Jonathan Swift’s short story, “A Modest Proposal”, proposes for the Irish to eat their children. I think this solution to poverty and hunger is not a reasonable plan for three reasons: The population of Ireland will decrease drastically, it’s unconventional and weird, and there will be way too many health issues.
First of all, if people in Ireland suddenly started to just eat each other, the population of the country would really go down. They’re only going to eat their children, but since the children would’ve grown up to be adults themselves, the only adults eventually left in Ireland would be the currently existing ones. Then when they slowly die off due to old age, bad things will start to happen, like if another country really wanted to conquer Ireland for some arbitrary reason. No one would be in their way, except a few leftover babies who were recently born and a whole lot of satisfied grandmas and grandpas, sitting around the fireplace, congratulating themselves on coming up with such a great plan to rid themselves of poverty. So–boom! The grandmas and grandpas are booted out of the country and congratulations to the UK because now they have a lot more land with more room to build houses to have dainty little tea parties in or something–whatever people from the UK do.
Secondly, this method of getting rid of poor people is really weird and unconventional. Nobody eats children!! I mean, nobody even eats other adults! This is straight-up cannibalism, and–spoiler alert–we don’t do that here. As far as I know, not even animals eat their own kind (Ignore the Komodo dragons for now)! Do you ever see monkeys eating other monkeys? Birds eating other birds? Even wolves eating other wolves? No! So why should we? We are an advanced species, Jonathan Swift. We could freaking invent something that gives us good food before we decide to eat our own children! Also–another scenario: The people around Ireland might feel offended or disgusted by the savage Irish people’s behavior and start feeling like they need to step in and tone down the craziness a bit. OR, as I said earlier, they could just start doing it the violent way again, kick the senior citizens out, and start planning their tea parties.
Lastly, I feel like this isn’t very healthy for the Irish people. Just think about it: If a mother had a disease and she gave birth, then the child might have the illness too. Then if they sell the child because they really need two shillings, then the wealthy person who receives the child might catch the disease. And according to Elon Musks’s Ten Rules To Success, successful people have all attracted cool people at some point in their career, so the wealthy person might happen to have a bunch of friends over when they eat the child. Then the child’s illness gets to his friends and his friends pass it on to their family or friends and this repeats until probably the whole of Ireland is infected by this disease. If the mother had had an unknown disease or something, it’s pretty much going to be a long long long pandemic like the COVID-19 because you have stuff like potatoes that are being exported to other countries and since everyone in your Ireland is infected, these potatoes will then carry this sickness and then when some person eats the potato in, let’s say, America, and then the whole of America will also have this disease. Let’s just say, it’s not really the best situation to be in.
I am strongly against Jonathan Swift’s idea and I hope this never happens anywhere. Between under-population problems, being judged by other countries, and bad health issues, surely everyone would agree with me on this.
I agree with ya
I agree on most of your points. The economy could collapse, they would have weak defenses, and the risk of a disease is high. However, there are many cases of animals eating their own offspring. Hamsters, for example. Fish, spiders, sharks, and snakes do it too. I think there is a Minute Earth youtube video about cannibalism. Also, if eating people is the norm, then they wouldn’t feel weird about it. Like if milk was green, that would become the norm.
Oooh, I didn’t know that hamsters eat other hamsters. But it’s only the norm for IRELAND. So the neighboring countries like Tea Party UK would think they’re weird. At least, I THINK that’s what I meant.