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I
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am a 28 year old guy who is still in the
university and I am already feeling too old, maybe because after you reach 30
you are into a different league. But the fact is I am actually too fresh and
young if i consider the age of this planet. In fact our entire human race is
very new and so new that if we consider the age of this planet to be 24 hours,
then our race is here for just 6 seconds. Today we are constantly hearing about
issues like global warming, species extinctions, pollution, carbon footprint and
so many other things, I wonder in just that “Six seconds” we almost changed the
face of this planet. We are now on the verge of creating an alien planet for
ourselves. Long before our existence in this planet, it took many processes and
countless evolutions to reach this stage. A lot of things have come in place
ever since we humans have come in the scene.
Few
years back I attended few classes of a Spiritual organisation- “Brahma
Kumaris”, they had is concept of the earth cycle and I was told that the present
time is of Transformation, Transformation of Bad into Good, Wrong into Right,
Evil into God. In Hinduism the present period is termed as ‘Kali-yuga’ , it’s the last stage of the cycle of the creation. It
might sound very old age idea, but with the recent series of events we here every
day, it quite really seems to be true. The seven sins as spoken in the bible,
i.e. Pride, Envy, Wrath, Gluttony and Lust, Sloth and Greed is profoundly seen
in this so called, ‘Modern and Civilized world’. These acts of ours have
affected our relationship with humans and also with nature. The materialistic
world we are living in has encouraged us to be more and more greedy. We are
always in a mood of asking more. And everything we consume or create is not
something that has to do with the outer space but the original source is our
earth—so the more we consume, the more we are generating pressure to this
planet. And when I say consume, I meant, from consuming petrol to water, rice to chocolate, gadgets to
pen and everything around us. “Hindu mythology constantly refers to a four-fold
division of the world- the world of elements (sky, earth, wind, water and fire),
plants, animals and humans.” (Pattanaik,
2015). We must able to understand here that out of these four, “Humans are
dramatically different. In us senses, emotions and intelligence are highly
developed. But what makes us unique is our imagination.”(Pattanaik, 2015). Now
here we must understand that with this special ability that we humans possess,
we have a very important role to play. Our actions and decisions therefore
matters the most. We can either make this place beautiful or can let it die.
The
one thing we all are very proud of is “we became civilized”, now what exactly
is being civilized? Many a times we justify our deeds stating we are the beings
of the 21st century, we have become modern, our technologies have
developed and we have come a long way. But what is the point of having such a
civilization which doesn’t respect its home. The
concept of economics, politics, social, culture, religions are created by us
and this is probably because we have that special quality of Imagination and by
which we have able to generate such concepts. Today we are messed up with so
many issues of these concepts that we had forgotten where we came from and how
we evolved, what this environment meant for us. The world politics is hard to
understand, with different countries having its own priorities and each one of
them trying to generate a bold economy, trying to generate wealth and in this
process, sometimes leaders tend to take decisions which is not a favourable for
the environment. One example is of Oil. The story of Oil is important for us to
understand because, it is a subject due to which we have seen many fold,
leading to war and peace, stable and unstable state of a country, the world
politics is much influence by this. Due to fact that there is instability in
OPEC countries, the production of oil could not regulated well. The countries
like United States started exploring new ways to dig out oil and sell them at
lower price. In this race of oil production and economy, the end victim is our
planet.
Although
it has to noted here that some concepts like our culture at times helped the
nature to sustain and make people aware of the role our nature and environment
has played and so it at times become important for us to save our culture and
heritage.
The
modern warfare has changed, ever since the Second World War, although we have
seen many wars amongst nations, we have fortunately avoided large scale wars.
This might sound better in paper but in reality, there are numerous wars
already been fought every day. Be it in Israel, Afghanistan, Syria or even India,
there is a regular tension that is being prevailing since long. And in this
process of trying to defend one’s motherland, we end up spending huge amount of
money and resources on the Military. If we consider India, our nation is
surrounded by sets of hostile nations and is in constant pressure from the
foreign land, so we just cannot stop our defence procurements as they may be
necessary for safeguarding the nation. But the question here is, Can we not
have that understanding among nations, among people, among leaders to avoid
such situations and agree upon Non-Violence? “The struggle for equitable development and the war against poverty are
as important as our campaign against terrorism and our collective search for
security. At a time when the external stimulus has motivated us to unite
against terrorism and for security, let us summon an equally stronger inner
resolve for development and poverty alleviation. They are just as crucial for a
global order at peace with itself” These were the words of India’s former
prime-minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his speech at the United
Nations, General Assembly in 2001. Is not time to think about hunger and about
people dying out of it? The growing
difference between the rich and the poor is also a result of our political
decisions, which the world leaders took at times. The people living under
poverty are in a greater risk from the environmental problems that we are
creating, as they have access to less resources and options.
“That's
one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” This was what Neil Armstrong said while making that landing on Moon. In
our context to save this environment, that one small step could be, just
switching of the lights, being vegetarian, buying local foods, walking and of
course making the best use of the free source of energy over our head—The Sun. Using
solar energy, wind energy, the tidal force all can be our saviour. The
situation is changing and multi-lateral platforms have yielded better
understanding among the nations. But more such collective actions have to be
taken from an individual level to an international level. And that we must get
it clear that, we are running out of time.
References:
1.
Pattanaik, D. (2015), My
Gita, 55-56
2.
Agarwal, N. (2014), India’s
Greatest Speeches, 139-142
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