscript, argument was intense - the Demons were loosening up!
Demon 4 The means of employment that the Northern lifestyle provides, in that to alter it, unless other difficult changes are also implemented, would increase unemployment. There is no more treasured social goal than to keep everyone in jobs.
Demon 5 Northern food habits which are integral to the market economy, and to the Northern lifestyle. They also contribute substantially to fossil fuel consumption, by requiring extensive and unnecessary transport - as when seemingly identical brands of beer are transported long distances in opposite directions.
Demon 6 The many problems of 1-child families. These include a preference for boys with resulting female infanticide, the 'the little emperor' phenomenon (spoilt only-children), and the problems of ageing communities. It is remarkable that, despite these disadvantages, to have one child only, has come to be seen by many sections of the Chinese community as being the only responsible social behaviour. In the 1970s, 1-child families were the Chinese response to what it perceived as its 'grain problem' which was, in effect, entrapment. The alternatives were seen to have been starvation and perhaps violence. See Section 2.5.
One of the many problems of 1-child families is that, if parts of the South need 1-child families to avoid starvation and violence, the North should have them also - see Section 2.15.
Demon 7 Current notions of human rights, especially as these relate to human reproduction. The human rights movement has never debated the necessary incentives, and disincentives, for fertility control under conditions of entrapment, nor has it balanced the rights of individuals with their duties to the community. The human rights movement, although it has an outstanding record in other fields, particularly in the abolition of torture, is therefore gravely flawed in matters of human reproduction.
Demon 8 Some aspects of the feminist agenda. This borders on the previous Demon, and is exemplified by the view that a woman should be allowed to have as many children, as she wishes, regardless of the disadvantages to the rest of her community.
The feminist agenda had a powerful effect in the Cairo population conference in 1994, in diverting priorities from population control and family planning, towards the more nebulous and demographically irrelevant notion of 'reproductive health'. Political correctness has now reached such ridiculous levels, in some circles, that it is now incorrect even to mention the term ' family planning'. Even 'reproductive health' itself is starting to become politically incorrect, in that it is associated in some minds with abortion. Some even more politically correct term will now need to be invented!
Demon 9 - the Holy See's attitudes to the postcoital family planning methods and particularly to abortion. The postcoital methods have a crucial role to play in disentrapment, in ensuring that no pregnant mother, particularly a teenager, delivers an unwanted baby. Also, any family planning service which also provides abortion services, is likely to be denied funding by those governments where there is a strong Catholic influence, particularly the United States. This has had a powerful effect in slowing fertility decline, and in increasing entrapment in intensely Catholic Rwanda, for example.
Demon 10 The Holy See's attitude to most methods of precoital family planning. A full range of family planning methods is essential if fertility is to fall to the levels necessary for disentrapment.
Demon 11 The cultural attitudes of the South that favour high fertility. Remarkably, these are not so firmly established, as is sometimes thought. For example, I have been able to open a dialogue on 1-child families in both Uganda and Malawi see Figure 2-25. I am also told that it can be opened in Kenya. See Section 2.15. It seems that public attitudes to family size in some African communities are presently far in advance of what the UN agencies and most demographers think they are.
Box 29:3
Northern lifestyles
This is what a Northern lifestyles ought to be. It is said to be so Franciscan in spirit as to merit nailing to the door of the basilica in Assisi. Since we are so much concerned with Southern fertility, Demon 3 compels us to say something about Northern lifestyles.
Out of compassion for a beautiful world and those who come after me, I will strictly ration my fossil fuel consumption (and my global warming). I will even have a cold shower each morning (soon I won't notice it).
In solidarity with the trapped of the South, and of the rest of terrestrial creation (plants, animals) who also need room to live, I will have 1-child only.
Out of care for the hungry in a world in which per capita grain is falling, and out of compassion for pigs in crates and chickens in cages, I will eat a photon-efficient diet (one which converts light energy into food energy with the greatest efficiency).
I will have the courage to feed my guests spaghetti al pesto, instead of T-bone steaks.
Where possible, I will eat local produce in season, and avoid pineapples airfreighted from Peru.
I will endeavour to 'live locally', stay put, and bond to my immediate community.
I will walk or cycle, and will recycle everything.
If I drive at all, it will be in the smallest and most efficient car there is.
When I travel, I will use public transport where possible, on the surface of the earth (more energy efficient).
I will ration my tourism to the heavenly places (the Parthenon, Chartres, Assisi...), lest I spoil them. Where I can, I will arrive as a pilgrim on foot.
I will wear the thickest tweed (presently unobtainable), and if I am bald I will wear a hat in the house (the scalp radiates). I will only turn on the central heating when absolutely necessary.
I will repair everything until it drops, and take a pride in the beautiful patches on my jacket.
I will do and honour manual work, and get the stuff of this planet under my finger nails (or wear gardening gloves).
I will be 100% advertisement resistant, so that I myself decide my behaviour and lifestyle, and not the advertisers.
I realise that the economy cannot provide two jobs for every family, so my wife and I will earn alternately.
When I am old and if I am still fit, I will care for the old-old, in our ageing society.
Lest I deplete society's 'social capital', I will, before dying, pass on to the next generation, at least as much care, nurturing, education, and inspiration as I received myself.
I will cheaply die a low-tech death (and leave resources for others). But I would like a high-church funeral.
Finally, I will endeavour to so pass through things temporal, that I lose not the things eternal.
Demon 12 The 'Iron Age Taboo'. Paul Demeny, an eminent demographer, once asked me "Why cannot Malawi become a tiger economy like Malaysia?" The short answer is that it is impossible for any community to have a sufficiently rapid economic take-off to qualify for the term 'tiger economy', when it was it in the Iron Age less than a hundred years ago, without the wheel, or writing, or permanent buildings, etc. Under such conditions, and particularly when the average mother has six children, it is impossible for economic development to be fast enough to connect the country with the rest of the world and provide it with imported food - before population increase causes the community to exceed the carrying capacity of its ecosystem. This is so difficult to accept that the Iron Age Taboo has to be considered a Demon. See Section 2.8.
Development economics, and with it UNDP, are gravely corrupted by Demon. 12. It is the assumption that, because population densities in, say Malawi, have not yet reached those of the Netherlands, population is no problem in Africa. The failure to take account of Demon 12 has now reached the point of farce in that the current (2002) UN document on the development of Africa - NEPAD - New Partnership for Africa's development {154}- makes no mention of population whatsoever, despite the portent of Figure 'X'. This is not the fault of those African statesman who participated in it, but of UNDP, which has long been aware of entrapment, without ever mentioning it, and which must therefore be declared grossly corrupt intellectually.
In Homer-Dixon's terms a community only recently out of the Iron Age finds itself with a huge 'ingenuity gap'. {140} It cannot make the necessary social and economic adaptations fast enough to disentrap itself.
Demon 13 The high status of the child in Western liberalism. It is fashionable to think that if only we could 'get things right for the child', all would be well - 'child-survivalism'. Hence the focus on child mortality, immunisation, etc. and the neglect of the ecological circumstances of those children. Tragically, Malawi now represents the end-stage of the child survival revolution, with stunting, starvation, and such grave ecological destruction, in that in many areas there is barely a tree in sight.
The world has a UNICEF, but nothing similar for mothers, or men, or the disabled, or the aged, etc. The fact that, in a tightly trapped community, one more child mouth to feed, is less for someone else, is a dilemma which the UN agencies, particularly UNICEF, fail to resolve. {54} Ethically, the way out is for the individual doctor to treat the individual child, and thus to shift the dilemma to the programming level - for example, should new funds be spent on child survival, or on family planning? This makes the dilemma easier to handle.
Here is a contribution by Charles Elliott {54}, which also concerns Demon 14 : "
"Precisely because society is so 'hung up' on children, the suggestion that they have no greater claim to scarce resources than other vulnerable groups is unusually repugnant. At a stage in 'western' intellectual history when there is extreme uncertainty about the foundations and content of ethics, [Demon 14] people are bound to react nervously to the suggestion that the one thing they feel reasonably certain about - the sanctity of the life of children and the need to protect them at almost any cost - should come under critical scrutiny. Some claim that to raise such questions is to play with fire. But when this fire licks round the whole metaphysical and ethical system of late western capitalism and threatens to engulf it, the mature response is surely not to deny or ignore it, in the hope that the ultimate horror of 'letting children die' can be avoided."
Demon 14 The metaphysical position of modern man - What are we here for anyway? Merely to 'consume'? The comfortable materialism of late capitalist man, brought up to be confident of progress, is particularly disturbed to think that most of a continent is demographically trapped, and what this might mean for his own lifestyle. This Demon is probably more important than might appear at first sight.
If Demon 21 is one of the outer ramparts (walls) of the Demon's castle, we will probably find that Demon 14 is its keep (strongest part), and that when fighting ('benign uproar') gets really tough, this is where the argument will ultimately get to. For example, although the argument between John Blacker, Basia Zaba and myself (29.9) , has not yet got this far, this is where we will probably end up - if their rationality does not end before it does.
The awesome power of the Demons is such that confronting them requires that one put 'everything on the table' - one's time, one's reputation, one's money, and indeed one's life. I have had the singular distinction of being warned that "...to interfere in politics at this level is exceedingly dangerous..." See. In doing so one has to be certain what one is here for - in Christian terms to worship one's God, and love one's fellow men - in my case trying to disentrap a continent, and doing one's inadequate best to 'prevent Earth boiling like Venus'. We really are dealing with overpowering evil. Imagine it - if you can - 'Figure 'X' - and everyone turns the other way! If one is locked in combat with the demons one has to have one's feet firmly on the ground, and know in the last analysis (in the end) where one stands.
Mama Mbewe It seems to me that this world is really only a cosmic 'Petrie dish for the culture of souls' - one of those glass plates that bacteriologists grow their bacteria on.
Demon 15 A dread of the future, in that abolishing the Hardinian taboo and facing up to entrapment, acknowledges the fact that an anarchic population future, now approaching us at nearly a billion a decade, is already upon us. Robert Kaplan wrote an article called The Coming Anarchy {78} in which he describes how crime, overpopulation, tribalism and disease, are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet. Seeing the link between demographic entrapment and all this, three colleagues sent me - quite independently - a copy of his article. We prefer to shut our eyes to anarchic 'over- population', one aspect of which is demographic entrapment.
Demon 16 ' Political correctness' is a new term, first widely used in the 1980s. This suggests that it describes a new reality - a deadly new conformism, and an ever-greater reluctance to 'stick one's neck out'. Although originally applying to such relatively trivial matters as gender, mentioning demographic entrapment is now the last word in political incorrectness. It is at its worst in UN agencies, particularly at senior levels, where political correctness, and not sticking one's neck out, is critical to keeping one's job - and one's pension. See also.
Where does political correctness in respect of entrapment start? Does it: 'Crystallise out' spontaneously? Or, Does it have to be seeded with a 'nucleus'. Or, Do both processes happen? The case against Demon 21, argues that political correctness in respect of entrapment had originally to be 'seeded' by senior demographers in the United States. If not, why are they bound by it? See.
Demon 17 'Peer pressure', and Demon 18, 'Institutional Conformity'. How far these are separable, and how far they can be distinguished from 'political correctness' is arguable. The opinion of one's peers is powerfully conducive to conformity. It is difficult to take a deviant position in a strong institution, where the pressure on conformity is so great. It is much easier to step out of line in a weak one. When I first started work on demographic entrapment, I had the good fortune to work in an excellent university, Leeds, but in a weak department. I doubt if it would have been possible to start working on entrapment in an institution as strong as, say the Harvard School of Public Health, or the London School of Hygiene.
Demon 19 Despair. When I lectured on entrapment recently, someone asked me: "Are you hopeful?" I replied: "There is always hope - hope of the will rather than that of the intellect". This particular Demon is likely to be closely linked to Demon 14 - the metaphysical position of modern man - what are we here for anyway? Despair is closely linked to powerlessness. So what can one do? The short answer is anything - make a start somewhere - any start however small to begin with. Do good 'by minute particulars'. You will experience great difficulty, and yet greater joy! See 'Moliere's madness'
Demon 22 Friendship. There are few more subtle means of coercion than to be written to by a very dear and very eminent old friend, as I was, and for it to be pointed out a that it would, in effect, be better for me 'not to rock the boat old chap' and to remain 'one of us'!
Demon (23) Fear that even to mention entrapment is to incite racism - see Argument 10.
Demon (24) The fear of uncontrolled immigration. Monsieur le Pen in France, and the late Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands confronted Europe with Demon 24 - the fear of uncontrolled immigration. The future of the world is brown - the question is how brown? England welcomes Chicken tikka Marsala as its national dish, having replaced fish and chips, Nasser Hussein as the captain of its cricket team, and Paul Boateng from Ghana, as a member of Tony Blair's cabinet. Nobody knows how many immigrants from Africa there already are in Europe. There has already been much emigration out of Africa, and there will be more. It seems unlikely however, that 2 billion people will be able to emigrate from Africa, with perhaps another billion from Asia. The assumption therefore has to be that most disentrapment will have to take place in Africa by reduced fertility. There is still a long way to go. In a third of African countries fertility has not even begun to fall. Ugandan mothers, for example, still have 6.9 children!
Demon 25 For a demographer the fear of being labelled a 'Malthusian'. This is presently very unfashionable. See Argument 15 in the next Section.
This does not limit the list. There is also the sensitivity of some North Americans towards criticising African fecundity (openly), and generational feelings of guilt because of slavery and discrimination against African Americans.
Mama Mbewe "Have you listed all the Demons, or are there any which you know but dare not list?"
Knowledge Engineer "Yes, there is another important one. I have not listed it because there is nothing we can do about it. 25 Demons, most of which we can do something about, are enough to be getting on with! Guess, and whisper it in my ear. If you guess it right, I will tell you so. Or send me an e-mail M.H.King@leeds.ac.uk. with your guess. For the moment, even 'benign uproar' has its limits!"
29.8 Seventeen arguments for avoiding the diagnosis of entrapment
If indeed entrapment does not exist, it is remarkable that there should be such a tight taboo on it, especially when it is said to be so pervasive. How then do demographers, development economists and the UN agencies contrive to avoid it? The best collection of arguments against the existence of entrapment is that by Sir Richard Jolly. He summarises the arguments of 'orthodoxy' as cogently as is presently possible. Here is another sometimes overlapping list.
Argument (1) They focus on global population and demographic success, and fail to confront demographic failure. For example, a medium term projection of 9.4 billions for the world population in 2100 {158} does not seem very threatening - especially if nothing is said about how those billions are to be fed, or the conditions under which so many of them are going to live. The (US dominated) UN Population Division would have us believe that, because countries in the intermediate levels of fertility are showing greater than expected levels of fertility decline, with major implications for world population size, population will therefore be no problem in high fertility areas also - including middle Africa!!
To further allay population fears, the UN Population Division is revising downwards population projections for the developing world. Our concern is again with Africa, where fertility has not even started to fall in one country in three.
Argument (2) They fail to consider the combined effects of population increase, and a circumscribed ecosystem, and carrying capacity limitations, migration restrictions, and inadequate economic links with the rest of the world - because this is what demographic entrapment is! If any one of these is neglected, it can be assumed to be the solution to the problem of supporting that population. The variables that are commonly neglected are usually either carrying capacity, or economic development. For example, it is often assumed that sufficient economic development will take place, when there is no reasonable hope of this happening in time - before a community exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecosystem. See the 'Iron Age Taboo'. (2.8)
Argument (3) They assume that technological development, such as the development of new plant varieties, will solve any carrying capacity problems, that might arise - the highly questionable 'science will fix it' argument. Increasing carrying capacity is particularly difficult when soil fertility is falling so widely in Africa, and there is so much soil erosion. {146}
Argument (4) They argue that reducing child mortality, or increasing female education, will bring down fertility, so there is a need to worry. So they would - if there was time, or enough unused land to support the expected population increase meanwhile. It is now too late for these fertility slowing factors to be effective by themselves in severely trapped communities, such as Malawi. Much more radical measures are necessary to reduce fertility.
Argument (5) They argue that, because grain yields in Malawi, for example, have not yet reached those in the United States, such huge increases in yields should now be possible, that entrapment will be no problem. They forget that crop yields are constrained by local soil quality and climate, and that what is possible under some circumstances, is quite impossible in others.
Argument (6) They argue that 'carrying capacity has no relevance for man' and point to the high population densities of Hongkong, Singapore or the Netherlands. This assumes that economic development is going to take place fast enough to accommodate high levels of fertility, and to allow disentrapment to take place when there is no reasonable hope of this happening - fast enough. Again, see - 'The Iron Age Taboo'. (2.8)
Argument (7) They fail to choose a community living in a circumscribed area, or they argue that its boundaries are too vague to be meaningful. Although it is theoretically possible to choose almost any circumscribed area, the most convenient one is usually a country, since data are usually best at country level. Although boundaries, particularly in Africa, are sometimes said to be so porous as to make the consideration of any circumscribed area meaningless, there are in reality real constraints on migrating out of a trapped area. Although the boundaries of a trapped community are conveniently thought of as being sharp, they are best seen as 'gradients', entrapment conditions being worse on one side of the gradient, than on the other. The result is that entrapment is geographically complex, and the choice of a circumscribed area is somewhat arbitrary. For example, should one consider the entrapment of Rwanda alone, {73} or of Rwanda and Burundi together, or the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, or 'Middle Africa', or perhaps Africa as a whole, or even the entire world? Ideally, entrapment should be examined at all the relevant levels. The relative simplicity of Malawi makes it an ideal example to start with - see Section 2.6.
Argument (8) They argue that Africa is a very large place, and that if the population were more evenly spread out, there would surely be room for everyone. They forget that there are considerable constraints on migration within Africa. They also forget that Africa's food balance is already negative. They forget that Northern Zambia, which might seem to be very sparsely inhabited has already surpassed the sustainable carrying capacity of its slash-and-burn agriculture. {9} They forget that in rain-forrest most of the nutrients are in the biomass, and that once planted with crops the land soon reverts to laterite ('sandy soil').
Argument (9) They argue that entrapment is merely another name for poverty. Poverty and entrapment are not synonymous, although they share several common features. To be poor is not necessarily to be trapped. To live in a trapped community is not necessarily to be trapped oneself, since if one is from the elite, one can buy what food there is, or emigrate. To be poor, and for one's community to be trapped (with gardens too small to feed one's family, no imported food, and nowhere to go) makes one's poverty much worse. Entrapment is thus an addition to the complex of factors that constitute poverty, and a powerful factor in increasing it, particularly when it is already near its worst
For a community to be poor does not imply that the unrelieved outcome of such poverty is stunting, starvation and violence, whereas for a community to be trapped it does. The definition of entrapment given here uses the food component of poverty - stunting and starvation.
Argument (10) They argue that entrapment cannot exist because it is racist - Demon 23. Besides being a non sequitur, this argument is open to the reply that not to diagnose entrapment is even more racist, because it allows trapped 'races' to proceed to starvation and violence with their entrapment undiagnosed, and thus deprived of the help that might relieve it - especially adequate family planning services.
Argument (11) They argue that carrying capacity calculations apply to man only, and make no allowance for other species. Although this is an important argument, it does not invalidate the concept of human entrapment. Although mindful of the needs of other species, only carrying capacity for man is considered here, the only other species mentioned being man's food crops and those he uses as fuel.
Argument (12) They argue that entrapment is merely a matter of multiple interlocking downward spirals of increasing population causing increasing poverty, causing more population increase, and ever smaller land-holdings, etc. Downward spirals there certainly are. Entrapment is merely these downward spirals in a tightly constrained community that is exceeding the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, and is without adequate economic or migratory links with the rest of the world. It is these downward spirals in a tightly constrained space that end in the starvation and violence of entrapment.
Argument (13) They argue that, because carrying capacity has to be welfare referenced, entrapment is meaningless. This is not a problem because all that is necessary is to choose an appropriate level of welfare, and to calculate entrapment in terms of it. For example, Malawi is largely a subsistence economy, so bare subsistence is chosen. Since about 90% of the food energy of Malawians is provided by maize, calculations can be in terms of maize requirements alone. (2.1)
Argument (14) They argue about the problems of the word 'entrapment' itself, as if removing the word would remove the phenomenon - 'casuistical linguistic expungement'. That they cannot find 'demographic entrapment' in most dictionaries is hardly surprising, since it is taboo. The term 'demographic trap', is however in the Dictionary of Epidemiology. {109} They argue that demographic entrapment would require a personal 'entrapper', and deny that the process of population growth exceeding carrying capacity can itself produce entrapment. They also point out that entrapment has unhappy connotations, and would prefer a term which didn't have them!! Unfortunately, any word to describe such an unhappy phenomenon would not be a happy one.
I had been working for a year on the problem of communities exceeding the carrying capacities of their ecosystems, without knowing that the technical term for this is 'demographic entrapment'. It is said to have been first used by Harvey Leibenstein in the 1950s {5} There is no official definition of demographic entrapment. However, Jack Caldwell, appeared to know exactly what I meant. Also, it is often understood by laymen. The definition I use is given above.
Demographic entrapment is an extreme form of what Homer-Dixon calls 'environmental scarcity'. {140} Since this term is much more vague, and much less threatening, it is not taboo. All that he says about the relation of environmental scarcity to violence, applies to entrapment.
Argument (15) They argue that entrapment is merely 'Malthus in modern dress'. {132} They are largely correct, but if so why don't they lift the taboo and reinstate him? The diagnosis of entrapment is an attempt to diagnose 'the pre-Malthusian condition' - before starvation and violence supervene - and hopefully to prevent them. Demography has been increasingly anti-Malthusian, ever since the 1930s when several senior demographers are said to have lost their professional reputations by espousing Malthus. It is high time that he was reinstated in Africa - and the most vigorous attempts made to forestall him there.
MALTHUS. The most recent analysis up the time of going to press is the book: Population matters by Nancy Birdsall and colleagues. {155} This describes how demographic opinion was broadly Malthusian until the 1980s, when it came sharply anti-Malthusian. However, studies in the 1990s showed that rapid population growth hinders economic development. It does therefore represent a minimal change in a Malthusian direction within the 'envelope' of the population policy lockstep. It has three references to the 'poverty trap', and none to demographic entrapment, disentrapment, carrying capacity or 1-child families. Its recommendations for policies and programmes remain thoroughly within the confines of 'the lockstep'. Although Jeffrey Sachs {156} in reviewing it notes that "...only a shrinking subset of poor countries seems to be stuck in the demography - poverty trap...", this statement is not to be found in the text, nor is the meaning behind it. It has to be concluded therefore that, although there is increasing consensus that a rapid demographic growth hinders economic development, 'the population policy lockstep' remains as tight as ever with Demon 16 (political correctness) still in full control - ably assisted by the other Demons.
Argument (16) They argue that "Entrapment is not demographer's work". This was reported to have been the response of the very eminent demographer, John Bongaarts, Vice President of the Policy Research Division of the Population Council (firmly lockstepped). It demonstrates the extreme narrowness of demography, as was pointed out to me by the nutritionist Phillip Payne, then of the London School of Hygiene, when I first started studying entrapment.
Argument (17) They argue that, because population densities in say Malawi or Rwanda, haven't yet reached those of Singapore all the Netherlands, population density is of no significance. They entirely forget that entrapment arises when carrying capacity is exceeded, and there is no opportunity for migration, and when the economy provides too few exports to exchange for food and other essentials. This is Sir Richard Jolly's high-density argument see and see
29.9 The renaissance of British demography
Some splendid 'benigh uproar' follows - unfortunately it is necessary!
The London School of Hygiene contains Britain's premier (best known) department of demography. I have long had vigorous arguments ('benign uproar') with my friends there - John Blacker and Basia Zaba. John Blacker was the first demographer I consulted, and also the last, and has been very helpful in correcting some technical errors in Chapter Two. The two of them represent the epicentre of demographic reaction in the London School of Hygiene - Basia has the brains, and John sends the e-mails!
I recently met his opposite number in the London School of Economics, Professor Tim Dyson, with whom I have several times discussed entrapment in the past. Tim looked through me as if I did not exist, and only in the last moments of the conference did he even 'pass the time of day' (say anything) - such is the strength of the Hardinian taboo, and the depth of the denial. History is repeating itself. The London School of Economics is now doing to entrapment what Lionel Robbins and Hugh Dalton did to John Maynard Keynes' economic theories in the 1930s.
John Blacker. "But I feel some duty to say that your depiction of the world's demographers corrupted by US policy and marching in "lockstep" is unutterable rubbish, laced with a strong tot of paranoia. Neither I nor any of the demographers I know have been so "corrupted". Indeed I feel that there is a strong element of paranoia running through your whole obsession with "entrapment" and "Hardinian taboo".
"It is true that since the great majority of the population of the Third World is now well set on the fertility transition, population is no longer regarded as a major issue and has been pushed into a back seat. Many of us regard this as regrettable for obvious reasons..." (continued in the next section).
Knowledge Engineer "I do not heap abuse on individuals. I argue that, such is that power of the Demons, there are no corrupt individuals, there are only corrupt disciplines and institutions (29.5). There are however some glorious exceptions, who are prepared to confront the Demons. This is why I have such IMMENSE respect for the intellectual integrity of John Cleland, Professor of Demography in the London School of Hygiene, who has recently had the humility, courage, and integrity, to agree sotto voce (quietly) that his discipline is corrupt - and has thus laid the foundations for a renaissance (rebirth) in British demography. We also agreed sotto voce, that as soon as this book is published, and the benign uproar leading to disentrapment is under way, I should retire from demography, and be no more seen! This I am delighted to do - but only, Gentle Reader, if you will take over where I leave off".The 'population policy lockstep' is not my term. I heard it from the US demographer Jason Finkle. It is a brilliant description of present population policies, which takes no account of entrapment, despite the fact that much of a continent is trapped (Figure 'X' ).
'Corruption' in this sense is not exploring something which has huge implications for a discipline, because it has unpleasant political and ethical implications. If demography wants to be seen to be uncorrupted, why does not it face Figure 'X'?
I only concern myself with entrapment because nobody else does - despite the fact that it is only too real. If I am to get anywhere at all, it has to be something of an obsession.
My concern is with those communities which are not well set on the fertility transition, and particularly with those which have not yet begun it (a third of the countries in the African region), and which are proceeding to starvation and violence, while everyone else looks the other way.
There is now urgent need to plan for the renaissance of demography. What impresses me is the opportunity that breaking up the lockstep now provides non-US, and particularly British demography. This an immense OPPORTUNITY which must not be missed, both technically, and above all for the good of the starving and the sick, and those injured by violence. The alternative is for British demography to sit on its hands, wait for the worst, and look the other way - while the United States 'calls the shots' (decides what is done, or rather what is not done). This is the opportunity for hope and joy (hardly 'fun' !) - the more desperate the task, the greater the joy of actually getting down to doing something. This is not the place to embark on (start) the enormous task of planning disentrapment programmes, although something is said about them in Sections 2.3 and 2.16.
Mama Mbewe I think you are too hard on the demographers. There was little they could do until somebody had listed all the Demons and pointed out that, as the taboo on entrapment lifts, they become Angels. Now that you have incriminated (found) Demon 21, it will be easier for them to lift the taboo. You have given them the tools with which to lift it.
I am told you sometimes quote people without asking their permission.
Knowledge Engineer When it would be in the interests of all concerned I sometimes do. If I was John Cleland, I would like my department to know what I actually thought, without the difficulty of having to argue with them. Likewise, Jack Caldwell.
Mama Mbewe Do you enjoy 'stirring it up' (promoting argument)?Knowledge Engineer No, but I am impressed by the number of thoughtful people who think that it is most urgently necessary.
... hope and joy...
the more desperate the task, the greater the joy.....
29.10 'Moliere's madness' and Demon 14
The foreword refers to this, so quicky glance at it
John Blacker of the London School of Hygiene"...But I have sometimes wondered whether you, with your extremist stance and the way you heap abuse on those who take a more balanced view, haven't done more harm than good. But most of those with whom I have discussed it don't think so: they think you are just regarded as a nutcase (MAD)..."
Knowledge Engineer As the Foreword pointed out, Moliere wrote "C'est une folie a nulle autre seconde, de vouloir se meler a corriger le monde" - there is no greater madness than bothering yourself with trying to 'save the world'. But, 'Gentle reader' - you and I are CERTAINLY going to do it! ...
What kind of madness does John mean?: (1)"Moliere's kind of madness?" - the world is as it is (entrapment exists), but there is nothing we can do to save it, so "Why try?" To try to save it is mad. On this reckoning almost everyone is solidly sane. Or, does he mean: (2) "Entrapment does not exist. To insist that it does is therefore mad".
I think he means madness (2). I will not argue this further except to say that this book, and particularly Figure 'X', provides abundant evidence that entrapment does exist. To argue in the face of such evidence that your opponent is mad is merely an unworthy 'copout' (escape). As further evidence for my sanity by this criteria, I have some very respected supporters, particularly the Assessor, who has no doubt about the reality of entrapment, although we do think differently about Genu robustum (29.1) and whether demography can properly be called 'corrupt', rather than merely 'misrepresented'.
Madness (1) - Moliere's - is much more interesting, and something we have not yet discussed. It is sometimes said that "Madness is the only true sanity". This slick little aphorism applies rather well to Moliere's madness, and I would support it strongly. I am reminded of Tom Stoppard's remark: "Stark raving sane". I do hope that I am successful in infecting you with Moliere's madness?
Have you caught Moliere's madness?
Whether one does "se meler a corriger le monde" - bother oneself with correcting the world - is an ethical/moral/political/spiritual stance deep in the personality. Whether one does or doesn't is the business of Demons 14 and 19. Does one swim with the stream, remain politically correct, and opt for the comfortable life, or does one struggle to the last breath in one's body to do something about the world as a whole, and Figure 'X' in particular, and all it represents in terms of poverty, starvation and violence? Considering that Uganda has a total fertility of 6.9 and the area bordering on is certainly trapped, not at least to point out that such high fertility is very dangerous indeed is, I argue, the most culpable negligence on the part of the demographers. The only person, it seems who has done this so far, is the Ugandan editor in Figure 2-25.
When demographers do come to terms with Figure 'X', they will say, "This is merely Malthus, we told you so!" If so why then is demography still so solidly anti-Malthusian? - see Argument Fifteen, and why don't they diagnose and treat the 'premalthusian condition' (entrapment) before starvation and violence begin? What, hopefully will happen to demography, is that it will undergo a sudden 'flip' (change), and become very Malthusian indeed. This would be a true Kuhnian paradigm shift. {177}
Madness (3) is clinical madness. We had three mental diseases in our family. However, I had a lucky throw of the family's genetic dice, I have just the right dose of my mother's energy, she poor soul was a manic depressive, and just enough of my father's Asperger's syndrome to stick at something intensively, so as to have become what a friend called 'an obsessive, compulsive neurotic writer of books'. If I have to stop work before 10 pm on a Sunday night 11 years after retirement, I feel I am slipping! However, it is up to me to make up for those of us in the family who have been less fortunate in their throw of the genetic dice. The BMJ {36} accuses me of being a maverick, others an eccentric. I prefer the French term 'un original'.
Is this book 'brilliant or barmy' (mad)? You, Gentle Reader, are going to have to decide! 'Brilliance' and madness often go together. 'Brilliance' is not a good term, so I am not going to use it again. Had I recognised Demon 21 in 1989, when Jack Bryant told me that, what I had already been studying for a year, without knowing the name for it, was called 'demographic entrapment', I might indeed be called 'brilliant'. With hindsight, it was plainly obvious then. However, it took seven more years for the 'penny to drop' (come to the correct conclusion). I am therefore merely a persistent plodder, who in the end had very good luck, particularly the opportunity of being 8 years in Geneva, supported by my dear wife, with nothing better to do than to poke, shake, and kick entrapment, and wait for the 'nasties' (Demons) to fall out.
Madness(4) is to forgo all ambition, other than to keep ones family fed, and to pile one oeuvre de bonheur, upon another, high up to Heaven. Oeuvres de bonheur are what the Calvinists of Geneva call 'good works', but in French 'Oeuvres...' have a 'magic' which these words lack. Curiously, they are often richly rewarded in ways you least expect. The more desperate the Oeuvre... the greater the joy. Here are some heroic examples from Malawi:
PATSON BANDA anaesthetic assistant, reported by Michael King.. "Every time I visited this District Hospital, he would give a fast, safe, and cheerful anaesthetic to the several patients I operated upon.".
"But at the last visit I hardly recognized him - his normal plump body had shrunk, there was no smile on his face. He explained he was too weak to do anaesthetics now, but he was training a Medical Assistant to take over. This robust Medical Assistant lifted patients over from trolley to table, used the laryngoscope to intubate them, and gave drugs while the Anaesthetist commented and advised, slumped on a stool leaning against the wall. Later, he also died of AIDS."
"ALBERT PHIRI, an X-ray technician in another hospital got AIDS. The administrator asked him to train up the hospital tailor to take X-rays, which he did, most ably for three years until he himself started to get AIDS, whereupon he trained up a ground labourer to take the X-rays. I treated the tailor/technician with dreadful genital sores until he too died".
I will only lay claim to one oeuvre de bonheur, which was to take over this book when Hugh Philpott got stuck, when I already had three other books to finish {165}{166}{167} - and had a cast iron reason for not doing so. Subsequently, trying to finish off all four of them simultaneously in Leeds, while doing another job, I used to try to get to the office by 6 am. Twice I got there at 'ten to three' in the morning - I had dreamt that I had heard the alarm clock! It would appear therefore to have acquired a very special 'magic' (grace) in that it subsequently linked up with disentrapment (after a few more Oeuvres...) Previously, a book on entrapment alone would almost certainly have been a dead duck (died). Now that disentrapment is linked with Primary Mother Care, it might perhaps get somewhere.
29.11 Epilogue - a spiritual pilgrimage
Lancelot, this starts with you as I gazed at the pineapples in the stained glass in the chapel of Trinity Hall in Cambridge in 1945. You had recently been chaplain to a battleship. I don't remember a word of what you said. I am told that your sermons were concerned with 'the redemption of the world'. You actually had time to coach the 7th boat, and in doing so you made an indelible impression on all of us - to this day. I came down from Cambridge with a determination not to be 'bought by the system'. As you will see I haven't been! But what will you think of Genu robustum...? (See 29.1) Is it merely 'overturning the tables of the moneylenders'? One day I will ask you. It has been a spiritual pilgrimage. What started as a misty fantasy, becomes daily more like a concrete project. When I left Cambridge I had little idea where I was going, but I did find myself with a binnacle on stormy nights, which always told me which direction to take next, and still does.
Jim Sunnucks you were in that boat when we won our oars. You have been lay reader to the church at the bottom of your garden for more than 40 years. When I explained entrapment you said instantly, "There are many Demons'. As you will see, what were once the 'foundations of the Hardinian taboo' have become its 'Demons' - a huge advance. They anchor the problem in the spiritual realm - way above mere 'epidemiological factors'. In what other realm can one deal with the enormity of the evil of the superpower squelching the population debate (Demon 21) to the extent that there no longer is one, and allowing a continent and more to proceed to starvation and slaughter with its dilemmas undiscussed, while Northern lifestyles destroy the world. We are dealing with evil of such mind-boggling magnitude, that the ordinary language of public health and the UN agencies - which does not contain the word evil (or entrapment) - cannot comprehend or manage it. The problem has to be transported into quite another dimension. We are dealing with spiritual wickedness of quite appalling magnitude, in very high places.
The Almighty. You are always there in the background, and sometimes acutely, overwhelmingly and tearfully so. I have long prayed for the trapped, and for almost nobody else. Much of this had its origins at Holy Trinity Geneva, and St Michael's Headingley.
Jack Bryant We dined on lobster thermidor, and on Rockefeller, at the Crested Crane in Kampala in 1964. We were both writing books on the health of Africa {62}{63} When we met in Karachi in 1989 you said that what I had been calling 'Eldryd's dilemma' is in fact called 'demographic entrapment'. You had been lecturing about it, but were strangely silent. You are in the 'system' of the 'superpower'. You know about the political constraints on discussing entrapment. Why don't you 'spill the beans' so that we can write a joint paper on it? As a former government official, you will surely have taken an oath of loyalty to the United States of America. But as a physician you will have taken another kind of oath - to the sick, to the starving, and to the trapped - and indeed to humankind in general. This is the oath that now needs a paper.
Knowledge Engineer Richard Horton - The Lancet is editorially corrupt. I argue that if any really major dilemma, and there can hardly be any greater dilemma than the entrapment of a continent, reaches the editor's desk, it has to be put the readers by one author or another, or by the editor itself. Not to do so is for the editor to decide the dilemma himself, by default, and in this case to allow a continent to proceed to starvation and violence... - without the readers even knowing that the dilemma exists, let alone being allowed to debate it. In doing so you deprive a continent of the assistance that might help it to disentrap itself. You refused to debate the entrapment of Rwanda, {73} or Malawi, nor would you let your readers debate Figure 'X' (29.1). Two successive ombudsmen Tom Sherwood and Richard Carter have bent themselves to your wishes. You would not allow an approach to the Editorial Board.
Richard Smith, as always "Hooray for The BMJ!"
Sir Richard Jolly I am proud when my friends become 'Sirs' and 'Dames', but do please rescue development economics, it is even more corrupted by the Hardinian and Iron Age Taboos (2.8) than is demography.
Jason Finkle, you must be about as near to being a 'dissident demographer', as the US can produce at the present time - good for you! I was without a hypothesis as to why entrapment is so taboo, until I read your paper analysing what went on at the Cairo population conference in 1994. {65} I imagined that it was mostly the problems of 1-child families (Demon 6) You wrote that "...historically, the State Department has considered population in the light of US and global security...", and also that "...once formed, the US position [at Cairo] was advanced with determination and skill through every available channel..." (Demon 21) Instantly, all sorts of previously inexplicable events fitted into place. Subsequently, you told me about the 'population policy lockstep' (29.1) and about how the United States dominates demography globally.
Charles Cargille, thank you so much for my interview with the CIA at the Semiramis hotel in Cairo in 1994 - most useful evidence, although I did not understand what it meant at the time.
The Anonymous Medical Delegate to Oxford University Press, (David Worrall?) I have excellent reason for believing that you are on the side of the angels.
John Guillebaud, you represent the orthodox face of overpopulation, whereas I am a maverick {64} deep inside Hardinian taboo in combat with the Demons. Thank you so much for checking the family planning with such expertise. Deus volens we will do a wonderful 'pincer movement' on the population problem in the coming years.
Hugh Philpott, you should have been on the cover. You started this book in the 1970s and handed it over to me in 1982. I have been a long time in finishing it!
Rolf Korte of GTZ, once upon a time this book was with you, in the Primary Surgery Series. {165}{166}{167}. Thank you so much for the welcome you gave it in earlier years.
Alex Poteliakis in 1989 you asked me to lecture on 'The health of Africa'. Having previously been concerned with surgical nitty gritty, this was the first occasion for many years that I had been compelled to think more widely. While preparing my lecture I was brought face to face with be problem of communities in Africa exceeding the carrying capacity of their ecosystems. Had you not asked me to lecture, I would never have confronted entrapment.
Mrs Macdonald thank you so much for the £50 that you gave me - the only research grant I have ever had.
Dodie, besides being my adored aunt and guardian angel since I was a very small boy, you bequeathed me another guardian angel, the beautiful gilded Italian putti, that hangs directly above this keyboard, a screw in its seventh cervical vertebra and two Palm Sunday crosses over its arm, a memento of your wonderful self. The plaster coming off the laths in the ceiling provides the clouds in this damp converted coal cellar (known in the family as 'the coal face') that serves me as an office here in inner-city Leeds - so cold (to save fossil fuel!) that I need four jerseys, a scarf, and a wooly hat!
Barbara, another guardian angel. Thank you so much - for so much.
Hugo Spiegl. What a lovely man, what a godsend of a printer !
Robin Hodgson, what should I have done without your daily cappuccinos?
John Storr, the best carpet layer there ever was. I promised you the first signed copy to you when you laid our ancient stair carpet for the 'nth' time, without 'ripping off' the customer.
The Lady in the train - you told me to stop writing books, this is my eighth. I promise I will - for a time...
My very Dear wife. "Nobody would ever have paid you to write this, it has taken you so long - 20 years. When I said: "Why is it that the only person in the world, trying to lift the Hardinian taboo, should be me, long retired and now 76?" You said "Why not?"
To the young (anyone less than 76!) Do please pick this up and run with it - you are going to be around here longer than I am! To many, many, friends in Africa. For the moment, I have done what I can, neither more nor less".
Mama Mbewe "I think we have strayed rather far from 'shoulder dystocia'. (21.6), the 'COEC' and the 'POEC'." (9.6)
Knowledge Engineer "But remember that we are also locked in mortal combat with the 25 Demons - just think of the starvation and violence that will result if we fail to tackle Figure 'X'!"
Mama Mbewe "I don't think you have finished properly. Even though I am HIV positive, I can give you a big, big hug! (4.14) But the person who really does need a big, big hug is Professor John Cleland, of the London School of Hygiene, for admitting that his discipline is corrupt."
Knowledge Engineer "Finished? I have only just begun..... 'See you in the next edition. Incidentally, I have no idea what will happen to this book. Will it be 'epochal', or will a thousand copies - the initial print run - end up in a skip?"
Mama Mbewe "I hope that we do meet in the second edition. Weren't you warned by Guiseppe Benagiano in 1994 that 'To interfere in politics at this level is exceedingly dangerous?"
Knowledge Engineer "I was indeed. One must never seek martyrdom, but since this life is finite anyway, it would be a wonderful way to go. The very last words are of course: Non Nobis Domine...{144} and ...et jube me venire ad Te..." {175}
My overall reaction to all this is one of humility and awe - and of course thanks to Mrs Macdonald!
