Tomorrow is World Population Day, 2015!

Long before starting World Vasectomy Day, I was researching a film about population on the planet. It was meant to be the ‘inconvenient truth about humanity’ or what I called the people paradox. After twenty years making films about child soldiers, violence against women, prison rape and extreme poverty, all while observing how our species wreaked havoc on the planet, I had lost faith in our future.

We started as a small group species a few million years ago and from the beginning began walking across the planet in groups of 75 -150. Over time the empathic behavior required for survival in such diverse and harsh conditions, brought us enormous success. Our brains grew in capacity, we learned to store calories, we started to specialize and collaborate, we settled into communities, villages and eventually cities. We were successful, but as we grew in numbers things got complicated. Today, we find that managing a small group of 7 billion people comes with many challenges.

After recording endless stories of men causing enormous pain, I was perpetually baffled by a conundrum; how is it that the same species, and even the same person, capable of such loving acts of kindness, can also be so cruel?

And then I met Dr. Doug Stein, one of the world leading vasectomists. Filming him work, I had a chance to interview men on the very day they had chosen to exit the gene pool. Vulnerable, their pants down, their private parts exposed, they shared very intimate details of their reasoning.

A few opted for a vasectomy because they wanted to save the planet, the odd individual was hoping to stamp out a genetic ‘flaw’ that had haunted their family line, but the vast majority said it was done out of love for their wives, for their children and for themselves. They just believed that they could create a higher quality life by limiting the number of children they had.

Almost every man, whatever the country and regardless of class or ethnicity, believes it is important that they not put all the burden of responsibility on their partners. Call it sacrifice or call it love, World Vasectomy Day celebrates this spirit by acknowledging the men who do the right thing and the medical providers who make it all possible.

We believe that talking about population is critical. We have this beautiful planet to share so we have to be conscious of how we treat it, but World Vasectomy Day is not about lowering population, it’s not about sterilizing men and it’s not about fixing a quota for family size. World Vasectomy Day is about increasing the quality of life, by increasing the consciousness and kindness with which new life is brought into this world and old and other life forms are cared for.

The bottom line is we don’t need to add billion more, we need to take better care of the 7 billion we already have. And guess what? If we do provide better education for all people, and especially young women, and we help generate meaningful jobs that make it possible to raise healthy families , and if we treat all of us as part of the same family, that same small group species that carries us this far, then the numbers will go down by themselves.

So on this World Population Day, let us worry less about absolute numbers and more about the quality of life we create for all humankind. Ultimately, there’s only one smart choice. We just have to have the courage to make it.

#population #environment #vasectomy #familyplanning #love