HUMANITY PROCEEDING TOWARDS AN IMPLOSION (PART 2)

The first part was focused on the exploitation of nature and environment as well as the plight and sufferings being endured by human beings. It was a broad brushstroke of all our follies and misdemeanors from the past to the present, and the transgressions that we wish to devolve upon ourselves in the future. We have discussed the symptoms of the sickness which we have brought upon ourselves and our planet, now we can move ahead to the causes for the sickness. This second part also takes a swipe at the problems but in a structured form, identifying and linking them to the specific areas of our lives, so as to make it understandable and to force open a path for resolution.

When we take a hard look at our present situation we find that it is but a natural progression stemming from the root trait where we give ourselves unrestricted freedom to pursue our personal choices, where we permit the freedom to playout our desires, under the naive assumption and presumptive caution of “as long as it does not hurt another human”. We do not even embrace all life forms in this line of thought but merely human beings. This stress on freedom is so overbearing in our ideas and philosophies that we do not even imagine, leave aside consider; that freedom itself can lead to ruins, that unhindered freedom can shackle us to the path of self-destruction.   

                                    

Secondly we humans are merely looking at or rather fixated on improvement to our present conditions, without assessing impact of our actions on our future and the future of our planet. This myopic vision justifies our primary instinct of survival and a remedial measure for the conquest over uncertainties. It is justified on the grounds of making our present lives comfortable. This attitude and outlook too is begging for a change. Primarily the natural resources of our planet aren’t unlimited. Moreover as we instigate a deliberate conversion of one form of energy to another, we cause an imbalance in nature and its stability. In the long run it works to our disadvantage and perils our survival itself.         

                                      

Further all our activities are done with a view to earn money. Our efforts towards name, fame, goodwill, award, appreciation, skill, knowledge, creativity, invention, talent, sports of both physical and mental types, etc. everything is carried out for money. Money is undoubtedly useful to the extent that it helps in defining a common measure to understand the world and enable us to make our own living, tread our own path depending on our own capabilities. However when money becomes the basic common denominator through which everything is evaluated then like every base common denominator, it panders to the basic instincts amongst us. There is no restraint against our greed and no stoppages beyond what we could define as something we deserve. Money has become an ego booster. Therefore we witness that people who cannot earn it the right way, stoop to snatch it by hook or crook. Individuals adopt corrupt practices and also justify the same. People have stopped evaluating about their needs and requirements. There are no restrictions for earning more and more money and there is no concept called enough.   But all the money has not brought happiness to our lives. Instead it has brought in ill health, stress, tension, breakdown of relationship, breakdown of balance on this planet.    

                             

As we can see, all human endeavors have been moving towards an extreme, and anything is excess is harmful. Everything looks doomed and irredeemable.           

Our problems; why we do what we do.       

                         

We Dumb Humans

As a species we like to call ourselves as the most intelligent life form on this planet, however from what we have seen such an outlandish conclusion stands to be most unwarranted. Our deeds till date do not merit such a pedestal. We are as weak, incomplete, defective and vulnerable as any other life form that has existed or is in existence. All claims to intelligence would be judged as a fraud against nature given the fact that we have used our so called intelligence to exploit the environment as well as life on this planet. One of the fundamental laws of nature that the strong preys on the weak is seen in abundance in humans. We consider the exploitation of natural resources, humans as well as of other life forms for our exaggerated and current needs food, clothing and shelter as an accepted norm.          

    

The Victim-Employees Culture

While desire is commonly visible and rather lavishly spread across all humanity, the risk appetite is scattered with a few and the application of astuteness to working out a decent living is rather rare. The vast majority amongst us wants to be cared for and protected by others while a few are willing to take care of the vast majority. The vast majority are the labour force, the organised unionist, and proletariats, bourgeois, who need laws for their protection from the capitalists. The other few are the risk takers, the entrepreneurs, the businessmen. The latter being the job provers cannot desist from exploiting the former inspite of laws but yet the majority still won’t try to be their own masters. While they are willing to be slaves, they however demand to be treated as equals and paradoxically would never miss an opportunity to criticize the risk takers. In this chain with the slightly smarter one above the lesser, taking advantage is an ordinary and conventional custom and there are no holds barred.          

We have educated and trained the vast majority of the people to be useful in executing small tasks and pay them money in exchange. They think they are being useful, that they have contributed to the economic welfare of the community and country and that they deserve to be appreciated and rewarded. We humans use other humans according to their intelligence, taking advantage of the karmic trap they are in, which is exploitation. Majority of the population have no idea no knowledge and no information beyond their daily existence. Neither are they bothered. The capitalists need the cheap labour force as much as the employees detest risk taking and in this melee both thrive. This cycle of dependency is tolerated, encouraged and perpetrated                as if there are no alternatives.

We can also say that we have led ourselves into this pathetic situation. Our education is a misnomer. We had no idea about how to feed the masses and making them useful for minor jobs was a solution to get them to remain organised and disciplined. We never taught our fellow humans to be responsible towards the planet and towards other humans and other life forms.     

Our Mis-Governance

Most countries have adopted democracy or some variant resembling it. Democracy as a governing system is imperfect, because its major selling USP is also its weakest argument, which is that it is meant to reflect and to represent the wishes of the majority of the people. Whenever the most common view or demand of the people is required to be upheld, then the basest of their view or demand gets prominence, whichever is the lowest common denominator. Every view and demand laced with fear factor gets highlighted. The elected government representatives themselves, their policies and work priorities, all are a flection of basic and common interest matters. The refined views thereby get relegated to the back burner. Sacrifice is ignored and instant gratification is glorified. Long term vision gets thrown out and short term goals are set for achievement. Petty issues gets sensationalized, foolish decisions are forced, minor tasks completions are celebrated as achievements and nobody thinks beyond short term survival. As a result wasteful corruption of resources is not a taboo because their importance is never understood in a short time frame of one life time.        

                                   

Our Destructive Economic Policies

We humans promote consumerism as The Flagship policy for our countries economy. The more people consume, the more they will spend, and the more money that will flow from the users to the producers. Excessive consumerism, beyond requirement consumerism, and consumerism bolstered on borrowings are the sought after goals. This is the basis of what we call growth. Every act of consumerism by the user gets counted in the GDP and it is well advertised that higher the GDP better is the development levels of the country. Materialistic growth is the only criteria. The objective is to enable every human on this planet to get rich at the cost of other life forms, natural resources and weather. It is assumed that doing so is the only time tested way for people to be happy.     

                                      

Yet these economic theories are not without their pitfalls. There is a narrow path which countries have to tread, ensuring stability and good behavior at all times, which is paramount. There are not so unwarranted fears that any untoward event could over-heat or freeze the economy leading to chaos. Therefore every economy is artificially controlled by its central bank and bureaucracy in such a stiff manner that swings of the economic indicators from point to point is constantly monitored. Tendencies of inflation, deflation or stagflation are kept under check through monetary policies and financial arrangements are not permitted to explode.    

                                

However all our economic theories and laws are tilted to favour those who take advantage of the situation, environment, natural resources and other life forms. Their acts are incentivized and promoted. The perpetrators are rewarded as risk takers even when they cause harm to the planet.     

The Fuel for our Destruction - Electricity

We measure our economies in GDP terms and all our economic activities are founded on electrical power. For higher growth we need more power supply. Our major power supply is from fossil fuel products, coal and petroleum, which is not a renewable source of supply. The ill effects of fossil fuel are very well documented. The directly visible harmful impact of pollution on human lives and the environment is evident to all of us even if we may choose to deny it. However the invisible changes that are happening to the balance of energies on the planet will be witnessed only in the long run. Our difficulty is in the fact that we have directly encouraged too many people to be employed in the sector of extracting fossil fuel from the depths from under the ground and the sea and also in the conversion of the fossil fuel into electricity. How do we ensure their well-being? Further the users of this electricity and the fossil fuel are the factories which produce our goods and transportation sector of people and goods which also have too many people working in them. How do we ensure a replacement electricity supply for them?   

       

This dependency on electricity for our growth as well as the way in which we have defined growth based on consumption and allowed it to continue for such a long time, has today become our Achilles Heel.     

 

Luxury goods - Our bane

Since ages every society in every country is segregated into the Haves and the Have-nots. The have-nots have been left behind partly because they chose not to take advantage of everything around and also because they aren’t enterprising in their methods. However keeping aside the fact that there would naturally be these two sections in society, the worrying factor is that the gap between them is widening. This is despite the efforts of the governments which is enacting laws and adopting policies of the Robin Hood style of approach to uplift the poor.

We call this development while in reality this has become the aspirations of egoists. Whenever the have-nots obtain some leverage, they immediately imitate the rich people in spending. As a result whenever an existing gap is narrowed or a level is transgressed, the consumer products become more luxuriant, whether it is a luxury car, luxury home or other high cost life-style and consumer products. The rich move ahead several notches and the poor continue to emulate. Over time it is very difficult to establish who is exploiting whom. In this process the message is lost that all such expenditure is wasteful, unnecessary and merely an ego trip.  The more we accept such shameless activities under the garb of economic development, the more we entrap ourselves in the misuse of natural resources of this planet.            

The Left-behind Agriculturists

In all these merry-go-round and utter confusion, the one section of people whom we humans have taken for granted are our food providers. Absurd as it may sound while our survival is in their hands but they do not have any place or say in our economic policies. We have relegated this critical task of food producers to the under privileged, the uneducated, the poor. We have denied the agriculturists any semblance of respectability and all in a deliberate humiliating manner. Since they do not have an easy access to money, they do not access to the requisite knowledge of economic theories, and also since they are not urbanites, their opinion do not count when we frame economic policies. They are forced to accept subsidies and charity. Our economic theories are all based on keeping inflation low and this tilts the scale favoring the urbanites, the factories, the traders and middlemen, ultimately squeezing the primary producers like farmers. Thereafter if they have somehow managed to extract a good produce, since they are dealing in perishable products and also since they do not have the strength of long term storage, we exploit them for prices. Especially the marginal agriculturists are the worse victims of our blatant mortification. There is no let up and no way out for the farmers in our existing scheme of things. They will continue to remain the ultimate exploited class.      

                                                  (To be continued)