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> The one aspect of the film that doesn’t seem to be coming true is its central premise. The idea is that no human beings have been born in the last 18 years, s

> The one aspect of the film that doesn’t seem to be coming true is its central premise. The idea is that no human beings have been born in the last 18 years, so when Theo meets Kee, an African woman who is miraculously pregnant, he has to protect her from the various groups who want to exploit her condition. Obviously, we know that this infertility pandemic hasn’t happened: in Children of Men, the youngest person on the planet was born in 2009. But even as a concept, this particular one doesn’t resonate with our current anxieties, because overpopulation is more worrying than population decline. It's not really about population -- it's about having no future, which is something a lot of people constantly worry about.

duaneb 10y ago
> It's not really about population -- it's about having no future, which is something a lot of people constantly worry about. One thing the movie (unintentionally) got right was how absurd this is. It really ruined the movie to me, TBH, because it was laughably implausible. Reproduction is what life does best. I'll obviously have to watch again for the world building....
- knz 10y ago
  And yet fertility rates are declining in many nations. Science fiction often takes current events to their extreme outcome for the sake of social commentary (Black Mirror being the latest example).
  - stephengillie 10y ago
    Human fertility itself isn't in decline. Fertility and human births are conflated in the US government definition, implying that we are somehow losing the physical ability to reproduce. What's actually happening is that our society is getting so complex that our agency of reproduction is impaired. It's entirely social; it's all in our heads.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      Jury is still out, but there's accumulating evidence that male fertility isn't doing well across the developing world: http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a46/ http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a46/ http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323394504578607641775723354 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873233945045786076... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-158463/Why-male-fertility-decline.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-158463/Why-male-fe... http://jezebel.com/finally-an-answer-to-declining-male-fertility-1681694488 http://jezebel.com/finally-an-answer-to-declining-male-ferti...
      - stephengillie 10y ago
        Your first article debates the efficacy of current attempts to investigate infertility: Recent years have seen many similar reports of falling human sperm counts, but there has been much debate over whether the problem is real. “The principal trouble has been selection bias,” says Joëlle Le Moal, an environmental health epidemiologist at the Institut de Veille Sanitaire in Saint Maurice, France, and joint first author of the new article with colleague Matthieu Rolland. She explains that few studies have involved sperm samples collected from randomly selected members of the general population; for the few that did, only a small percentage of men agreed to be included, and the studies were run in restricted areas. So most studies have had to rely on sperm donors or couples coming to fertility clinics, which do not represent the general population. That article focuses on France, which is rarely counted among developing worlds. The second article is paywalled. The third two could easily be considered Submarine Articles[0] for male supplements and stimulants. [0] http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
    - onion2k 10y ago
      If the premise of the film actually happened and the birth rate were to reach zero, I doubt the fact it was psychological rather than physical would be much comfort. Sometimes the technical reason is less important than the outcome.
- ozmbie 10y ago
  It's really just a plot device. Suspend your belief for that one part of the movie, and enjoy the rest of the social and political commentary.
SmokyBourbon 10y ago
The fact is overpopulation isn't an issue, it's a myth. World population is decellerating at a rapid pace and will begin decreasing within decades. It's painfully obvious to anybody who looks at the numbers. But science fiction has convinced everyone otherwise. Just look at all the countries with programs trying to entice their citizens to start families and make babies. Governments know its going to be a catastrophe. Our governments spend money at a rate that only a larger population in the future can afford to pay for. If families aren't producing above the replacement rate, we're doomed.
- lqdc13 10y ago
  It's not painfully obvious to UN or anyone else noteworthy. Was it also painfully obvious that USSR was going to break up and Russia would have stalled with population growth? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Population_of_former_USSR.PNG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Populati... None of the current trends made sense 30 yrs ago. And in 30 yrs there could be major geopolitical changes that would make current projections useless.
  - AnAfrican 10y ago
    But the worry about overpopulation has been damn near constant. Rebuked again and again and again each time we reached the previous "unsustainable" threshold.
  - concinds 10y ago
    "Overpopulation"-hysteria is a short-sighted, semi-genocidal ideology (see: People's Republic of China). The same people that a decade ago were worrying about overpopulation in Germany are now clamoring for more migrants from the Global South countries to keep up population growth ("these are our future engineers and doctors"). Proof of how unworkable it is. European economies would simply collapse without population growth to feed social security. And aging populations are a ridiculously undesirable outcome for any country Current projections aren't useless. The higher your socioeconomic status, the lower your fertility rate, period. The correlation couldn't be clearer. Geopolitical events could cause temporary changes but obviously wouldn't change the underlying trend. Bringing up the existence of Black Swans to disprove trends is logically flawed. So there's a clear downwards pressure on fertility rates, in the West, which includes propaganda about "overpopulation" that obviously quite a few people believe in, and that guides their decisions; it also includes socioeconomic improvements. What possible trend could act as an upward pressure? Is there anything more pathological (psychologically-speaking) than the belief that humans are themselves a pathology
edblarney 10y ago
It's not about population, and not quite about having no 'future' (though you could say that) - it's about social nihilism and a crises of faith (in the book, literally, in the film, a little more existentially).

duaneb 10y ago

> It's not really about population -- it's about having no future, which is something a lot of people constantly worry about. One thing the movie (unintentionally) got right was how absurd this is. It really ruined the movie to me, TBH, because it was laughably implausible. Reproduction is what life does best. I'll obviously have to watch again for the world building....

knz 10y ago
And yet fertility rates are declining in many nations. Science fiction often takes current events to their extreme outcome for the sake of social commentary (Black Mirror being the latest example).
- stephengillie 10y ago
  Human fertility itself isn't in decline. Fertility and human births are conflated in the US government definition, implying that we are somehow losing the physical ability to reproduce. What's actually happening is that our society is getting so complex that our agency of reproduction is impaired. It's entirely social; it's all in our heads.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    Jury is still out, but there's accumulating evidence that male fertility isn't doing well across the developing world: http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a46/ http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a46/ http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323394504578607641775723354 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873233945045786076... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-158463/Why-male-fertility-decline.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-158463/Why-male-fe... http://jezebel.com/finally-an-answer-to-declining-male-fertility-1681694488 http://jezebel.com/finally-an-answer-to-declining-male-ferti...
    - stephengillie 10y ago
      Your first article debates the efficacy of current attempts to investigate infertility: Recent years have seen many similar reports of falling human sperm counts, but there has been much debate over whether the problem is real. “The principal trouble has been selection bias,” says Joëlle Le Moal, an environmental health epidemiologist at the Institut de Veille Sanitaire in Saint Maurice, France, and joint first author of the new article with colleague Matthieu Rolland. She explains that few studies have involved sperm samples collected from randomly selected members of the general population; for the few that did, only a small percentage of men agreed to be included, and the studies were run in restricted areas. So most studies have had to rely on sperm donors or couples coming to fertility clinics, which do not represent the general population. That article focuses on France, which is rarely counted among developing worlds. The second article is paywalled. The third two could easily be considered Submarine Articles[0] for male supplements and stimulants. [0] http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  - onion2k 10y ago
    If the premise of the film actually happened and the birth rate were to reach zero, I doubt the fact it was psychological rather than physical would be much comfort. Sometimes the technical reason is less important than the outcome.
ozmbie 10y ago
It's really just a plot device. Suspend your belief for that one part of the movie, and enjoy the rest of the social and political commentary.

SmokyBourbon 10y ago

The fact is overpopulation isn't an issue, it's a myth. World population is decellerating at a rapid pace and will begin decreasing within decades. It's painfully obvious to anybody who looks at the numbers. But science fiction has convinced everyone otherwise. Just look at all the countries with programs trying to entice their citizens to start families and make babies. Governments know its going to be a catastrophe. Our governments spend money at a rate that only a larger population in the future can afford to pay for. If families aren't producing above the replacement rate, we're doomed.

lqdc13 10y ago
It's not painfully obvious to UN or anyone else noteworthy. Was it also painfully obvious that USSR was going to break up and Russia would have stalled with population growth? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Population_of_former_USSR.PNG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Populati... None of the current trends made sense 30 yrs ago. And in 30 yrs there could be major geopolitical changes that would make current projections useless.
- AnAfrican 10y ago
  But the worry about overpopulation has been damn near constant. Rebuked again and again and again each time we reached the previous "unsustainable" threshold.
- concinds 10y ago
  "Overpopulation"-hysteria is a short-sighted, semi-genocidal ideology (see: People's Republic of China). The same people that a decade ago were worrying about overpopulation in Germany are now clamoring for more migrants from the Global South countries to keep up population growth ("these are our future engineers and doctors"). Proof of how unworkable it is. European economies would simply collapse without population growth to feed social security. And aging populations are a ridiculously undesirable outcome for any country Current projections aren't useless. The higher your socioeconomic status, the lower your fertility rate, period. The correlation couldn't be clearer. Geopolitical events could cause temporary changes but obviously wouldn't change the underlying trend. Bringing up the existence of Black Swans to disprove trends is logically flawed. So there's a clear downwards pressure on fertility rates, in the West, which includes propaganda about "overpopulation" that obviously quite a few people believe in, and that guides their decisions; it also includes socioeconomic improvements. What possible trend could act as an upward pressure? Is there anything more pathological (psychologically-speaking) than the belief that humans are themselves a pathology

edblarney 10y ago

It's not about population, and not quite about having no 'future' (though you could say that) - it's about social nihilism and a crises of faith (in the book, literally, in the film, a little more existentially).