De-cluttering

Nature is not with anybody. Neither is it against anyone. It’s for us to decide whether we are with it or against it. The onus is on us. Since we are merely its part, it suits our purpose if we go with it. Going against it means going against ourselves. But that is what we have been doing presently, especially since the industrial revolution. Our brains turned the crowns of our ownership of the planet as the sole proprietor species. The weakening of the overall system manifests primarily in the weakening of its constituent parts.

In a single-species environment, the rest of all subservient species get threatened with extinction, just like Corona virus imperils our cells. The exponentially growing species may think that it’s moving towards the crowning glory in terms of development, it’s in fact moving towards a pointed summit where maintaining a perch is impossible. So why move so laboriously towards a little point, only to topple down and start all over again after the crisis. Why not maintain a less ambitious broad high point, i.e., a plateau. The rise will be full of pause and the perch of pinnacle point will be safer and broader. Why do we aim for pointed summit which is unsustainable? Why can’t we raise the bar a bit less seriously and move to another plateau only at a higher elevation. I would say it finely graded growth. It doesn’t collapse rapidly.

Corona is now the most dreaded word. Corona positive is the most fearsome status. It’s stalking the entire humanity. The enemy is invisible and quite wisely we have locked ourselves in the safety of our houses. Meanwhile, the high points of our economic and financial hills fall down.

It’ll be too shortsighted if we just consider Corona as a malady in abstract. Corona isn’t something that has somehow surfaced randomly. It’s merely a symptom of the greater malady with the ecosystem, something to do with the entire earth. It’s just an indication that there are far bigger problems than what we may envision just looking at Corona.

Suppose there is a body having severely compromised immunity. Naturally, things are supposed to collapse. But there will be a trigger somewhere in some part, in some organ, to let the manifestation start. Corona is just one of the triggers that indicate the grievously harmed immunity of mother nature on the planet. Beyond the point of whether the Wuhan virus is lab-created by the Chinese regime or jumped out of inhuman gluttony cascading through live animal markets in China, the basic point is that it’s a symptom of an ailing planet. If not Corona, something x, y, z will unleash the same consequences. If not some virus, it will manifest through the virtual virus of human minds to create phobias, fears, greed, humongous egos and envy to catapult destabilizing forces to penalize the errant society.

Open-ended are the options for the effects to manifest in lieu of the cause, our unsustainable practices. The effects can manifest either through man-made mediums such as wars, civil strife, terrorism, natural calamities, or these can simply manifest through the rulebook of nature in their unseen, intangible ways. I am no perpetual doomsayer, but my only point is that with our awareness we should have known better. We could have done better. It’s not simply enough to go after inventions and discoveries. An equal amount of our energy and resources to estimate the consequences of our actions could have turned our practices more or less sustainable.

In the face of this pandemic, where are the earth-shattering issues like Brexit, trade wars, geostrategic brainstorms in top government offices to control regions, military pursuits, tensions on borders, etc.? If we can survive without them as we do during the lockdown, we can do the same even post-endemic. As we sit in silence after many decades, let’s just cast a look at the mountain loads of unnecessary things that we have crammed in our minds, houses and bazaars. Let’s start de-cluttering.