I also wonder if the responsibility solely depends on the people who feel concerned, though it is all of humanity who will be responsible for any impending calamity.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
What if our truest beliefs don't hold?
I believe that what I study and what I want to work on will contribute to making this world a better and terminally sustainable place. I am sure that I am not the only one who feels that way. My fellow ecologists and other folks from all sorts of discipline--who are concerned with understanding the ways of living in an equilibrium with available resources--I think, do hold it in their hearts that our work will contribute something substantive towards sustainability. Oftentimes, during my readings or in the middle of a sleepless night, I feel concerned about the direction our planet is heading toward. But even in those bleak moments, I feel an undercurrent of hope and optimism that what I do, what other concerned workers do, will resolve the eternal conflict between human prosperity/existence and sustainability of resources/environments. What gives real chill in my spine though is to think what if we fail to deliver. If the concerned few--concerned with the shortage of resources coupled with decimation of human and natural populations alike in near future--cannot deliver on their hopes, promises and intentions, what will happen?
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3 comments:
So, I often feel like that, as you guys know. And often it makes me cynical or sad. The thing is I forget my optimism a lot more these days. My mother once told me "If you can effect one person that's big!" If you think about the task ahead of us, it is overwhelming, but I try to keep this thing in mind that mother told me. Like, if we can teach one person then maybe they'll pass it on. I dunno, we must be hopeful. I'm going to try and do better and be more optimistic. Maybe I can change ONE other person's attitude. ;-D Thanks for the post.!
Wendell Berry has a beautiful way with words and your words (Shafkat) remind me of what he says here. Mostly I love the line " the lives our lives prepare will live here." All we can do, is what we CAN do and if we will do it, then there is hope.
Vision --Wendell Berry
If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it...
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live here, their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides...
The river will run clear, as we will never know it...
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields...
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it like a grove, and memory will grow into legend, legend into song, song into sacrament. The abundance of this place, the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.
Shafkat:
Thanks for initiating it. Like you I encounter thoughts about the world around and wish to achieve something positive. The only difference is I get less and less people to share about those thoughts every day.
Being a member in the corporate community, I get to see a much more competitive side of the world and increasingly realize that preaching people for change is not enough.
I strongly feel that despite growth of academic studies about reversing the world's fate, the destructions are still going on with greater speed and the constructions are happening in a loose or un-coordinated fashion of course at a slower pace. So the gap widens every day.
I am concerned as the intellectual mass are yet to see any popular economic model linked with environmental protection. The concept of Sustainable Development is still debated. We need firm and viable answers to the energy sources, population management issue, industrial production, water resource distribution, availability of food and nutrition,etc across the world. We need to publish the model, practice it and convince the decision makers to adopt it, be it the goverment bodies or corporate.
Though I am not sure whether the academia have already worked out any such fully integrated economic model.
Frankly, ecology is yet to grab the center of attention in most of the parts of the globe. Even in the education system, it is still seen as one of those 'good to have' or 'potential for future' kind of subject to study. The parents are reluctant to teach these courses to their kids unless compelled, even in case of elementary schools. We have the duty of changing the scenario soon. Even if we cannot change the adults now, we need to prepare a whole new generation within 30 years time, so that when they grow up they shout for us.
Changing one person a day will take about 6 billion man days to convert the world's population. We simply don't have that much affordability, yet we need to touch everyone's heart to act constructively. We need some drastic but visionary measures to do that.
Wish that this blog does not stop at writing and tries to collectively bring positive change with all our thoughful optimism and forceful actions. Being selfish, I cannot wait for my next generations to get the results, I also want a share of it in my life time. So lets hurry and lead the way!!
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