Not in my lifetime syndrome..
I see things black and white. I do not believe in grey really. Is that true?
This is what my food for thought was, the whole 30 minute or something walk home. After yet another mind-racing lecture on Environmental Law.
My lecturer, you see, is a pretty cool English bloke, some would say. He literally puts things black and white. He confirmed today what our fear has been all these years, The Indian fear. That these people here today are not really bothered about environmental problems. This world is really, an egocentric society. They are not,like us, driven by needs to protect our direct environment like we are.
All through the lecture, all I could picture in my head were families in a flood situation.Imagine-water filling up in cities. The rich guys in houses on stilts. High stilts. They are not really bothered with the floods. They might instead focus on selling products, handing them down to the poorer ones for cash. The poorer ones however are busy trying to drain out the water from their homes. Having frantic discussions in their drowning houses about what can be done to keep the water away. Grasping like a drowning man for any branch held out by the rich. The rich say, let us put more water into this, we will give you some stilts, lower than ours of course. And all the while, nature dissolves slowly into the rising flood.
CUTTTTTTTTT!
Am I really this pessimistic? Do I really think this? The truth is, I was being melodramatic- I chose not to really believe in my wise and well-read lecturer when he said, there were solutions. Because the rich countries are not so foolish. They know the limitation of their stilts. They know there is a limit to how high the stilts can be. That is our saving grace. The fact that, not all the rich guys would be out in their high huts sipping beer and watching the rest of the world slowly resign to the rising waters. And also the fact that we will not just stand like morons and let the water fill our lungs. We will fight. And we will die trying.
There is a flaw in me. I see things black and white. Really. If I were to be asked,' What is the solution to this? This chaos.' I would say,' Start over'. Start on a clean sheet of paper where all the countries and within them people have equal shares of everything. Where the economies of the world do not read like skyscrapers in New York city on a graph.
But this cannot happen. Atleast not in our lifetimes. So why fret over what could have been. And focus on what can be done.
Did I have a ONE solution then? That we can do now to wipe all the frowns and tears from the faces of every single person on earth and make them sing happy songs? No. I am not going to be winning the Nobel Prize for Peace anytime soon, finding that one solution. I am just going to sit back and absorb everything said and everything happening like a sponge. And then drain it out, hoping I managed to somehow got the solution as well. Like in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galazy. But unlike Arthur, I will not accept answers like '42'. I will look for deeper ones. Smaller ones in the meantime. Like wiping that frown from my dad's face by reading more serious books and writing more serious articles for once.
What say?
This is what my food for thought was, the whole 30 minute or something walk home. After yet another mind-racing lecture on Environmental Law.
My lecturer, you see, is a pretty cool English bloke, some would say. He literally puts things black and white. He confirmed today what our fear has been all these years, The Indian fear. That these people here today are not really bothered about environmental problems. This world is really, an egocentric society. They are not,like us, driven by needs to protect our direct environment like we are.
All through the lecture, all I could picture in my head were families in a flood situation.Imagine-water filling up in cities. The rich guys in houses on stilts. High stilts. They are not really bothered with the floods. They might instead focus on selling products, handing them down to the poorer ones for cash. The poorer ones however are busy trying to drain out the water from their homes. Having frantic discussions in their drowning houses about what can be done to keep the water away. Grasping like a drowning man for any branch held out by the rich. The rich say, let us put more water into this, we will give you some stilts, lower than ours of course. And all the while, nature dissolves slowly into the rising flood.
CUTTTTTTTTT!
Am I really this pessimistic? Do I really think this? The truth is, I was being melodramatic- I chose not to really believe in my wise and well-read lecturer when he said, there were solutions. Because the rich countries are not so foolish. They know the limitation of their stilts. They know there is a limit to how high the stilts can be. That is our saving grace. The fact that, not all the rich guys would be out in their high huts sipping beer and watching the rest of the world slowly resign to the rising waters. And also the fact that we will not just stand like morons and let the water fill our lungs. We will fight. And we will die trying.
There is a flaw in me. I see things black and white. Really. If I were to be asked,' What is the solution to this? This chaos.' I would say,' Start over'. Start on a clean sheet of paper where all the countries and within them people have equal shares of everything. Where the economies of the world do not read like skyscrapers in New York city on a graph.
But this cannot happen. Atleast not in our lifetimes. So why fret over what could have been. And focus on what can be done.
Did I have a ONE solution then? That we can do now to wipe all the frowns and tears from the faces of every single person on earth and make them sing happy songs? No. I am not going to be winning the Nobel Prize for Peace anytime soon, finding that one solution. I am just going to sit back and absorb everything said and everything happening like a sponge. And then drain it out, hoping I managed to somehow got the solution as well. Like in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galazy. But unlike Arthur, I will not accept answers like '42'. I will look for deeper ones. Smaller ones in the meantime. Like wiping that frown from my dad's face by reading more serious books and writing more serious articles for once.
What say?
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