CRISIS OF HUMANITY (Part 1)

It is claimed by reserchers that the modern humans have been living together and migrating since one hundred to two hundred thousand years ago. Over the past fifty thousand years they have spread across the entire planet. History which can be seen or touched, is read or was heard goes back six to ten thousand years from date. Inspite of such a vast experience going through millions of generations, it is rather unfortunate that we humans have miserably failed on two counts; first our inability to stop exploitation of nature and humans and second our inability to avoid human sufferings. As life forms, today we are not too far away from the life condition that existed fifty thousand years ago. We are still primitive in our instinct, we still fear for our survival, inspite of several scientific advancements, machines and instruments to aid our ease and leisure. From such a perspective our performance has been an utter disappointment.

Currently since the past sixty odd years we have not had any major world wars. Apart from potentially threatening situations converting onto lighter and localised wars everywhere, there has not been a major human orchestrated killing of other humans. Around the world we no longer indulge in genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass scale wiping out of enemy population, looting of enemy wealth, raping of their women, etc. A few severe ones probably are the Sinhalese attack on Tamil population in Sri Lanka, the continued armed battles in middle Africa, Iraq and Syria. One other major cause of death over the past several decades has been natural disasters and disease. There has been a reasonable stability on that front, to assist better human conditions. However we are squandering away this window of opportunity. During this respite we have achieved nothing tangible except merely increasing our population which has compounded the problem instead of resolving or improving anything. We haven’t attained any greater heights in our understandings and feelings for life on this planet. Rather we have degraded ourselves to further exploit the planets resources and other life forms.

We have been rather short sighted in our approach over the past few decades. All our focus has been directed towards selfish aggrandisement, under the garb of individual liberty and freedom. We have placed or one could say misplaced all our faith on democracy as a conduit for better living. In doing so we have legalised exploitation of resources, permitted manipulation of ideas and sacrificed our combined happiness. We have allowed individuals and groups to increase production of every kind in an innocent assumption that doing so would spread wealth in the hands of everyone. Obviously wealth is still reflected as the main ingredient for happiness, more the wealth more the happiness.  Well, it seems that we have been wrong all along.

What we do to exploit and manipulate: We humans have bestowed on ourselves an unbridled expression to our desires without necessitating any evaluation of the justifications regarding its universal benefit. Our ambitions have transcended honourable limits. Post the industrial revolution we have encouraged consumerism in food clothing and shelter. It started with the West and seeing how wealthy they have become, the East aped it. Consumerism is a cycle where demand pushes production which results in increased earnings and therefore caters to additional demands. But behind the screen the production has to be supported by continuous supply of raw material and energy. We have assumed that demand can rise perpetually disregarding the fact that natural resources are limited. Today we are sailing in unchartered territories where we hardly discuss or know about how to limit our consumerism while being fully aware that every mineral on this planet is available to a finite quantity.

An informed look at our politics across the globe shows it appears that in several places we have replaced monarchy and autocracy, however we have merely converted into democracy under the camouflage of upholding citizen’s rights, freedom. The wine remains the same while the bottle has changed. Physical slavery has been replaced by psychological slavery. Elections are strategies in vote bank politics and uttering lies aloud, where manipulating of public opinion and spreading misinformation is the rule of the game. Those who aren’t in power or those who have been manipulated over the years have switched over to terrorism to make themselves heard. To counter the terrorist’s, weaponry of the official armies have also become sophisticated and nuclear. Crime has taken a white-collared reputation, becoming more skill and cyber based. The damage inflicted and benefit earned is enormous.  Child pornography is another area which is raising its head.

People around the globe have learnt to live in fear accepting it as a part of their lives. Power and wealth has become cherished aspirations to overcome the fear. Those who cannot become aggressive follow some or the other religion, which also is steeped into narrow-mindedness. Those in charge of these religions have understood the value of fear in retaining their individual importance. Even an open religion like Hinduism which has survived thousands of years today shamelessly talks of being subverted with threats of being wiped out because of divergent views. Spirituality was once a celebrated tradition in the East and also in other places has witnessed reduced importance in recent decades. India itself had several hundreds of spiritual and philosophical schools at the start of the Christian era, of which hardly a handful has survived.

Another situation which is visible is that the population explosion is coupled with huge advancements in medical science. On the one hand we witness disturbing trends in intrusive medical treatment which prolongs life even in a vegetative condition. On the other hand we also see wide scale proliferation of obesity, diabetes, BP, heart ailments and cancer. The medical profession has flourished. Urban pollution has spilled out of hand and we are constantly wrestling with air, river, sea, sound and plastic waste pollutants.

Inspite of all our labours at pseudo-development, poverty continues to exist and exploitation continues to prosper. The more we imagine that we are advancing the more we are suffering as a life form.

What we endure because of our exploitative tendencies: We humans are watching a phenomenon new to our experience; global warming. While the planet has become hot and cold several times before, we have never experienced it in our combined knowledge of fifty thousand years. This time around we reckon that the increasing temperature of the planet is our undoing and mainly rooted in our exploitative burning of fossil fuel. Assessing the correctness of whether the view is right or wrong is not going to matter because we are practically witnessing shrinking ice cover, vanishing forests, water scarcity on an ongoing basis which is disturbing the climate across the planet causing unprecedented variations in rainfall, winter cold and summer heat.

We are staring at a huge ageing population, our own population. In our unmanageable numerical growth, we have taken over every conceivable nook and corner of this planet, we have destroyed several species of plant and animal life, we have cut down oxygen producing forests, we have polluted the air, we have made our surroundings filthy. We humans have become so paradoxical that while the awareness of physical fitness has increased the numbers of sick and diseased has also increased.

Migration has been a human privilege right from the time we have walked out of Africa. We migrate for livelihood, for education, for a better life, to escape from atrocities and crime, basically to survive. The rich migrate individually and silently while the poor migrate in numbers and attract undue attention. Currently the volumes of migrations have increased to such proportions that societies are barricading against the migrants. We can imagine the extent of outrage causing the migrants to escape. While the voice against these new migrants have also become shrill and the number of countries which refuse to accept them are increasing.

The economic policies that we implement, the importance that we attach to earning money and wealth creation and the ruthlessness and with which we pursue freedom for selfish interests, have all resulted in vast disparities in wealth distribution in society. The poor continue to exist even in highly developed countries. There are people without basic quantities of food, clothing and shelter living in every country on this planet. We once thought that Socialism would help alleviate poverty and then realised that capitalism is probably the right way forward to eliminate human sufferings. Let us accept that this hasn’t happened. While Socialism is dead, Capitalism hasn’t delivered. We as a species have failed to protect even our own from exploitation.

We still have certain more wants that are exploitative too: It is claimed, by us humans of course, that we are the most intelligent creature living on this planet. However looking at our demands and expectations for the future, the claim stands open to argument. It is as if we haven’t learnt our lessons yet that we continue on the same treacherous path of self-destruction through exploitation of whatever the planet has to offer.

Protectionism has walked into our thoughts in every area of life. We have started feeling extreme insecurities about our lives, religion, country, local territory, local economy, caste, group life-style and culture, and the list is endless. A couple of decades ago in the international scene, cross border trade was demanded, all previous trade barriers were asked to be broken, benefits of globalization was promised and it did spread out. Just when it had taken roots, a U-turn is being demanded by those who pushed globalization in the first place. The reason is simply that the benefits were really flowing into the once upon a time developing and poor countries. Today the big powerful countries fear that globalization is taking the wind out of their sail. They aren’t interested in making every poor country a better place as theirs, atleast that wasn’t the supposed intention behind the theory of globalization.

Even in education we have ventured deep into subject specialisation where every specialist feels that his is the right way or rather the only way. We have become less tolerant about the views of others and consider them to be inferior to our own. A balanced view considering the opinions of all is slowly becoming an outdated concept. It is being viewed as primitive and a waste of time.

At a time when global warming is making life difficult for us humans, it is but common sense that we should pool our energies together to create a safe and practical environment so that we can survive in the long run. However it is right at this moment that across the world we chose to bicker about our rights of privacy and infringement of personal space. Yes, the Gay rights and freedom is a step in the right direction but beyond that everybody need to share information about their life, choices, consumptions, and vocations so that unwanted impact on the environment can be avoided. However we are moving in the opposite direction.

Our agricultural sector across the world is so constipated that our farmers can think of survival only with subsidies and grants. Food production in all countries still is dependent on a benign weather. Food prices are deliberately kept low to starve off inflationary tendencies in the economy. Food preservation and storage is never in the hands of the food producers who therefore lose out on prices. We also fear to introduce Genetically Modified food, which can help the food producers. These are age old problems which we don’t want to resolve. Every economist, every central bank, every politician, every learned intellect anywhere on this planet, merely pays lip service to agriculture. We are least concerned about how to feed the ever growing population in harsh climatic conditions of the future.

As if our exploitation of this planet is not enough, we now want to exploit the moon and Mars. Space tourism and space travel, is expected to become the fad of the future. It is anticipated by some enterprising money-bags that the rich of the future will prefer to spend their wealth on a short spin around the planet while the poor continue to struggle.

Artificial Intelligence and robotics is a growing technology and every new development should be welcome, evaluated and pursued. One should be cautious when a new development is expected to for the detriment of life forms on this planet, for instance the atomic bomb and nuclear war arsenal.  AI is expected to replace humans in the job market and none of us are too sure how this one will play out. With a huge population to feed, with few employment opportunities for them, under a harsh climatic condition, without a practical food strategy in place, how are we expecting us to survive?

                                                                                                                   (To be continued)