Dr APJ Abdul Kalam once said, “Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.” We are missing the message Dr Kalam had said.
It’s the dusk of 2020. At some point at the end of 2019, we thought 2020 would bring an abundance of success in our lives. We do this exercise every year! We live, we dream, we work hard, we reach our goals and we feel relaxed. Sometimes, we fail to reach our desired goals and do not equally offer the respect that the task deserves. We celebrate our success extravagantly, while we shy away from our failures, lock ourselves up in isolation and all hell breaks loose. The cycle continues!
Nobody would envisage something similar for 2020 — a series of lockdowns, the rise of distress of migrants, loss of jobs, increase in poverty and other facets of hunger and mental disturbances haven’t been much welcoming.
We all want a break, a change and a transformation, in the hope that the New Year is just a few moments away and would bring with it a bundle of good news, happiness, success, and more importantly, a defeat to the raging pandemic.
I am afraid we are not seeing anything as such. Neither sooner nor later.
We did a commendable job when we locked ourselves up in the last few months and allowed the rising greenhouse gas emissions to slow down, let ourselves to breathe the much elusive pure air. Wild animals and birds could taste their pristine wildlife habitats and become a part of a global cause to keep humanity alive stronger for today and tomorrow. But we have forgotten our resolves now because our business-as-usual attitude is back!
Just look around. Our quixotic thoughts and human stupidity are reflected everywhere! Our demon of over-the-top consumerism is back. We are over-adventurous without our safety-recommended masks. Streets are littered with all scraps from our overnight parties, only to be eaten by the poverty-stricken road of destitute the next morning. We connect with our so-called unconditional love in the digital world but never care for the one near us who is sitting next to us and suffering.
We do not do our house chores and just put them off. We have no idea what our mothers, sisters and others are going through and their mental condition that might be invisibly taking a toll on their lives.
Digital world citizens are full of “reel-feel-good-messages” – a world that looks forward to a paradisiacal world as if 2021 will suddenly pardon the assaults that human civilisation has committed to humanity and the planet.
This is how life today is: we wake up, we start to consume data, and more data, and then a data-full day makes us feel fulfilled as super-achievers and makes us believe that we have done a tremendous job. It is impossible to live if we aren’t letting the world know where we have been, what we ate, etc. The truth is we are living in a new colonised world, a new world of imperialism where our digital screens are our masters and we are their slaves. And we are the first colonial people who are, with all mindfulness, subscribing ourselves as slaves to this new colonial movement.
And I have come to terms with the reality that enjoyment in solitude and being at peace with nature is now a fossilised world. Our activities give us a small, non-existent leeway to appreciate the beauty of nature, sparrows, their chirping and the fresh air! Anyway, who cares about Mother Earth?
The aggressive mafia market showcases that “only coding can improve a child’s skills and aptitude and nothing else.” Today, learning about coding at the age of 6 or even earlier is much more important than someone learning to draw trees, mountains and houses on a sheet of paper or learning about kindness, gratitude and humility in moral science. Being an app developer is the only job left for a six-year-old.
In this fast-paced world, if we don’t teach kids coding, how will we then get our much-destined jobs at Google and Facebook? Let us welcome the kids to this rat race, the kids who are destined to live on a hot-earth with erratic heatwaves and destruction because our objectives of stopping anthropogenic climate change have gone for a toss.
So, folks, 2021 isn’t really going to be any different. We are going to be the same that we have been so far — be it in the beginning of 2020, the beginning of 2000 or, let me push back further, 1500 BCE. Our problems are the same and our reluctance to shape ourselves as a cosmopolitan citizen is way beyond our thought processes, except for a few.
Evidence suggests that the Indus Valley Civilisation had been a victim of a changing climate. Our climate is changing too! Women were victims of a patriarchal society then, and today too, any visibility of a positive transformation and upliftment is a far-cry! These issues have been existent since time immemorial.
Wow, don’t you think it’s quite fascinating that we have achieved so many wonderful things today, things that seemed intangible in the far past but we managed to break the threshold of science and technology and made human creativity reach the moon and the stars? Big things have been achieved and we will certainly continue to achieve more. How strange it is that the farthest of the universal things, say exploring Mars, has been a reality, while the nearest of the things, say our mind, is still out of our reach and comprehension. We are still unable to tame it.
Putting things into perspective from the last two millennium, I believe we have upgraded ourselves only materialistically and achieved some of the biggest things in today’s 21st century where artificial intelligence technologies such as Google Duplex can book an appointment with the physician’s clinic on our behalf; where reaching the Sun and beyond isn’t a big thing that India’s Aditya Solar Mission is all set to execute, and where CRISPR-Cas9 has the ability to edit molecular structures to produce an error-free genetic product. The art-of-sophisticated wonders of human creativity have streamlined our lives. This is amazing. A testament to the power that we have!
We aren’t upgrading ourselves in a comprehensive manner. Our inner self and the values of morality are nowhere to be seen. We don’t help. We don’t talk. We run away. We are blind to see the beauty of nature. Our extreme environmental assaults continue at a rapid pace. We aren’t in harmony.
Syria is still battling. Our homes are still full of domestic violence. Nations are closing down borders. Migrants are treated as bees. And peace is only to be found on our digital screens with the “like” dopamine. I don’t want to justify my opinion with data and statistics, as I hate them. Pain is personal. Data on the number of people who don’t have access to two meals a day or those who have been in stressful conditions cannot be quantified. We just cannot measure one’s emotions!
Thus, today, we are missing everything — righteousness, beauty, character, harmony, order and peace. And also an inspiring personality, Dr Kalam! Our habits are going to continue. And the world will still be in the same state of chaos. 2021 isn’t a panacea of anything, but only a Pandora’s box if we aren’t going to take a course correction for ourselves!