We Have Forgotten Who We Are
We have forgotten our place in the circle of life.
Today as Covid 19 rips through the world in an unprecedented pandemic, I cannot help but wonder about our role as humans on this Earth. We have for centuries been abusing the planet, despite multiple warnings about climate change, population control, pollution, resource drain etc.
We have been on a trajectory of destruction justified by our own self righteous importance with scant regard for history and lessons from the past.
If anyone bothered reading Darwin and his theory of natural selection – his observations on the Galapagos islands are very telling. He says the animal populations self regulate themselves and are constant. Which means that something, somewhere controls their numbers. He also says that species survive based on their ability to adapt. It’s survival of the fittest. Literally law of the jungle.
Add to this, the understanding that we live in ecosystems that are interdependent and cyclic. We cannot live without the other and the system breaks down if one cog goes out of line, disappears or becomes excessive.
Today, we as a species, are arrogant, self righteous and smug. We think we are the kings of the world because we have conquered some part of the Earth. We think economic and scientific advancement equates good sense, ethics and values. Power and money today are what people yearn for – at any cost.
We use institutionalized religion to justify that we are supreme and that God created us as his greatest creation. Where are all these ‘facts’ stated? In books written by people, not the leaders who they claim to emulate. Take the Bible for example. There is nothing in it written by Jesus. It was actually compiled by human beings many years later and it was compiled at the Council of Nicaea which was convened by Constantine VI. The Bible was translated from Hebrew to Greek, Latin and then whatever Romance languages along the way. How much is lost in translation? Jesus spoke Aramaic. So his words are not even recorded in the language he spoke. Not only that, Christianity was born in the Mediterranean – the fertile crescent which had the most advanced civilization of the time. But today Jesus has become white and like everything else Christianity has been colonized and made as a weapon to be used for political gain. Don’t forget the crusades, don’t forget the Borgia Popes. Don’t forget the wonderful prophets of today who should be given marketing awards. It’s sadly the same with other major religions too. Warped for the use of the powerful.
Humans in their present form – Homo sapiens sapiens – have been on this Earth for almost 200,000 years but God decided to send his son / prophet or follower only about 2000 years ago? What happened to those humans before that? God forgot them is it? It doesn’t make sense. But those prehistoric humans, worshipped the elements – the sun, moon, stars, trees – all God’s creation. If you believe this world was created by a higher power then what better proof than the creations we see all around us? The mountains, rivers, waterfalls, forests, vistas, unexplainably beautiful and epic. Nothing man made has ever matched what nature has made. So what if God’s greatest creation was the Earth? Wouldn’t that make sense? The only planet in this solar system that has the climate and atmosphere to allow life and nature the way it does. What if man is God’s latest creation and not necessarily his greatest? Would that be a problem? It would be a problem to our ego. But in context it would make sense. To date, natural disasters have far greater power than human beings. We cannot stop tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, asteroids, droughts. But nature can. Even if you take the Bible – the story of Noah – he builds an ark against a great flood. Who sends the flood? Can the ark stop it? No but it can maneuver through it. Why didn’t God give man the power to rule the elements if Man was his greatest creation? Why are we interdependent on the circle of life if we are so great? Remember the dinosaurs that walked the Earth 65 million years ago? What happened to them? They disappeared and went extinct. Perhaps we should learn from that lesson. They were literally kings of the Earth. And now just mere bones and fossils to say a once great group of animals walked this Earth.
We have forgotten where we belong. We have forgotten that the Earth has survived for over 4 billion years and she will survive. It is we who won’t. And that is our great lesson from the one above. To remember our place in this world. To remember that we reap what we sow. And that we can all be wiped out in the blink of an eye. The day we learn that humility, the day we can bow down in the face of the greatness of nature, God’s own creation, that we depend so much on, then will we truly learn to live and let live. If we understand how small and insignificant we are in the greater scheme of things – look at the Milky Way and the billions of stars and planets in just one galaxy – understand that we are nothing. Absolutely nothing in the face of the creation. Then can we learn to live and be grateful for what is given. This Earth, this life, this existence. It’s not forever. Let that be our lesson these days.
