Population and the Bathroom Metaphor
You
can't hang around and listen to the arguments about
world population for long without hearing the bathroom metaphor. As far as
we know, it originated with Dr. Albert Bartlett. Here's the way he describes it,
as transcribed on Global Public Media:
I like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an
apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then they both have freedom of the
bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want, stay as long as you
want, for whatever you need. And everyone believes in freedom of the bathroom.
It should be right there in the constitution. But if you have twenty people in
the apartment and two bathrooms, then no matter how much every person believes
in freedom of the bathroom, there’s no such thing. You have to set up times
for each person, you have to bang on the door, ‘Aren't you through yet?’ and
so on.” And Asimov concluded with one of the most profound observations I've
seen in years. He said, “In the same way, democracy cannot survive
overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive overpopulation. Convenience and
decency cannot survive overpopulation. As you put more and more people into
the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t
matter if someone dies, the more people there are, the less one individual
matters."
And so, central to the things that we must do, is to recognize that
population growth is the immediate cause of all our resource and environmental
crises.
In one sense, the bathroom metaphor is clearly apt. It casts in simple and
inescapable terms the logical result of our continued decision to overpopulate
the world. So what's the complaint about it? That it is hopelessly mired in
American individualism. That by casting the choice as between "I can use the
bathroom anytime I want" and "I am inconvenienced because there are other people
I have to work around," Bartlett is perhaps unconsciously equating dignity with
not having to share.
This complaint would be fair if Bartlett had addressed the bathroom metaphor
to people in Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere (N1), or Solomon Islands or Malawi, tied for the the poorest nation in the world
(N2). There the first response to his story might be
"Cool - I get to use a bathroom instead of a hole in the ground!" He didn't though. He has addressed the
bathroom metaphor to audiences in the industrialized world in general and the
U.S. in particular, where his listeners can identify easily with the loss of
freedom that comes automatically with overcrowding.
So recognize its limits. The bathroom metaphor may not be the best way to
teach the poorest humans about overpopulation. It's pretty good for Yanks and
other rich westerners, though.
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CIA: The World Factbook.
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CIA: The World Factbook. Solomon Islands and Malawi have GDP per capita of
$600 per year, the lowest value of any of the nations listed.
