All is not well with civilisation

FE Team | Published: January 07, 2012 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Nilratan Halder
With the world players remaining unconvinced of the merit of taking immediate action for reining in carbon emission to the extent that limits global temperature two degrees above the pre-industrial level, the onus is now on environmental scientists, green activists and of course small countries like the Maldives and Bangladesh. Their compulsion is overriding because at stake is no less an issue than the survival of this planet. Political priorities -no matter if it is nationalistic or based on religious vengeance -- have been responsible for socio-economic pandemonium throughout the history of mankind. The Earth is still good enough to produce enough food for its population and even provide them with required material comfort. But man is the only animal that has refused to be governed by the law of Nature. Hence he has been in a continuous tussle with it to dominate it, manipulate it and even conquer it. It would not be fair to say that his effort has not been paid dividends but surely at great costs.
Yet man's advancement has been largely negated by his concentration on production of weapons of mass destruction. The research, experiment and development of such arms and their stockpiles have proved a huge drag on the world economies. At the end of the Cold War era, the rival powers have gone through radical changes in terms of political philosophy, economic theories and even social values. Some have embarked on costly programmes of colonising smaller countries strategically important or rich in oil and other mineral resources. In other cases, devoid of any ideals, skewed societies are battling with themselves. No wonder, therefore, that some of them are so unexpectedly in vicious turmoil from within and others are exposing that the gap between the rhetoric and the ground realities within those considered an El Dorado is yawning instead of narrowing. The world's killing machines are proving too hot to handle and the hidden diabolic nature of dispensation may unleash its arrogance against its own people as against those of other countries. There indeed lies the danger.
The world could be a completely different place if only its abundant resources were not diverted to production of arms and ammunitions in the name of defence. How can today's mankind claim to be civilised enough when actually different nations are still locked in an armed rivalry like the opposing and vengeful tribes? Beneath the veneer of peaceful coexistence in fact they are in a race to acquire superiority in terms of their destructive arms stockpiles. Had human beings been truly civilised, they would have been in a competition to outdo each other in intellect, achieving greater height in terms of abstract thought, poetic appreciation, philosophy of life, scientific invention for lessening human suffering and above everything else narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor and the privileged and the hapless.
This would not have been a tall task had the resources spent on weapons of mass destruction could be avoided. In fact, despite all his spectacular achievements in different areas, his knowledge has been dwarfed by his concern for security. The latest revolution in information and communication technology has brought to the fore that man can indeed avoid armed rivalry and the unity in diversity is no utopia. There are people who have long swayed world opinion by their simple philosophy of life. They have warned against avarice and accumulation of wealth because they knew the danger of limitless consumerism and material comfort.
Jonathan Swift did not satirize the human civilisation from different perspectives for nothing. He portrayed the values, norms and even the standards of size and shape in relative terms so that they assume different meanings in different settings. With so much progress, the mankind may indeed look pitiably poor and loathsome if compared to a civilisation in another planet or even of yore. The Brobdingnagians and Lilliputians are not just people in Swift's imagination, they are the variations of people roaming this planet. The size is just symbolic. Even in our personal life, we experience such irresolutely contradictory feelings when we discover ourselves in companies of people of greater and shorter stature in both narrow and broader sense.
Human insignificance and novelty or greatness does not actually lie in size and shape. It is the inner worth - not just brilliance of talent but that of enlightened mind - that really counts in the ultimate analysis. A Mahatma Gandhi and a Nelson Mandela did politics without being political men. They rose above politics and therefore could scale height that remains statesmen's dream. We need such people who can give us a vision of a world that will not be overexploited simply because of our worthless pursuit of wealth and comfort.
E-mail: nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com