The Britannica Dictionary definition of a superstition is “a belief or way of behaving that is based on fear of the unknown and faith in magic or luck.” I think our faith in growth as progress toward a better world is on that level. It is pure superstition to believe that we can keep adding to our population with all the demands on our resources that it brings and believe that life will be better for all. If one further defines superstition as a steadfast belief which causes unintended or intended suffering, then the addiction to a pattern of endless growth in a limited place certainly fills the bill.
We know for certain that superstitions harm our most amazing and rare wild animals. It is estimated that 37 million seahorses end up in the black market due to the superstition in much of Asia that these remarkable and unusual fish promote virility and are a symbol of good luck. In India more that 17,000 owls are poached each year because according to Hindu mythology, the owl is connected to the Goddess Lakshmi and some who practice the occult still believe in appeasing the goddess by killing the owl. These beautiful birds are also killed due to a superstition about its ability to bring good luck and prosperity to those who possess its bones and feathers. Not so lucky for the owls themselves who need them more.
The monitor lizard experiences the same precarious fate because of superstitions attached to its ability to help a woman conceive. No proof of this exists yet those who stand to profit from nonsense need only to perpetuate the superstition to collect from those who will soon find themselves poorer and in the same predicament.
Viagra and Cialis sales reps need to find their way to the villages in India where the spiny tail lizard, called ‘Sanda’ in local language, is in high demand for its mythological ability to do what insurance pays for in this country.
The oil, which is extracted from its tail, makes money for the perpetrators and by the time the duped customers figure out the scheme it is too late for this nearly extinct lizard. Due to extensive poaching this species is on the verge of extinction. Myth and legend are the real killers of spiny tailed lizards for they do not contain magical powers to heal bone diseases and erectile dysfunction any more than throwing salt over your shoulder protects you from evil, a superstition which lives on some of the families I grew up with.
From Pangolins to Bengal Tigers, I could unfortunately go on and on about how these nearly extinct species are being killed for the superpowers they are believed to have but do not possess. https://wildhub.community/posts/how-myths-and-superstitions-are-fueling-illegal-wildlife-trade-and-driving-wildlife-to-extinction?channel_id=capacity-development
Their superpower does exist, but it is in the way they add diversity, beauty, and function to the natural world. They have proven they can survive the worst of storms but are dying because of our ways, our numbers, and our ridiculous and destructive superstitions about the way they have more value to us dead than alive.
Superstitions are so dangerous to wildlife and yet they hang on despite well-researched scientific data. Take shark-finning, please take it, please make it go away. This horrid process of killing sharks just for their fins is rooted in ancient times when dominance over sharks was a sign of prowess in China and when it was thought that they had medicinal properties and were a status symbol due to their expense. Now driven by billions on the Asian continent with a taste for it, multiple species of sharks have been reduced in number by 80% in the last 50 years. We know that sharks are critical predators to balancing ocean habitats. We also know that eating them will not bring health benefits. Yet on top of having to contend with warming oceans due to climate change, this theoretically stoppable harvest remains an unsustainable and deadly practice.
Growth of the human enterprise must be lumped together with all these wild beliefs as a superstition that is bad for us. Growth as a narrative pushes for the carving up of landscapes to make room for more housing, spurred on by increases in population, which in turn means more office space and stores will be built over aquifers that are already stressed. The worship of growth is a more prolific superstition for it is embraced by nearly all cities, counties and countries wishing to attract development dollars to spruce up their landscapes with new high-rises and shopping malls. Empty spaces cause real estate developers to salivate, without understanding their value as open land. We know that conservation has a better pay off. According to the Trust for Public Land https://www.tpl.org/how-we-work/fund/conservation-economics $4 are returned to a community for every $10 conservation dollar investment. Stopping development creates a reason for staying in a place while developing creates a reason to leave. People want to attract development but then their overcrowded clogged cities create a need to escape because humans do not thrive in crowded places. On the contrary they become frustrated and even mentally ill. The density we promote with our growth superstition leads to more noise, more smells, more disarray, more pollution and more confusion. (https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/how-the-city-affects-mental-health.html)
Ending this growth inspired train wreck is clearly what we must do but because so many benefit and because it is all we have known for decades it remains an excruciatingly difficult task. At the very least we can quit believing the snake oil salesmen who tout its benefits while ignoring the price we are all paying. By almost every measure, our superstitious attitude toward the promises of growth is a failure. It is like rubbing oil on our skin instead of sunscreen wondering why we’ve been told to make a date with the skin cancer surgeon.
Next time you drive by a new development ask yourself a few questions, where will the water come from? How will the traffic be impacted? How will crime rates be affected? How will the next virus spread through them? How many taxes will be levied to pay for the services now required? Where will the new jobs come from and who will become disenfranchised because of a new supply of workers?
Growth fails our society on all fronts. There will not be enough water, there will be more traffic and accompanying road rage, more crime will flourish, and taxes will be higher while services will not be covered by the monies raised. We know this to be true. Truth is not the problem, letting go of superstitions is.
The latest sprawl studies reveal the sobering news that nearly 18,000 square miles (11.4 million acres) have been gobbled up by development between 2002 and 2017 alone. A deeper dive into the data reveals that 2/3 of this is related to population growth. An even deeper parsing of the data reveals that most of our growth in the US is now driven by immigration.
(https://www.numbersusa.com/resource-article/vanishing-open-spaces-national-study)
Thanks to our relative prosperity and a great public relations job it is said that upwards of 160 million would like to move here from around the world for various reasons, mostly for opportunities for a better life. There is no way to keep that door open and expect that our country won’t collapse under the weight of all of those additional citizens. As Senator Gaylord Nelson said long ago, “It’s phony to say I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.” If we can demonstrate that the growth is the enemy to a decent future, we cannot continue to dismiss how we are growing. Americans need to be spending time addressing the hard choices we face reasonably and with decency and quit wasting precious time slinging arrows at the immigrants or those who hate them from a racist point of view.
Our superstitions continue to keep us away from the truth. The enlightenment is trying to knock on our door, and we keep sending it away. We do this every time we ban books, try to rewrite history with textbooks edited for both liberal and conservative audiences, and ignore the ramifications of our superstitious ways. We keep being told and sold tales with no grounding. We keep getting false choices too. We can have a less populated US and we can do so without economic blowback, disparaging rhetoric, or despicable policies.
The millions more people headed our way as we continue to promote the growth train, will only destroy our country, and the ecological ability to support us. Yet we are more afraid of triggering backlash than doing the hard work of coming up with fair and balanced policies that address population stabilization in a country already overpopulated by millions. Many have done the legwork and the required research. We don’t need any more proof that adding one million more people a year due to legal immigration and untold millions more due to illegal immigration is not sustainable, we just need to look out the window, and down our blocks. We can see that growth is choking us. But we do need to let go of growth as our number one unexamined superstition first. If we don’t it will be a lot like saying we love the oceans while dining on shark fin soup.