Spencer Heath Archive

Item 974

Penned on cards and then typed on small notebook pages

About 1937?

MEASUREMENT OF POPULATION

Population cannot be measured by numbers alone any more than a stream can be measured by the size of the conduit in which it flows. In any case, the number of units that pass must be multiplied by the speed with which they flow. The unit for measuring population is not the single individual but the individual life-year. Life is a stream, a flow of energy. Its volume must be multiplied by its speed, just as the amperes by the volts gives the quantity of an electric flow.

     A population of one person living only one year would be a single life-year. A population of ten living an average of ten years would represent a hundred life-years. A million population with an average life span of twenty-five years would have twenty-five million life-years. A half-million with a span of fifty years would have the same number of life-years. It is clear, then, that the quantity of human life in any place cannot be measured by mere enumeration. The quantity may remain the same throughout the widest imaginable change in numbers. Likewise, the numbers could remain the same throughout an indefinitely large amount of change in the quantity of life being manifested in the fixed numbers of any population.

     From the foregoing point of view, it might seem of no consequence how a given quantity of of human life-energy shall manifest itself, whether it be in a large population of short lives or a small population of long lives. It is as though we should say that a sluggish stream of large dimensions would not differ from a swift stream of small dimensions, so the quantity of flow be the same; or that a current of low voltage high in amperes would be the same as a current of higher voltage and fewer amperes. The quantity of energy in both cases may be the same, but the amount of energy manifesting itself in each unit, the energy per unit, is greater in all the former cases and less in all the latter. Each short-lived individual in the large population, each volume-unit moving in the sluggish stream, each unit (electron) in the low voltage flow, possesses less energy than the corresponding unit in the longer-lived population, the swifter stream, or the current of higher voltage. The difference can best be expressed by saying that it is qualitative, that the component units are more highly endowed with energy, that the potentials of the units are higher, and this we well know, for who shall say how much greater are the potentialities of full-span human lives than of lives cut short in early maturity or that never even mature? In fact, at the level of human life this qualitative difference is most extreme, for all the years of infancy are years of dependence on the mature life that has gone before. The potentiality of the individual is not fully realized until maturity; only then can he cease being a retardant and become a positive asset to the stream of life in which he flows.

     From this point of view it is seen that the quality and capacity, the potentiality, of a population depends not upon its quantity of life-years, but rather upon the number of life-years that adulthood superposes upon the years of infancy and immaturity. Assuming maturity at twenty, the million population with average span of twenty-five years has but five million or only one-fifth of its life-years on the asset side of maturity. But the half million population of fifty years average span has fifteen million mature life years which is three-fifths of its total life years, as against one-fifth in the former instance. So notwithstanding that it is numerically only half as large, the second population as a whole has three times the potentiality for culture and civilization or whatever may flower from the expression and transformation of the energy of individual and social organization in its highest forms.

     It is noteworthy that the foregoing comparison and ratio of potentiality is as between the two populations as a whole. From the average individual standpoint, the ratio is just twice as high, for in the second population the average individual possesses thirty mature life years, and this is not three times but six times greater than in the case of the more numerous population.

     Thus it is seen that whatever more advantageous modes of association, whatever higher social organization, has brought about conditions to extend the span of life for the individual, even if it should be accompanied by a fifty per cent reduction of numbers, can, as in the given illustration bring about a three-fold improvement in the positive capacities of the society as a whole, and this is accompanied by a six-fold enhancement of opportunity and possibilities for the average individual in the more highly developed society.