Man and Nature

Prof A N Sadhu
We are a part of the Universe. While making mother earth worthy of human habitation, it provided an environment around it to support human life and sustain it. Everything around the earth is living except rocks that strengthen its crust. The earth, the air, the water, the sky and the spirit jointly created the life on the earth and organised its sustenance on lasting basis. The theory of evolution elaborates the stages through which the human life has passed from its inception to its present status. Science and Social theories may differ on several counts on matters relating to human society but both seem to be blending agreeably on its spiritual essence. Science, Social, Philosophy and Economic Development are in consonance with each other and their composite effect explains the elevation of human society from one stage to another supposedly contributing to the augmentation of facilities that make human life more comfortable.
The Development has taken place at the cost of natural environment. While social thought significantly contributed to the evolution of an organised society, helping it to remain in harmony with nature and time tested value systems, the science, politics and Economics, seem to have failed to built-in this harmony in their profession over time. Science and Technology is essential for satisfying the basic needs of mankind but unfortunately its innovations have contributed more towards meeting the greeds of the mankind. Greed is the product of an urge to satisfy all wants, which becomes an unending process because all wants are not satiable and need not be; but in the madness of satisfying this urge, the science and technology seems to have drifted form its path of making life comfortable and not vulnerable. For last about hundred years or so, the focus has been to marvel in the production of mechanical devices of mass destruction, on one hand and on the other, to reduce a man to a press-button mechanical tool, leaving him effortless as a mass of flesh and bones. Human body was created to be part of the nature and not to be in conflict with it. The running condition of human machinery tended to be reduced significantly resulting into its rusting, loss of immunity and failure of its biological strength to fight against the external aggression – small or big. Science has professed a lot but, perhaps, in the wrong direction. It boosts of its miracles – the miracles that fall flat before a single stroke of nature. These are all instruments of devastation. The real miracle of nature is perhaps arriving soon, which, when it appears will swallow all the miracles of man and perhaps the man himself. Lot of investment has gone into unproductive and undesirable enterprises and not into building a strong security cover against the likely pit false, the type of which the mankind is currently faced with.
The political philosophy taught by the Greek philosophers was to develop a state-craft capable of administering a state and organising its subjects for an orderly and ethical coexistence. This has also been distorted by political opportunists to demolish an established order to grab a chance for exploiting it to meet their selfish designs at the cost of the common man. The worst of it comes when the self-styled intellectuals give twisted interpretations to civil liberties to hide their cynicism and mislead the innocent people. The established order, instead of being strengthened is sought to be weakened to the disadvantage of the masses. Although I am not a politician, nor did I ever intend to be, but what I see of contemporary politics, is a story of mischief, dishonesty and deceit, exceptions exempted, which should be troubling even the soul of those great philosophers who developed it in the service of mankind. The economists have developed the subject of Economics from its primitive ideas to full-fledged body of knowledge relating to planning and development. However, not much attention was given to the destruction of Earth’s natural endowment in the name of economic development. We levelled mountains, we changed the coarse of rivers, we squeezed the green spaces in the cities and towns and created concrete jungles, instead, resulting into denial of free flow of oxygen and safe drinking water to humans. We have encroached upon the animal habitats resulting in their on-slaught on human habitation which possibly could be one reason of spreading unknown viruses among humans. Unfortunately, not much attention was given to Malthusian thought. His fore-warning was brushed aside by concluding that industrial revolution negates his predictions. It was illogical inference and not a sufficient material to prove him wrong. Malthus was a Normative Economist and what he wrote had a strong ethical bases to explain his concern for quality living of successive generations. Unwise abhorenceof his timely warning suggesting use of preventive checks to regulate demographic transformations was wrong. These were his genuine concerns for human race wherein he wanted the contemporary societies to exhibit a responsible social behaviour towards building a misery-free futuristic societies. While writing his essay on population, four hundred years back, he had anticipated the occurrence the nature’s positive checks, the symptoms of which the world has started witnessing. The inorganic farming has already done immense damage to the earth’s crust. The water bodies and rivers are drying up. The climate change is causing serious concerns. The industrial pollution has assumed alarming proportions, the air pollutions is suffocating the cities and so on. Greed has overtaken the need, scarcities of essential commodities are imminent. The mankind is likely to face depravations of pure water, air and food stuffs threatening frequent occurrence of health crises in the future.
A new world order is in making. The direction of development has to change. The world will have to launch a fresh struggle for survival and direct its innovations to ensure safety against unforeseen occurrences of disease and deprivations.
However there is no scope for pessimism. There is need for learning the lessons. We will overcome this crises. We will meet again but with a resolve that we will not jeopardise the safety of our progeny. Let us not leave a legacy of impoverished world to them.
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