Eight Billion Humans

"Swing your partner, do si do, allemande left, now allemande right,” proclaimed the voice on a scratchy 78 rpm record over the fiddle music. My teacher, Mrs. Tannahill, could not resist taking my sixth grade class down to the basement of our double-storied red brick schoolhouse, next to the big furnace, to square dance. There were eight of us, just the right number. I was eleven. As spring came, it happened ever more frequently as we got better at it. “Put your little foot, put your little foot, put your little foot right out.”

We were four town kids, and four from the country. Even the right number of boys and girls. I was supposedly in love with Michael, son of the hardware store owner, who shared the top of the class with me. Both of us squinted through our glasses. But when square dancing, I found I preferred the hard, calloused hands of the boys who came in off the farm, straight from their chores.

My favorite dance was the Virginia reel, with its sassy and complicated moves. The head couple in a line of facing boys and girls started, swinging, then sliding. The head couple “peeled the banana,” following down the line and making a bridge with their hands for the other couples to move under. They then became the last couple and a new head couple sashayed down the line to lively fiddle music. Had I ever been happier? I don’t think so.

My little brother was born that spring of 1957 also. There were already six of us, and in the end we became a family of eight kids. On Sunday afternoons we all piled into the station wagon and drove out into the flat expanse of wheat fields around the little town. The bare trees against the evening sky looked like black lace. The population of Buxton, North Dakota was 300. The world population was 2.87 billion, just over a third of what it is now.

I have always been fascinated by population density and have found myself moving into ever more populous places. How many people do we need to make a culture? What must people share in order to be connected? And what of the creatures and plant kingdoms we impinge on? We are now eight billion, a dominant and responsible species. This increase has happened very fast.

The United States as a whole is far down the list in people per square mile at 96, per data for 2022 at worldpopulationreview.com. India has 1,235 people per square mile; Japan, 881; the United Kingdom, 723; and France 306. In the United States, we have vast spaces with little population, and others that are dense. Los Angeles County, where I currently live, has about 10 million residents.

Clearly, from my story above, it doesn’t take many people to make a culture or to tap into one. Every town has its unique aspect, a fractal beauty, just as each of us do. And we all have a story that connects us. Post-war America was proud of itself and what it could accomplish, and our little town was no exception. On Memorial Day, the whole town walked a mile out to the cemetery to honor veterans. I marched with my flute in a new band uniform.

Probably because of my early history on the plains, I’ve always had some degree of claustrophobia about space. When I moved to cities, I needed to know how much time it would take to get to a wild, natural place. When I lived for many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, it never took much time. A green belt and that beautiful bay surrounded the city. I could take a ferry to Angel Island, a state park situated in the bay, or the train out to the Lafayette reservoir, surrounded by wild spaces. The long, rich Golden Gate park right in the city was also a refuge. (I never had a car of my own.)

Thus the idea of moving to Los Angeles made me nervous! It is a vast and crowded city. But we have been here three and a half years now, and I have found stories in which people and cultures thrive.

For instance, we live two blocks from Mariachi Plaza, a meeting point for the mariachis (Spanish for musicians) who make their living playing in groups in restaurants and for parties. Their vans, with the name of their group and a phone number, are parked all around the plaza. On November 22, the mariachis march down our neighboring streets behind a large painting of St. Cecilia, playing and singing. They honor her and beg her, as their patron saint, to give them good work in the coming year.

Don has worked hard to preserve his membership in the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 600. It was formed 129 years ago to pool the interests of workers on stages. You will see its five-sided badge at the end of all major movies and its locals are visible all over Los Angeles, providing education and professionalism. Once you had to kill a family member to get in, but now it is a little less difficult! It too has a powerful story to tell about human association. 

As for me, I have backed off of my need for space as my physical abilities diminish and my need for safety grows. I am now happy in the big outdoor plazas to be found all over the city. I go up to Little Tokyo and bask in the wide Aratani plaza beside a small, sunken, Japanese garden. Or to the wide and beautiful courtyard of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels with its beautiful glass, stonework and orange trees. These spaces have been preserved by groups of people for the sake of all.

E.O. Wilson published a book entitled Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life in 2016. His intriguing theory was that humans could retreat to half of the planet’s surface, leaving the other half as a natural habitat to preserve species diversity. The idea included the fact that the spaces left free from humans would be connected in some way, to allow for roaming and species interconnection. He suggested that we simply don’t know enough to be the earth’s gardeners and should leave some of it to its own devices.

In 2022, research insists we must preserve 44% of the earth to prevent major biodiversity loss. And governments pledge to work toward this, though their efforts have not resulted in much. It is a matter of people and their stories. It is simply true that an increased number of humans requires more discipline and more dedication to civilized behavior.