What Happened to Monday?
The prices of coal, food, water and housing, are all more than ever. It is a curve that is on it’s rising side, and does not anticipate any fall in the likely future. Why, with all the technology in the world, is life harder to live today? Why do we struggle to breathe the air around us, or wait for years for things that everyone has the right to possess? Blame it all on population. The world’s population is exceeding at an alarming rate, outpacing every milestone we had anticipated. “When you increase population in a finite space, you increase per capita aggression, and increase competition for resources. You see more conflict, more suffering, more pain, more death,” says Corey Bradshaw, an ecologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia. “No question, the human population is the core of every single environmental issue that we have.” (Stockton, N, The Biggest Threat to the Earth?)
What Happened to Monday, is a film which attempts to offer a solution for this problem in the future. Around the year 2043, when overpopulation has caused an overall state of emergency, the ‘Child Allocation Department enforces a one-child policy in America. If ever, a woman is chanced with twins or more, all but the eldest child is put into cryosleep (a space of suspended animation), until a solution for the population concern has been achieved.
‘Karen Settman’ dies while giving birth to identical septuplet sisters, and their grandfather, afraid of the consequences, takes them in hiding. He names them after the days of the week. He trains his granddaughters in such a way, that only one of them may leave the house at any point, as they all maintain a common identity in the outside world. To outsmart the superior security that enforces this law, they are each given same ID’s, and it becomes common practice for each of them to share their day’s events with all the sisters at night. The sisters build up an arrangement of wigs and cosmetics to cover any distinguishing highlights.
Their secret lasts for a bout 25years, after which each of them seeks to have a normal life, leading to rebellion and consequential problems. Obviously, they are eventually discovered, which leads to a witch hunt, that results in the end of this ghastly system, as well as most of the sisters.
While this system may seem unlikely to occur, the chances of it are extremely high. This is especially since the current state of population itself was reason enough for China to impose the ‘One Child Policy’ in 1979. “In 2007, 36% of China’s population was subject to a strict one-child restriction, with an additional 53% being allowed to have a second child if the first child was a girl. Provincial governments imposed fines for violations, and the local and national governments created commissions to raise awareness and carry out registration and inspection work.” One-child policy. Wikipedia.com)
In 2013, however, China abolished it’s One Child Policy (with restrictions). Such a policy affects the life and choice of an individual, without being in power of effectively controlling the population. Sure, it could be well enforced if the practice were to be imitated like it is done in ‘What Happened to Monday’, however, that would face enough regression to be opposed soon enough. However, it is to be noted that the population is highest in developing countries, and that eminently affects policies of population control.
Source: United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, medium variant (2011).
If a developing country such as China faces the obligation of One Child Policy back in 1979, it could mean that developed nations would reach a similar stage in 30-40 years from now. These developed nations, possessing an advanced system of technology and a better, stable system of governance, are better equipped to handle the situation. In fact, population control is often considered a tool for the rich, as explained by BBC, making it more likely for these nations to take up One Child Policy planning. (Population control: Is it a tool of the rich? http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15449959). Or worse, could this lead to genocidal tactics being practiced by economic super powers, on the lesser able, or better put, ‘developing countries’, if a state of war is to ever emerge?
To conclude, while China’s abolishment of this policy clarifies that such a policy cannot exist currently, situations might demand the recurrence of these measures in developed nations, as was done in the film. The issue of population, feeding the emergence of climatic and environmental degradations, would need drastic measures, that could conflict our most fundamental rights of having a family. A better solution is the need of the hour.. or perhaps, a need of the century.
References:
One-child policy. (2018, March 14). Retrieved March 15, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
Population control: Is it a tool of the rich? (2011, October 28). Retrieved March 15, 2018, from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15449959
Stockton, N. (2017, June 06). The Biggest Threat to the Earth? We Have Too Many Kids. Retrieved March 15, 2018, from https://www.wired.com/2015/04/biggest-threat-earth-many-kids/
The fact that the human population is so high, and is coupled with high population growth, does exacerbate the existing environmental problems we face. Things such as pollution, food production, and waste management become harder and harder to alleviate not just because of the volume that we are faced with but also because of the concentration. Urban centers and developed areas are more limited in their ability to combat environmental issues due to the lack of available land and the large amount of privately owned land that impedes their ability to establish facilities and areas dedicated to sorting out these issues. This is just one small piece of the ever growing puzzle we must solve, and hopefully we can before it is too late to remedy the harm we have caused.
Population control really is an issue that hards to come to terms with. It’s hard to look at wonderful people and think that the world would be better off with less of us. However, it’s a reality and there really is a need to find some form of solution. Easier said than done since life is such a precious thing