Terrorists

I really wonder who are the real terrorists! One county bombed some other country decades ago, which is till date the biggest bombing operation, with bombs per person on the land ratio, even more than any of the events during the World Wars! Even today, present generation in the bombed country is living under the terror of threat of being blown by a bomb in their garden. And now some other countries are being bombed and being threatened to be bombed by the same 'power', for real reasons that appear to be driven by economics and politics rather than 'bringing peace to the (rest of the) world'!

Haves, have-nots, and modern economics

In modern economies, the ‘have-nots’ spend their lives in aspiring to be ‘haves’ and end up only observing and celebrating the affluent and effluent lifestyles of ‘haves’. This economy does not allow proportion of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ to deviate from 1: 99. The simple maths it fails to understand is population keeps growing and with that, exponentially, the number of ‘have-nots’. How long would these economies survive against the pressure of billions who are forced with degraded ‘quality of life’ in the search of a mirage called ‘standard of living’…? I suppose what we are witnessing is a birth of that revolt against the modern economies worldover.  

Scale

With every passing day, it is becoming so evident to me that 'scale' is the most important virtue that is required to be considered no matter what you are dealing with. I am getting more and more possessed by the idea that nothing can be sorted out, physical or intangible, without a proper understanding the scope of the scales it is associated with.   

...I struggle to live like a human

I observe the delicate balance of natural systems. The incredible diversity of creatures that maintain the flows within the ecosystems and across them, in the complex tropical forests, in the driest deserts, below the glaciers and at the bottom of the sea. I read about fragile atmosphere of the Earth, held together by the delicate balance of Earth's just appropriate mass and gravity, exact distance from Sun and the perfect mass. I think about the life forms that called this planet home, and perished, only to leave behind a history of billions of years trapped in the sedimentary rocks.

It makes me dumb. Quiet. It becomes difficult for me to live like a human.
I struggle to live like a human...
And then, I look at the ever increasing 'GDP's of countries, the toxic chemical world that the developing and developed modern societies aspiring to get engulfed in, the malls, super markets, oil run trawlers robbing all the creatures of the sea, the countless cattle locked in the feeding quadrates and the cheap 'made in China' cars luring common people to aspire for the luxury. I get confused. I feel ashamed to live like a human.
I plan to research on how one can fasten the restoration of natural processes without any significant external inputs to invite the natural systems back on the devastated mined lands. And I see people passing through the walkway carrying bundles of print outs from the resource room, which I can only hope, they would at least read them all... I get confused. I feel dumb to be a human. I struggle to live like a human.
And then to me, human sorrows don't appear sad enough, joys and victories appear not even worth of a smile, the thoughts, emotions, and my whole existence as a human melts and disappears in thin air... I struggle to live the life of a human.

Sun

I always wondered why the Sun was referred to as the greatest of all Gods for a Hindu. As I grow up and know more and more about the Sun, it is so obvious! I am curious how the wise people from ancient India knew about it all. What I learn with that, is also how it all has been just a matter of chance. You, me, all the life on Earth, and all the life through Geological time of the past and future. Of all the 150 odd moons of solar systems, Earth's Moon is the only one, which along with its parent planet is at the 'exactly right' distance from the Sun and from each other, and are of 'exactly right' size to superimpose onto the Sun so perfectly during an eclipse. The Earth's perfect distance from the Sun, and Earth's own mass, together makes it possible to have the atmospheric envelope and just perfect gravitational pull to have the water preserved on the planet, to support all the life that ever existed on Earth.



Amazing!


So many nights I have spent wondering about this miracle and that boils up the philosophical questions.


Coming back to all these accidents of perfect mass, perfect distances, perfect balance of energy and water to produce further complex accidents like origin of life and its sustenance through Geological time, what do we understand about all these systems?


I sat down to write about how delicately the natural systems are balancing life on the planet, for a period well beyond our imagination and on the scale also beyond our comprehension. Would we ever know enough about how this all works around us and how it all has ben working around the same space over millions of years to be able to predict how it will change in the future to come?


Today as I was looking through the bus window at a small patch of grass on the bank of the Brisbane river and thinking about how everything is bound in a cycle of creation and destruction as I was listening to 'अंत उन्नतीचा पतनी होई या जगात... सर्व संग्रहाचा वत्सा नाश हाच अंत... जीवासमे जन्मे मृत्यू... जोड जन्मजात... दिसे भास ते ते सारे विश्व नाशिवंत...'


For a moment, all the depression captured me and everything from restoration, sustainability and yes, also 'mined land rehabilitation' all started appearing so very futile. A few miserable moments and I recovered myself. Boy, who gives us the right of interfering with the Nature and this whole drama? We, the humans, by no means have a right to disturb the 3.8 billion years rhythm of Nature and start changing things on such enormous scale. We better start putting the pieces of the Lego back, before the Natures discovers who destroyed his castle and breaks us the same way we are breaking his creation - with utmost cruelty and speed!


And as I thought about this, the bus stopped at another bus-stop and I felt huge respect for the tiny ants near the bus - stop moving randomly and haphazardly (to my naive understanding of their system), a creation of a 5 million year old process of Nature...