I spent 5 hours on the road today. One hour in the morning to drop the kids to school and 4 hours in the afternoon picking them up at 2 different times. This is because their exams were finishing at 12.00 noon and 1.45 pm. I am glad I have only three children. If I got my wish of 5 kids, I would be wasting away inside a car.
5 hours on the road means 5 hours less to study and 5 hours less to work. Driving in the 31°C heat is no easy task. It is not just the heat – it’s all the other maniacal drivers on the road trying to figure out who gets killed first. I think the heat makes people go mad on the road. I read today that cold is a stressor. I am sure heat is too. Fun fact: cold kills much more people than heat. So hopefully the climate crisis and global warming will balance it out. It will not do for one extremity to be more successful in destroying life. Equality.
Equality must be. I learned today that the 4 decades of China’s one-child policy messed up their gender balance. Now there are 34 million more males in China than females. That’s more than Sri Lanka’s total population! They say it is an unintended consequence. But I fail to see it that way. In India, the girl-child didn’t get much preference for as long as…I don’t know, a long time. There are hundreds of years of evidence that a male child is preferred over a female. Add into the mix, a one-child policy, and do you expect to get a balance of both? Ridiculous.
So, China is in trouble because men don’t marry. They have no brides. When men are not tamed by marriage, they tend to do unsavory things. China is seeing increasing violence and increasing laziness! Young people are refusing to work – they have given up. I don’t know how much of that is a problem of the one-child policy, but when something like ‘lying flat’ trends in a country, we can think of a few good reasons. One would be the bleak future people face without the stabilizing and protective effects of family. Every two parents have produced one child. Meaning two people leave one behind. Imagine that happening for a few decades. No siblings, no cousins. No sense of family, just one young person considering the prospect of looking after 6 elders (parents and 2 sets of grandparents). Finally, they are giving up.
Equality matters. Wisdom matters more. The Chinese are not stupid to be ignorant about the eventuality of their policies. They simply wanted a quick fix to the immediate problem (which was about feeding the many millions) and did not worry about the future rulers who will inherit a more massive problem. A major difference between the East and West – the East wants a quick fix, the West plans for the future. At some point in recent history, the wisdom of the East skipped over to the West. Eastern elites probably got educated in the West and implemented Marxist policies and destroyed their countries. Western elites made sure the Marxists stay inside the universities. Reductionist, I know. Musings are allowed.
Varuni Fernando 