Whose life is the most important?

Who should live or die?

We have grown up with the thought that we are all important, and I am still talking about my culture, I don’t know enough about other cultures to make sweeping statements. However, there are rumours of double standards, even here in our so called civilization there is a debate about whether everybody has the same rights to life or choices in their own care.

There are rumours of some elderly and/or disabled, not being given the same treatment in hospital as the young and abled. Arguments on the very premature and even the right of having children. Choices being made, without our consent, on the rights which  individuals / society have over our lives. I believe the consensus would be, that we are all entitled to live. This idea of the equality of all persons is relatively new in our history and has been hard fought for. It flourishes now in this land in a climate of certainty and social cohesion.

But in a climate of uncertainty and anarchy, what then? In the Sefuty Chronicles what would those settlements decide when it comes to making choices of food distribution. Back to the basics of survival.

If food is limited, should people who cannot, or will not, pull their weight in the manner of work, be looked after by others. The old, infirm,or very young, for instance?

Are all children wanted, should population controls be put in place, a limitation too how many or when they are allowed to be born?

If food is limited who should receive rations? Are women as bearers of children and so the future, worth more than men with their strength to provide protection and work the land?

Just how many children are needed to keep a population stable, when each year' rates harvest , illness and accident rate is uncertain?

How many of the old with the knowledge and skills are needed to pass on valuable information?

There comes a point in this scenario I set up in The Sefuty Chronicles, when some kind of population control is needed. I had many isolated settlements, no interaction with others, closed societies abandoned by any kind of central government. But all with a history and culture of modernity behind them. How in the extremities of survival would they choose?

How would they divide, first the food still in homes and shops, second what they can provide for themselves?

 To the men because they need the muscle power, 

to the women because they need to be healthy to nurse the children, 

 OR

to the children for their successful growth?

I remember, decades ago in the 60s, when TV showed pictures of a famine for the first time, hundreds of bone thin refugees, having made their way to a camp for help. Pictures of starving babies being lovingly cared for. An angry refugee male arguing that it was madness to feed the babies, the young adults needed the food, what use to a dying society to have well fed babies? What use was a baby, what could they do? Nothing, until years had passed. It was shocking to hear yet even then in my youth I could understand his logic and anger I cared for children, it was my chosen career for decades and what he said was against every fibre of my being, but I could understand.

Some societies in a famine will abandon the child (anathema to us) but, it does actually make sense, if you keep adult men and women alive more babies can be conceived when the famine has passed. If you keep children alive and let the adults die the baby on its own won’t survive. This chicken and the egg again. Other societies have many children, as an insurance against old age and infirmity, someone always there to help you stay alive.

So decisions about food divisions and population control would be be needed in my dystopian world. It is not sensible to trust to luck against natural disasters. 

Children apart, what happens to the sick, injured and old. What worth do they have? If the sick cannot work or contribute to survival are they abandoned/killed - if an injury is not so great, does everyone else carry them until they are back working alongside again? The old, are they useless mouths,a repository of knowledge and advice or cherished parents? Do our modern ethics, so hard won over the centuries, or our ancient religious beliefs, get used as our guides, or would they be abandoned to the even older instincts for self survival.

I thought long and hard about these choices, came up with a few variations for different communities. Impossible to know how any of us would react to supreme extended disaster We all hope we would maintain our moral standards.

Would we?

Could we?

How would you decide?

Who is to live and who to die?

So okay – in my Sefuty Chronicles’ world I trashed the planet and caused devastating wars over diminishing resources!  I divided the survivors into three.

 1)      Those who made it into purpose built cities before the doors shut (for ever). 
2)    Those who hid behind rings of land mines on the promise that they would be rescued soon! (50 years) 
3)     Those who managed neither and were left to survive or not by their own ways.

I have not written about the whole world, other countries are mentioned but these Tales are a localized affair set in a locale I know reasonably well, and so some solutions may not ring likely to other nations.  Bear with me, the problems are still the same.

Whether or not the climate change disaster was caused by mankind or by natural changes matters not when the world is home to billions of our own kind.  We don’t really care if the ancient life forms millions of years ago went through the same and became extinct.  Now it us and it is  personal.  9 billion die before my Tales begin as one old man put it

‘By the time it was finished, the victors of the world stood on a mound of billions. We committed the greatest genocide of all time.  To save ourselves we killed them all.’

He was by anyone’s standards a good man before the Wars, and he struggled to do good after the Wars.  But things had changed. 

The next problem I had with this new world I was inventing was by how much would our nature change when the chips were truly down. How much does our civilized code depend on the basic security of food, health and shelter. Does the fact that the fall from our pampered world to bare basics would be huge make any difference to that code.

Each of my groups of survivors would need to tackle their changed lifestyles in different ways and this took much pondered time.  Studying historical events, anthropological theories, listening to people and tossing the mix together.  Testing my ideas.  I enjoyed it and what does that say I wonder?!

Population Control

Food Security

Law and Order

All these are the matter for heated debate and none more so than population control.  You scoff, why is it needed if the worlds population has crashed to Neolithic numbers? Well in the first two books of the Chronicles the City folk have no land to grow food, the mined areas have no room for expansion. Population control and food security walked hand in hand.

Population control is an emotive subject, complete with a dark history of coercion and eugenics, which has rendered the management of it almost a taboo subject.  There have been world summits over the years.  Many strands mooted as to how best manage the worlds rapidly climbing population little has happened, because we are scared of the subject. (a subject for another day) 

In my diminished world some of the problems remain. 

*  If there is not enough food or water who decides on who has the right to it?

*  If survival depends on the co-operation of the many what place is there for the ones who cannot/will not contribute?

*  If survival depends on the next generation who is to be allowed the right to produce that generation?

*  If medical expertise has vanished who is to be saved and who not?

*  Do people make their own rules or try and follow the old rules?    

You can see some potential trouble brewing in these questions. I wandered into murky depths and had to tease out some moral and ethical as well as practical solutions.