I love reading novels and have just been caught up with a book called The Inferno by Dan Brown, a thriller where the famous Robert Langdon, a professor of Symbology, is drawn into a grievous world focused on the world’s most mysterious literary masterpieces Dante’s Inferno. From Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide who to trust before the world is irrevocably altered by Bertrand Zobrist, a Transhumanist genius scientist and madman obsessed with Dante’s Inferno. Zobrist is intent on solving the world’s overpopulation problem by releasing a virus.
The idea of creating a virus to kill people in order to lessen the downside effects of population was quite a shocking idea for me especially after receiving the Track A training where William Mcgurn’s article Population and The Wealth of Nations talked about population as a resource that ensures the development of a country. Contrary to the fact that overpopulation will increase of crime rate because people will start killing or stealing to feed themselves, Mcgurn said that population, if well-managed, would be our valuable most natural resource. These ideas spring from our belief in the intrinsic dignity of every human being in which human dignity is the core value for any individual and should be used as a pivot from which initiate all laws, rights and agreements for the advancement of our community.
As such, relying on people to enhance the wealth of nations depends on the implementation of programs that increase the proficiency and competence of every individual and, as a result, of the community as a whole. We further acknowledge that it’s better to teach a person how to fish rather than giving him fish, by which we mean building them to become leaders and pioneers who can take the community into higher levels of development. Thus, every person can become resourceful and have a beneficial impact on the community. The idea that some people are thought of as liabilities instead of assets would cease to be.
Dan Brown’s Inferno may be a mere fictional novel but the message behind it raises the importance of having compassion. We are all affected by what happens to each other as stated by the Dalai Lama in the article Our Global Family. Thus, sacrificing people to reduce world population would be harmful to all humanity. I recall a story my Aunt told me about a couple with 12 children. The wife was pregnant with their 13th child and the couple was considering aborting the child. Instead, they decided to leave things to the will of God. Their 13th child became one of the most well-known philosophers of all time Rabindranath Tagore. If the couple had decided to abort their child, the world would have missed such a great person.
By our regional intern, Dima al banna, World Youth Alliance, Middle East.
