If you plot populations throughout history
Counting back from now to antiquity
You may notice a startling asymmetry
when charting our ironic morbidity

Graphs place you in the top percentile
When nations crumble as eyes turn docile
When we huddled massive must now reconcile
Maybe our ancestors went out in style

Would you rather be born in ages agrarian
Oppressed by noble contrarians
Or struggle with classes proletarian
Who have proved just as totalitarian

Be born in a time in famine and fable
And lucky enough to make it past the cradle
Or be destroyed by technologies most fatal
When

Odds are you were born in that moment
When populations had an exponent
As centigrade rose and coastlines floated
And when everything simply exploded.

It was a numbers game in the conclusion
Be you humanitarian or Malthusian
The rare peasant died young in delusion
But a majority went out in collusion.