Sunday, December 10, 2006

Life on Earth

The more general a ‘rule’ is, the more powerful it is.

The large picture of 'LIFE ON EARTH' is this way. Life on earth consists of plants, animals and human beings. Plants live and probably communicate too but we do not know. They do not have enough control over their survival. They survive because they just grow in such large numbers and varieties and interest animals and human beings that we keep them alive.

Animals certainly do survive. They hunt or just pluck, eat and live. They do build some small community feelings. But the essence to their 'life on earth' is survival. They develop weapons and skills to defend themselves from enemies to ensure their survival. They do very little beyond that.

Human beings, though technically belonging to the class of mammals and hence animals, certainly are a different species. Not just because of the skills but WE are 'QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT' from animals and not just 'QUANTITATIVELY'. Which goes to say that we not just have more number of skills in different forms than animals but our 'life on earth' has a totally different 'purpose' and 'perspective' which animals don’t even get the scent of.

Essentially, 'life on earth' for human beings 'goes beyond survival.' 'WE EVOLVE'.

We know that lions have remained lions since ages and monkeys, monkeys. We are not the same. Human beings have grown and evolved along multiple lines over the ages. We have become more and more equipped with better tools for survival, become more and more artistic, become more and more knowledgeable, more and more peaceful, have improved our quality of life substantially, gone beyond the earth too to the moon and the mars too.

We are getting better at the way we 'survive' on earth. We today are looking to avoid attacks from beyond earth too if they do come, in forms as simple as asteroids or may be some other living species. We are at a stage that we believe 'WE CAN FEND OFF OR AT LEAST GIVE A STRONG FIGHT TO ANY EVIL THAT MAY STRIKE HUMANITY'. That’s as good as it gets for 'SURVIVAL'.

But where is it that we have 'QUALITATIVELY DIFFERED' from animals? We started as 'good animals'. God had not gifted us with weapons like the 'claws of a lion' or the 'venom of a king cobra' or the 'thorns of a porcupine' or the 'electric impulse of an eel'. He gave us just one thing, 'a powerful brain' and asked us to build the tools and weapons that we needed ourselves. We did and managed to achieve supremacy over most animals. We even used it to hunt fellow human beings for some time, being cannibals. But we got over that. We started domesticating some animals for our benefit. We anyway easily learnt the art of growing plants and even animals for our food. We were supreme. No questions asked. But we did not just stop at that.

We had another big enemy, OURSELVES. Man has been a big enemy of man for a long time. The slightly more technically advanced men went and set rule over other men, enslaved them, treated them as animals and extracted benefit from them too. Could there be a lower point in human history that this 'IMPERIALISTIC AGE'? We had dictators who executed whole sections of society. We waged world wars for supremacy over each other.

But then we came of that too. Today, we stand and realize the principle of 'DEMOCRACY'. 'MILITARISTIC IMPERIALISM' can survive no more. Those who still practice it in some small scale will also 'lay down their weapons' soon. We would be a more 'peaceful society' soon.

Amidst all this, other things have happened. Humans like no other species started using their 'strong intellect' to 'query nature'. Science was born. We found out 'gravity', 'electricity' and what not. We could do a lot more in a lot more efficient manner than earlier. The fight for that continues, as can be seen from a simple example of communication. From the days of 'sending men on horse back with letters' to 'calling through mobile phones'. We have spent energy to reduce the 'effort' spent on 'maintenance functions' so that we can spend more time on what we see as our exclusive ability and our goal, 'EVOLUTION'.

Query of things outside of us as stated earlier came to be known as 'science'. These outside phenomenon could now be summed up with simple looking mathematical formulae having such profound implications and could help us immensely. But the men from the 'east' took a very different approach to ‘EVOLUTION’. They 'looked within'. Looked at aspects concerning the very reason, meaning and necessity for our 'existence on earth'. Looked at questions about how much control we had on our lives, knowing that turmoil has always existed in each of our personal lives despite all else. That was the birth of the 'eastern philosophy', that which the 'east' always valued more than 'science'. Concepts like 'liberation from life' and 'mukti' were unfolded and the 'east' has inarguably come to be accepted as the 'seat of evolution of philosophy'. Not to say that the 'west' never looked at philosophy. The 'west' had its share of 'philosophers' but there still existed an essential difference in the 'philosophy' of the 'east' and the 'west'.

Two essential facets of 'EVOLUTION' emerged from the above. The way of the 'west' which looked at the issues and problems on the ground as they seemed to the eye, resolution of the same, improving our 'quality of life' and being able to do more and more like 'computing the incidents at the beginning of the universe' to 'developing nuclear weapons', 'predicting earthquakes' and 'flying planes' across continents. The other ‘way of the east' which showed man the 'path to personal evolution' through meditation to 'reaching liberation from the grinds of life'. The 'essence' of the 'eastern philosophy' can be summarized as follows. It said that 'Man has four essential facets', the body, the mind, the intellect and the 'soul'. The first three make up his personality and that is what is seen outside by others and often mistakenly understood to be the whole. The body is subjected to 'birth and death'. The 'mind' and the 'intellect' cannot be expressed without a 'body' and hence are as good as 'dead' without a 'body'. But it’s the 'soul', which is never born and is never to be killed that 'WE ACTUALY ARE' and the goal is to 'REALISE' that. This realization is called by different names as 'mukti', 'Nirvana' etc.

We have thus seen that human beings have come a long way since the age of the ‘Homo erectus’ and that the ‘Homo sapiens’ that we are, while being masters at ‘survival’ are surely headed up the road of ‘EVOLUTION’.

LET US ALL UNDERSTAND WHAT AMONGST WHAT WE SPEND EFFORT ON ARE ‘MAINTENANCE FUNCTIONS’ (FOR E.G. HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS) AND WHAT ARE ‘EVOLUTIONARY FUNCTIONS’ AND WORK TOWARDS BEING MORE EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT IN CONTRIBUTING TO THE LATTER. LET US NOT LOSE THE ‘GOAL OF EVOLUTION’ IN THE ‘PATH’, WHICH NEEDS US TO SURVIVE AND MAINTAIN OURSELVES.

LET ALL OF US REALISE THE ROLE THAT WE ARE PLAYING IN THIS PROCESS CALLED ‘LIFE ON EARTH’ AND JOIN HANDS IN THE MARCH TOWARDS 'EVOLUTION' FORGETTING THE BARRIERS IN BETWEEN US THAT HAVE RESULTED FROM A LACK OF THIS UNIFIED VISION.




HAIL HUMANITY.

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