Reverse Gear

Last few months have been somewhat hard. I am not talking about me but about the humanity, about our collective future (may be a little about me too ;)). Its long time that I have written something, it is not that I do not want to write or I do not have anything to write. There have been millions of thoughts and words kept forming in my mind but feeling was so overwhelming that containing those in single blog was not so easy. Therefore, I capitulated; thoughts flowed and lost like a river in sea. However, I had to overcome that hesitation at some point of time, regardless of what my personal crisis is, so here I am.

If you are going to continue on this blog then I should add a disclaimer. Please do not relate your personal life with the content written in the blog. Please make a note that if I would have been in your shoes, I would have actually acted in the same way (I actually am in your shoes). This is just the sentiment expressed keeping the bigger picture in view, and you might have to open your other eye to experience that view.

By just having a cursory glance around me and a small effort to look at the world I get a déjà vu that I am looking at some scenes from Matrix. Every scenes are pre-scripted and people are like robots who are doing exactly the same things that they are supposed to do (Again ex-claimer – Not saying I am any different). The interesting thing is, this movie has only three recurring scenes – one - a constant exercise of facial muscle along with multitudes clicking of camera, two - frantic typing on the keypad of phone, three - many stone face statues travelling in car, buses and bikes with earphone plugged in their ears. It just gives a chilling sensation of being in a bad sci-fi movie where whole world is remote controlled by some mighty corporation through the tools like earphone, camera and phone. We are living in a uni-dimensional world with our sight limited to a 45-degree view. We are missing or willfully ignoring the other 315 degree. It is I, my future, and then my children and their future, and many of us goes long way and reserve future for some thousand generations ahead. Forget about the atrocities we are perpetrating on the mother earth in the process, we cannot even think of our own next generation (except for some material wealth that might not even have significance) and what future they might have if we do not stop and change track.

India’s population is currently 1.324 billion. We are ready to overtake China (1.379 billion) any day. Currently our population growth rate is hopelessly high (~1.7%) to even dream to stabilize it to optimum level. We are already beyond the sustenance level that the earth can support. 2.4% of land in India is already supporting 17% of world’s population which itself is a nightmare in current state. Think about all those stampede death in Mumbai, traffic jam in Bangalore, huge crowd in Kolkata, sea of human in Bihar and UP and so on. This is the chaos that we face at current population level. Think about next 50 years. Even if we manage to miraculously lower the growth rate to 1% (which is next to impossible), our population will still be 65% more than today (2.178 billion). That means 850 million more people (around the combine population of whole Europe and Brazil together). Think about situation of Local train of Mumbai, roads of Bangalore and street of Kolkata with those extra 850 million people. Think about what will happen to our water system, our forest, our biodiversity, when we have 850 million extra mouths to feed. We cannot even achieve that for current 1324 million after depleting all our natural resources. It is a nightmare, which should haunt each one of us. However, are we even concerned? Do we even think about it? All we care about is to get a degree, get a job, get married, and start family and proliferate the Vansh (I cannot even fathom the Vansh crap). We do not even have slightest compunction about our contribution in making this world worse and worsen. It is the high time that we stop swooning over babies. We should stop thinking about it as a boon and start treating it like a grim moment. A moment that keeps propelling us towards the doomsday. Five thousand years ago, human race was fighting for its survival and reproduction was integral part of that survival plan. 5000 years later, we have entered the 21^st century and human race is again on verge of survival war. Only difference is this time war will not be fought with other species, this war will be fought among us and we will eventually sink and will take every sign of life on earth along with us. In order to win this survival war and save humanity along with the biodiversity, we need to embark upon a different path. Instead of celebrating creation of new life, it has to be made as a somber moment. A moment to stop and think about the future of those new lives and their expected contribution to the ongoing eternal survival war. I know, the moment you read these words it might seem blasphemous to you. How can we even dare to pop those thoughts in our mind? That is not how civilization has ever worked. However, like rules of wars, rules to live also changes. These are the time, which requires backward movement. Our survival war started with a primitive Neanderthal who first learnt to make fire and then different tools. We started our journey from there and moved to achieve bigger things. There was always a next, hunting to agriculture, agriculture to industrialization, industrialization to a cyber-age. We kept moving, we kept getting better at everything but we never learnt to stop. We do not even know what lies beyond and when to stop. This is the time. This is the time to move backward instead of forward. We do not need entire humanity to understand that. Even if half of the world grasp the gravity of this problem and be ready to make sacrifices, we might have small chance to save this wonderful world. Or else we are doomed to our own destruction. In Gandhiji’s own word, we have ample for everyone’s need not greed. Our greed had run amok for so long that we have reached to a point where there will not be any left for the “need”. It is the time that we take the reverse gear and start on a new radical path that will not only ensure our survival but also will give us chance to live a worthy life. 

Stop Please !!

I have not written anything from past 11 months. Not that it matters in grand scheme of things, but it definitely matters to me. As the world is going haywire more and more, I am getting more numb day by day. Past 11 weeks have been so overwhelming that no amount of paper, time and space would have been sufficient to fill my emotions. I am just dumbfounded to pen down anything.

We live in hope that each of our tiny action will make this world a better place and that’s the hope that keep us nimble, alive, and active. But what happens when your hope is getting extinguished slowly, that’s when you lose your voice, you just become speechless. I am not a quitter, I never can be but that what’s scares me most. I can never stop to fight (or not), I can never be at peace.

Sorry, enough about my mumble jumble. I know if you ever dare to read this, your dare is fading at each advancing line. But hold on, I am coming back to the topic. Past one year, though it seems like one hour, but still I am going to ponder over the past 8784 hours. You may ask isn’t it too late to write about past year – But my numbness has made time flying for me. I am still living in Jan 2017 (or want to live). Jan 1917 would be more appropriate. World was in chaos then, but it still made more sense. Colonialism was at its apex, nationalism was just rousing its head, we were still dying in mass from diseases, hunger etc etc. Those were the terrifying but simpler time. Every events has a simpler explanation and we were standing at the juncture where we could have hoped for a better future. A better world where no one die of hunger and disease, where one can have freedom to express their thought and right to have a say in how they are governed. Those were the time when we were fighting for ideals, even though it was a terrible time, it was still an era of hope. We knew what we are doing now, will change the world and will make it a better place for generations to come.

Coming back to 100 years later (I have to literally drag myself as my mind adamantly refuses to come back to this glorious destructive era). “This is a very exciting time to live” - how many time we have heard this line on visual media. But is it? What excitement we are expecting in future? More sleek smartphone, our eyes as laptop screen, voice as command? More and more robots replacing human jobs with unhindered human population growth vying for ever depleting natural resources? Growth of regionalism, terrorism, regionalism, culturalism as culmination of increased competition for resource/jobs? Does that future seems exciting enough? Though our political and economic leaders, big corporates try to paint a very different picture for us, but in reality every phenomenon has a peak point beyond which it is impossible to achieve. “Impossible” word has become antithetical for human civilization and in 21^st century it attracts similar persecution as pronouncement of anti-Christ in medieval area. We are not allowed to say that it is impossible to achieve more growth, more technological achievement and we need to stop and retrace our steps a bit. We will be literally throttled by everyone and cast off as a big nuisance to society.

How good it looks when our statistical agencies come up with the growth number (any slide in number send us frenzy mood). Come at what cost, but we need maintain that figure. Mantra is very simple. Establish industry, cut forest, create more and more road, more and more flyover and buildings and growth will automatically fall into our bag. We are only looking at the curve of economic growth, concentrating only on that and forgetting that every other aspects are sliding out of our hand further, and further.

The industrial revolution, when the story of modern growth first started, it also started considerable conflicts in terms of resource sharing. In order to have a control over resources (man power and nature power), European nation started vying with each other to win over more and more land and slaves for themselves. They justified their action with moral euphemism of “obligation to civilize the 3^rd world”, “proliferation of science and technology, economic growth” etc etc. Hence we started seeing a logarithmic rise of economic growth but as well as also the growth of moral degradation. As soon as world power established their hegemony, there was the elusive decline of conflict as the world order was established by suppressing the weak and creating immoral pact with strong (remember the straight line division of Africa?). We still has ample for everyone to share. But this illusion of peace was not maintained for long and soon we witnessed many wars including war for independence by different servitude nations along with 2 world wars as last attempt to hold on to ancient world order.

As we reached mid-20^th century, we reached at the verge of high economic growth along with least conflict as ideal of world peace, democracy and equal opportunity were forefront in everyone’s mind. This was the time we started moving from social democracy to economic democracy. Very soon we achieved peak of everything – economic growth, technical growth, scientific growth, conflict resolution. This is where we started slipping. We reached an equilibrium but we could not maintain that equilibrium. We kept striving for more growth that started coming at price of other inevitable aspects of civilization – environment, peace, spirituality.  Where we stand today? Environment is worsening, we are losing biodiversity, forest, wetland at ever increasing pace. Habitable space is shrinking fast. Resources inevitable for a quality life are depleting/disappearing fast. As resources disappear, concept of globalization will be damned forever. In order to have control on resource, people will start looking more and more inwardly. There will be more polarization in the name of nation, region, religion, gender, race, caste etc.  Rise of phenomenon of terrorism is the direct result of this. Until now we have been witnessing phenomena of group polarization in terms of terrorism or race/caste chauvinism. We still had weapon of our democratic ideal against such evils. But then the year 2016 came and showed us that the weapon that has saved us hitherto is no longer effective. The long tentacle of evil has wrapped us from all around and has started the process of choking us. And we still believe that we are living in exciting time and hoping for a bright future. But be aware, next 3^rd quarter of 21^st century is going to be the most trying time of all the 5000 years of human civilization.

I am not predicting doomsday, but that is not far if we still don’t wake up and start calling a spade a spade. We are still living in illusion that was created after 2^nd world war. We are still striving for what western country achieved after industrial revolution. But time has changed, circumstance has changed but we are still not ready to acknowledge it and still blindly following the path that has been laid out after the industrial revolution. Industrial revolution was break from medieval past and that break made us to move forward. What we need now is to stop and break from modern past and take a different route towards a different civilization.

At each and every moment, my mind is crying aloud “Stop Please” and, funny, even I am not listening.