Population control will not work because population is a social problem and will not be solved until the society has changed. High birth rates, as we have seen in the West, can be lowered only when basic physical needs are met and people have hope for their future.
Even humanitarian aid, unconnected with gross political manuevering, is ultimately a false answer. Though some good is done, some lives saved and changed for the better, humanitarian aid has powerful negative effects. Essentially, it places the burden of change on the individual, neglecting the social roots of his condition. The paternalism inherent in aid ("these poor folks are inept and need help") is another negative factor.
To feed people, to bring forth justice to the nations, to raise the oppressed, requires political change above all. This is the metanoia that must be undergone. The social and political structures that enslave and starve people must be repudiated. I believe this repudiation must be non-violent; but America's inaction, her greed and unwillingness to do justice to the starving will, I fear, made violent and world-wide revolution inevitable. Whether the world that results will be inhabitable, or whether the systems that will be created will be just and free ones, I do not know.
First, we must end all military and economic aid to military dictatorships. Will it never begin to shock us that government "of the people, for the people, by the people" is so seldom supported in our foreign policy, that our foreign aid is based on the principle "with interest from all, with charity to none"? The aid we now send simply pushes the day when people will be fed further into the future.
Secondly, the United States must undergo massive de-development. We must consume less, pollute less, produce less of certain luxury goods, discover how to recycle what resources we have presently in use. In short, we must voluntarily relinquish the "privilege" we have had to over-consume and to strip our environment.
Third, we meet end the domination that our multi-national corporations now hold over the economics of the poorer nations. At the least, countries could grow grain, not cocoa, coffee, and bananas. Also, we can recognize that the industrial-agricultural practices of the West will, in the long run, inhibit the effective production of food. Not through energy-wasteful technology, not by making the Third World over in our own image, but by the redistribution of land and the intensive, organic cultivation of small farms will the problem of starvation be solved.
Fourth, the United States must reexamine the re-organize its economic system, producing on the same model that will be effective in the Third World. We must turn to minimum production, consumption, and waste, with an emphasis on simplicity and human development rather than material goods. Using technology rather than abusing it, consuming what we need, we can move towards a world with enough for all. In a nation that inundates each citizen with an average of 500 commercial messages a day, the "happiness is having" syndrome will be hard to eradicate, but it must be done.
Each one of us can work to see these four broad goals become realities. We can educate ourselves on what's been going on, particularly on the issue of hunger, where myths have been so pervasive, so widely accepted, and so misleading. We can change our own life styles, simplifying where we can, consuming less, using things longer, eating less meat. And where we see the possibility for work, for action, we can work, we can act.
Harvard can take the lead in beginning to make the changes that are necessary. Its economists can publicly make it their goal to formulate plans for changing our system to one that will better meet the crises we face. Its political scientists can press for action in Congress. Its scientists can do the basic research on more efficient ways of producing and storing food. Its writers can use their gift to give voices to those who have no voices. As an institution, Harvard can make it an official policy to cut down its consumption of food, especially meat, and to consume less in other ways that it sees fit.
As citizens of the richest and most powerful country on the face of the earth, we have a special obligation. Not only must we act to help those in need, but also we must act to ensure that the nation we are citizens of does not continue to use its power, in our name, for oppression and exploitation. Concern is worthless if it does not issue in action. Concern is another name for indifference when one does not do what he can