© 2017 André Chappuis
© 2017 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| UBIS The Framework of Study — Pedagogy | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 78 — June 2017 | The Urantia Book: Corrections to the 1955 Text |
According to current statistics, in 70 years, a third of humanity could live in Africa. Statistics are necessary for politicians so that the decisions they make today have the best chance of resulting in correct facts in the future. But, statistics predicting the future we will have in just 15 or 20 years will be influenced by so many factors that what happens then will probably be very different from what we imagine today. So, to say that in 70 years a third of humanity will be African is perhaps a great exaggeration.
Our planet has been overpopulated for several decades, and decision-makers will soon be forced to make decisions to limit the population.
The associations that work in Africa and Asia with disadvantaged populations have told us repeatedly for more than 10 years that if all the humans on Earth lived like Europeans and North Americans, it would take 5 to 6 planets to satisfy everyone. This means that if the people of the North lived more simply, we could possibly save one or two planets, but also that for the people of the South to be able to live with dignity, we would still need perhaps 4 planets.
We can only see that our Earth is overpopulated. How did we get there?
If, until now, no one (apart from China, which has not gone about it properly) wants to set up a system of population limitation, this is largely due to the fact that our civilization operates according to the myth of growth according to which industry, commerce, banks, etc. could only survive if they are in perpetual growth. The same goes for pensions; contributors are told that in order for them to be able to live normally when they are old, the number of people contributing must be constantly increasing. No influential person, for example, suggests levying a tax on financial speculation so that contributors do not have to pay more and so that pensions can be regularly adapted to the cost of living.
Overpopulation also has its origins in verse 28 of the first chapter of Genesis which says:
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.”
We can admit that this sentence had its reason to exist until the end of the 19th century, but, after that, it would have been necessary to act so that the population stopped increasing. From its creation, the UN should have taken measures to stabilize the population of the planet. Why was this not done? Probably because, at the Yalta conference, at the beginning of February 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had decided that the organization which was to replace the League of Nations a few months later, should above all be at the service of the victors of the Second World War, and these heads of state had no interest in the population being stabilized.
In the 6th century BCE, the Hebrew priests who wrote Genesis in Babylon (see UB 78:7.3), should have completed this verse 28 of the first chapter with:
But when you have filled the earth, stop growing and multiplying and have a stable population.
The Urantia Book tells us that on a normal world, the population is stabilized during the post-Adamic eras. See below.
“On a normal world, the biological fitness of the race has long since been brought to a high level during the post-Adamic epochs; and now the physical evolution of men continues from age to age during the anchoring eras. The range of vision and hearing is expanding. The population is now stationary. Reproduction is regulated according to planetary necessities and innate hereditary gifts. During this age, the inhabitants of the planet are divided into five to ten groups, and the lower groups are allowed to procreate only half as many children as the higher groups.” UB 55:6.3
Stabilizing the population at the right time is therefore something normal. This also happens with other living beings. In a given territory, we only find a certain number of animals of each kind, which corresponds to the quantity of these animals that this territory can feed and house. In places where man does not intervene, the quantity of plants of each species stabilizes after a certain time.
To accommodate the additional population that comes to Earth each year, new apartments must be built. In order not to encroach too much on agricultural areas, the authorities recommend densifying building zones. This densification consists of limiting the number of villas and building rental buildings higher and higher, therefore with more and more housing units per building.
But, densification is contrary to what The Urantia Book teaches us. Booklet 72, which describes the life of the most evolved nation on another planet of Satania, was transmitted to us to serve as a model (UB 72:12.3). In the first paragraph of chapter 3, we are told that in this nation, collective housing has been banned. The smallest family home must have half a hectare of land. This means that each family produces a large part of its food itself, even in the city, since with each house, there is enough land for that. With densification, we are far from being able to achieve this.
In 1935, this nation did not yet need to stabilize its population, since we are told that families had an average of 5 children, whereas for a stabilized population, families have between one and three children.
In the second paragraph of chapter two, we are told that no city can have more than one million inhabitants. For an average of 7 people per family, the largest cities would have about 147,850 homes. Taking into account homes and their land, roads, factories, administrative and commercial buildings, etc., large cities could have an area of 150,000 hectares or , or a square with a side of , or a circle with a diameter of . This corresponds to the area of Mexico City, but this city has 8.875 million inhabitants.
In view of the above, we can only note that it is becoming urgent that the UN or another organization establishes for all countries first a stabilization of the population, then a reduction in it, until the number of humans corresponds to what the Earth can feed and house without being overexploited.
March 27, 2017
André Chappuis
| UBIS The Framework of Study — Pedagogy | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 78 — June 2017 | The Urantia Book: Corrections to the 1955 Text |