MVVM: 'The Elephant in the Room' (poem)

Tong/ThL/Poem/Elephant.HTM

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Everyone is talking about it.

The room is getting crowded.
Everyone is talking about it.

Friends enough, things galore, but little space.
How did we end up in this cramped state?
The room is getting more crowded.
Everyone is talking about it.

Wells are drying up, fossil fuels depleted.
Will we be able to live as we used to,
to afford the heating in winter,
to pay for petrol and power,
to keep the machines and gadgets running?
To run those of all of us all at once?
The room is getting overcrowded.
Everyone is talking about it.

Pollution hits the waters and soils.
It has turned the fresh ozone of morning
into a mourning over climate change.
Forests, the lungs of lands, are being felled,
fields transferred from food to transport.
What are we blithely to breathe: the carbon?
What are we eager to eat: the fuel?
What are we destined to drink: the sewage?
Species are in danger of dying out,
plants and animals vanish from the Earth,
plagues and enemies take their place.
But the lavish spenders go on shopping
and driving and flying and producing
heaps of dirt and garbage in all corners.
The room is getting more overcrowded.
Everyone is talking about it.

Rats and rabbits are multiplying.
Mice and pigeons are multiplying.
Human beings too are multiplying,
adding and adding and adding
their sapient genes to the common lot.
Some of them have indeed no offspring.
Others raise only one child:
"It's a girl. Congratulations!"
Some of them raise a second child
and maintain their equilibrium:
"It's a boy. Congratulations!"
Other women have a third child
and other men have a third child.
It's a borderline case, three together:
there may be a couple with one instead.
Some human females take four children
and some human males take four children.
It's two bodies out of balance,
where no childless couple relates to them.
Other females take five children
and other males take five children.
Could all those in the room do likewise?
Where are their sibs with only one child?
Some females take six or more children
and some males take six or more children.
Could all those in the room do likewise?
Where are their sibs without progeny?
Two, ten, a hundred, a thousand,
a million, ten million, a billion.
It's a growing crowd. Ten billion soon!
There is an elephant in the room.
No-one is talking about it.

Vincent van Mechelen
63.ESE-65.MNW

An 'elephant in the room' is something important and obvious that people know well and ought to be discussed openly, but that is ignored nevertheless, because discussing or even considering it would cause too much embarrassment for themselves or discomfort for others. In this poem the 'elephant' is the unbridled growth of the number of human beings on Earth, which is one of the two main causes of the wholesale destruction of nature and the much faster depletion of its, especially fossil, resources. (This inconvenient truth is also a theme in , a short story in the shape of a fictional legend at TRINPsite.)

Almost ceaselessly nowadays we hear environmentalists, politicians, journalists and others express their concern over the ongoing deterioration and disappearance of the natural environment, while at the same time talking light-heartedly or even admiringly about men and women who have four, five, six, seven or even more biological children. The ones talking in this way are not seldom those men or women themselves.

However, people who really worry about the environment think of the world's actual or imminent human overpopulation and have a question for the person with three children: "Where is your (your sister or brother) with only one child?". They have a question for the person with four children: "Where is your one sib with no children, or where are your two sibs with only one child?". They have more serious questions for the persons with five or more children. This poem invites you to no longer deny the presence of the elephant in the room and to ask the environmentalists, the politicians, the journalists, the others and yourself.

Of course, a human being can live with nature without destroying it, but living with nature also means maintaining an equilibrium in which no species disturbs the balance of nature by growing too fast too big. This means, in turn, that human beings, too, should on average and until their death have no more than one child, or couples no more than two children, roughly speaking. (Or, that your parents should have no more than approximately four grandchildren.) This is the elephant proper, because discussing it could or would embarrass families with more than two biological children, and it could or would embarrass countries or communities that do little or nothing effective in the struggle against global human overpopulation.

Many would prefer to keep talking about cleaner cars, for instance, and about people taking the bus or train instead, without ever mentioning the incessantly growing number of human beings on this planet that will need or want some form of transportation in the near future, 'clean' or not. They would rather not talk about adequate family planning. And yet such planning encourages and depends on the same kind of interest in the future of ourselves, our families and our societies which makes people save for later and provide for their own education and for the education of their own or other people's children, so that they and these children and these children's children will not have to face ignorance and/or poverty forever.

Normally, a poem counting more than one stanza would have stanzas of equal length, that is, the same number of lines for each stanza. Or, if not the same number of lines, the lengths of the stanzas would vary in accordance with some finite scheme. The Elephant in the Room, however, is divided into six stanzas whose lengths are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 lines (each line consisting of a minimum of seven and a maximum of ten syllables.) The length of the stanzas therefore increases exponentially, ad infinitum as it were. Unfortunately, the human world population seems to be increasing on the same kind of exponential curve. Hence, the perhaps unbalanced form of this poem is made to resemble the unbalanced growth of the number of human beings on this planet. Form clearly follows content here, ugly or not.

When reading this poem aloud to an audience the first stanza should be read very, very slowly, almost word by word. Each following stanza should be read faster than the previous one. In theory, the reading of the sixth and last stanza should not take much longer than the reading of the short stanzas at the beginning.

['THE ELEPHANT' READ BY MVVM]
[MP3 FILE, 9.54 MB, 4:08, v 67.40.7]

The ongoing degradation of the natural environment and the diminution in living space worldwide is caused by two things: human overconsumption and human overpopulation. With respect to the role of ordinary human beings the former is already discussed frequently, whereas the latter is discussed little or not at all in any serious way in most countries. If you want to learn more about global human overpopulation and the need for a sustainable population equilibrium (SPE), visit The Powers of Two.

For another poem about the impact of human overpopulation on a global scale and the lack of attention it receives, especially when it concerns the individual family, see The family non-planners.

M. Vincent van Mechelen

mvvm.net/

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