To the prophet Jeremiah's timeless injunction, "Increase in number!" modern culture adds the caveat: "but no more than is sustainable."
The last half-century has witnessed the emergence of a new class of ethical imperatives about the impact of human existence. Whether motivated by worries about healthcare, overpopulation, overconsumption, or ecological disaster, these have come to take precedence over age-old injunctions passed down from the Judeo-Christian tradition. So entrenched are concerns about our collective human "footprint" in the contemporary moral scheme, that a New York Times article last year likened adultery to the "depravity" of "driving when I could take a train." These new ethical preoccupations reflect a deep, arguably metaphysical, transformation in how we think about human existence.
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