Sitting a chilling afternoon, I began to wonder.
Yes a chilling afternoon in an Indian summer, a corporate office. And yes only in such an environment where one's stomach is bursting with excess of food and one is troubled by created problems of affluence can one have such intellectual questions.
I am going to begin from the basics, food, water, air, clothing and shelter.
Food, the other day I bought fat chikus which were of the size of tennis balls. I had never seen anything like them before, and bought them out of fascination. I waited patiently for them to ripen, but they only rot. This taught me something, which I was still trying to understand. Why do people go for genetically modified or hybrid food products? I used to wonder, if it is already known that these drain all the water in the soil, make it unusable and are also bad for the health, why do people go for it? Here was the answer, with people like me being fascinated by anything un-natural and are ready to pay higher price for it. The choice is obvious, in the times when getting the basic price for agricultural produce is difficult, when a picture of a man in rags comes to mind when one thinks of a farmer, it can hardly be blamed. It is also obvious why people grow roses and exotic vegetables instead of food crops and divert the crops for fuel while millions of people are dying of hunger, and nations are dependent on importing food. Then who is to be blamed? Well I can only point to the system which values human beings on the amount of consumption. The world now encircles the people who consume the most.
Coming to water, I know a family living in the same house for sixteen years, the house had a ground water bore-well which was dug to 60 feet and served them for so long, now it is dry and the family buys water for their essential needs. Now the bore-well needs to be dug to atleast 500 ft for any trace of water. That is the rate at which the ground water resources are getting depleted. And the water is being redirected to the industries. Which in turn add pollutants to water. And I remember one of the basic lessons learnt in school, there is very limited drinking water in the world and most of which is in the polar ice caps, which we all know are melting at an alarming rate. Now if the ground water is gone, polar ice caps are going? The remaining water is being polluted, where do we expect to get our future supply of water from?
Air, the pollution meters keep registering newer heights of pollution and the parameters keep getting revised. And with newer inventions we have also invented newer diseases, newer medicines to treat them, another cycle of consumption.
Clothing and Shelter, these are the "higher" order needs much higher that the food, water and air. While those who are deprived of them any way do not have access to these, even those who have food and water are now slipping into being dependent for clothing and shelter. Thanks again to the economic system, which concentrates the wealth in the hands of few. The ongoing financial crisis has brought several thousands of people on to the roads.
Now this economic system, which is the biggest achievement of the past 2-3 centuries has failed to provide these basic requirements, what did it actually provide? I have a few more questions, I don't know if it is my cynicism I think the industrial revolution has done more harm than benefit. With the transport revolution, we have now come to a stage where the natural resources have been eaten up and the entire world's polity runs on finding newer places with resources and newer ways to dominating these resources. But isn't the world finite? How long can we look for new places? Wasn't the industrial revolution supposed to make our lives better, if we have found cure for diseases, we have also found newer diseases. And the cure still can only be afforded by few. I sadly say, atleast in the past people died an equal death, now even that is eluded.
Another question alert!! We keep on buying things, newer things every day. But these things wont dissapear from this earth, will they? The more we buy the more garbage we add to the world, now if this goes on, where do we put all the garbage into, afterall there is a limited supply of third world countries where garbage can be dumped and what about their garbage, they are not far behind in production.
Now I wonder what will happen if this continues, about 2% of people will be prosperous (as they are now) the hunger deaths will increase and probably science will now have to make food out of thin air, which will be available for the previleged few. Because the other deprived ones will not be peaceful, they will probably have to live in a bubble (most probably live extra terrestially, as the earth would be uninhabitable by then) and probably then there would be no countries apart from the class difference, and they would somehow have to sustain these class attacks until either the difference perishes or the difference creators perish.
Now what if this doesn't happen? What if we correct ourselves? Will we??
I somehow see it coming, whether we correct ourselves or the system perishes, one of these is just around the corner.