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.