Nobody Cares
When it happened, nobody cared. It all began with tribes and civilizations waging war. Sometimes to prove their superiority; sometimes to be territorial about resources. Lives were lost- wiped away in the sands of time. Almost of little value, women and children were slaughtered alike as nations rose and fell. Soldiers surrendered their lives in the name of nationality and religion, almost like they never mattered, passively pronouncing the superiority of the two. All for the larger good, they thought. Lost lives didn’t matter until the larger goal was met, they thought. There was glory in leaving aside all else as long as the best interest of the king or priest was met. Skip through a few millenniums and the bankers came. The medicis and rockefellers. Initially traders of sorts that worked in a corner of the city, soon to be rulers that pulled strings through financial instruments that redefined the destinies of entire nations. As science progressed and civilizations made leaps and bounds in sophistication, man found new means to ensure dominance over the planet. A ruler of sorts, he tamed animals and geographies alike to meet his needs. In the process, he also wiped out cultures. Aboriginals of Australia or the Red Indians of America are unheard of today, as their race was wiped clean, to pronounce the greedy’s dominance over the land the innocent possessed. Closer to home, in India, our education is filled with tales of heroic sacrifices and extreme brutalities by the British. It is almost as if this planet gave in to the desires of the one willing to commit larger crimes.
As industrialization approached, we automated the process through which we committed atrocities on this planet. Once a home to thousands of species was now cut down, to plant a single species of tree that created commercial returns. Land was raped to fulfill man’s desire to multiply produce from farming. Chemicals that were demonic in nature were fed to seeds, whose very fundamentals were manipulated through genetic mutations to fill tummies, or so they said. But that wasn’t the case. When the weather changed and ruined crops, nobody cared to mobilize food crops to the poor. Thousands died hoping for help. Their only crime, you ask? They played the damsel in distress to the State. The wrong prince charming had the damsel waiting forever in anticipation of rescue. While you are reading this article which brings together the virtual version, a farmer is committing suicide because the actuality was too heavy to bear. The melting ice caps did not bother them as much the changing weather conditions, the arctic and antarctic silently melted away from the heat of the world’s oblivion. Keep pumping oil, they said. Got to keep the system rolling to churn out profit, they said. What they don’t realise is, those profits are never going to bring back the animals or ice caps that this planet possessed.
Talking of oil, they even spent billions developing new means to eradicate communities without ever coming near them. Nuclear was too deadly, so they relied on remote controlled drones to surgically wipe out those they deemed a threat. In the process, they took down 5 countries over the last decade alone. Nation states that made the heinous crime of being resourceful enough to be of interest to the energy barons of our time. As the world looked upon images of children screaming out for help while buried in the remains of the very place they called home, it stayed back. Doesn’t matter as long as it is not close to home, said some. What they didn’t realize was that the crimes we committed on one end of this planet had its impact all around the globe. That planet earth is the only inhabitable place we know in the solar system. That there exists no place other than earth that can sustain life within man’s reach with existing technology.
This planet has for far too long borne the atrocities we have committed as a collective. Some of us would argue, but hey, I never took a life, never waged war — heck I don’t even harm animals. Yet, we stand guilty of silence to the crimes our ‘leaders’ commit to mother earth as we know it. The grim picture ? All of this comes to an end. Each time a disaster like the Tsunami or an earthquake comes, we realize man’s inability to stand strong in the face of nature’s fury. All of our resources cannot protect us from the imminent threats that face us today as a result of climate change. The sum total of gold deposits in our banks and every note ever printed together cannot bring back the natural diversity this planet once possessed. Isn’t that a little scary? For all our technological advances and material possessions, we cannot do what nature could over the span of billions of years while relying on the genius of random. That ought to make us more humble and remind us of the choices we make. Who knows, perhaps, when nature strikes back for all the sins we’ve committed, as echos for help vibrate across the universe in radio signals maybe, once again, no one would care. Because, when it all happened on earth, no one cared and man would be left to deal with the punishments for his doings.
Writer: Joel John
Editor: Diya Mathew
