According to ancient Sumerian tablets, a race of beings from another planet called Anunnaki descended on Earth in search of gold. Why they needed gold isn’t clear yet but they needed lots of gold. When the slaves they brought with them to mine for gold revolted, they extracted the genes of pre-human race of beings (Neanderthals, Homo Erectus) and combined with their own genes to create us. This is up for a lot of debate and in Genesis 1:26 in the Bible, God says “let us create them in our own image” where “let us” means there is no one God that created us. I am a believer in this story for two reasons:
1) Our natural tendency to look up when we pray which indicates the Gods we are worshiping came from above us
2) Unlike metals like iron, copper and aluminum, gold is useless to us. Then why take all the effort to mine it and why is it precious to us? Tons of gold have kept in a temple in India under the protection of the temple God for hundreds of years. This means gold is important to the Gods which is why it is precious to us.
Most importantly, the story is an indicator to us that we were created as biological robots to obey our creators. Why didn’t the Gods simply build mechanical robots for mining and why did they take all the effort to engage in genetic engineering to create us? Because they wanted us to think on our own and also have emotional intelligence. Why emotional intelligence? Because they wanted to control us emotionally and not mechanically. How? When we talk about Gods, we do not ask ourselves how did the concept of God and the fear of an unknown all knowing entity became embedded in us. We are in the 21st century and with so much of technological advances we are still under the control of Gods through various religions. There is nothing more advanced, complicated and powerful that can control us than the concept of God.
Do we have a similar controlling mechanism for the intelligent machines we are building? What would happen if AI grew to a point where it could think and act autonomously? The scene in The Matrix where Agent Smith tells Morpheus that human beings are the most dangerous virus on the planet has stuck with me. It is not only true that we do behave like viruses, if intelligence created by us becomes powerful enough to come to such a conclusion, what is shown in the Matrix and Terminator series will become real.
When I see all the excitement and euphoria over what AI can do all it tells me is how blatantly ignorant we are about ourselves and our past.
When established norms and widely accepted views are questioned and challenged, it has become normal to call them conspiracy theories. The term conspiracy theory has a predecessor. Heresy. Anyone opposing the views of the Church were branded as heretics and burned on stakes. Apparently more than 50,000 women who opposed the patriarchal rules of the Church were branded as witches and burned on stakes during the Dark Ages. One of the most famous ones is Nicolaus Copernicus who was admonished by the Church for his heliocentric theory which displaced Earth and put Sun at the center of the Universe. The most famous conspiracy theories that have been going around for the past several decades are about aliens and UFOs.
Two conspiracy theories have taken hold of the world from the time the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
1) The COVID-19 virus was released from the virology lab at Wuhan in China and it did not jump from the bats to us as we have been repeatedly told 2) The objective of the COVID-19 virus and the vaccines for it is part of the depopulation agenda, to wipe out most of our population
I have been getting bombarded with messages on social media about these for quite some time now so I finally decided to take an objective look at them. We know Copernicus was ridiculed and his work was banned for a few centuries before sensibility dawned on the scientific community as knowledge about science progressed. So it doesn’t matter if what are called as conspiracy theories are true or not. Throughout our history, majoritarian views have always been opposed and we have fought relentlessly for dissenting voices to be heard. An opposing view to an established norm allows us to look at the other side and maybe change or improve the existing situation.
So, Was the COVID-19 virus released from a lab? I would rephrase the question and ask “has our medical and technological knowledge become sophisticated enough to create and release a new virus from a lab?” We do have enough knowledge now to splice up our genes in the lab, not all genes but we are on the way. We are working on repairing defective genes which means we can get rid of genetic diseases. This means we must have developed the capability to manipulate and alter the genetic structure of at least some of the organisms. Medical community would endorse the need to play around with microorganisms so that new medicines and vaccines can be developed to fight potentially new diseases. But there is a catch here. Medicine is a profit making industry. Creating new medicines and vaccines is innovation for pharmaceutical companies. There are two problems with it.
1) The medical system we follow now is treatment based and not wellness based. Prevention is better than cure no longer holds water now. We have become too busy to worry about our health. Health is wealth has become wealth is health. There are hospitals and we have insurance policies. So we live with the belief that when we fall sick we will be adequately protected. The reality is nowhere near to it. Our immune system is and has always been our first line of defense. The caveat with the immune system though is, it needs to be constantly engaged with the natural elements. That is the only way it can learn about new diseases and variants of existing ones and develop immunity against them. Medicines and vaccines are boosters for the immune system, a tiny external intervention for the immune system to learn about new diseases and protect us faster.
2) When we fiddle with microorganisms and alter their genes in labs, no amount of safeguards are enough. If the virus manages to escape in any way, it will mutate immediately when exposed to nature. A disaster in the form of an epidemic can start off any time. Because of our global proximity now, it can become a pandemic in no time like we have seen in the case of COVID-19.
So can we mutate and create a new virus in a lab? Yes. Will we release such a virus into nature? We could. After atomic and chemical warfare, biological and cyber space are the new means of waging wars. Was this done with COVID-19 virus? We may never know. If yes, would there be a possible intent? Read on.
Now, is there something called a depopulation agenda? Well, apparently there was. Noah’s story of the Ark is not just a Biblical story. We need to understand a bit of history here. The authors of the Bible have borrowed heavily from ancient Babylonian texts which in turn were written under the influence of even more ancient Sumerian tablets. This is recorded history. Our history goes back even further than this. It is called pre-history. How do we know this? Ancient texts all over the world are written in verses. Pre-history was information handed down to the next generations orally because writing wasn’t invented at that time. What is created as a verse can be recited and sung. Its far more easier to remember and reproduce a story as a song than a remember it as a story.
I guess most people know of Noah’s story. Noah is the Biblical name the name is different in different ancient texts.
So the story goes that the creator Gods of humans left Earth and sent angels (watchers) to watch over our activities and report back to them. Our lifestyle became wayward with time, we procreated randomly creating genetic diseases among us, our population increased manifold and we caused huge destruction to nature. To add to the woes, the angels became enamored with the beautiful women, procreated with them and the children born to them became giants. When the Gods finally got wind of what was happening on Earth, they were enraged. They banished the angels from heaven forever and decided to cleanse the planet of us. So Noah was chosen and tasked with building a boat to house a pair of every animal. Then the world was swept over by floods and everything was destroyed. The plan was to eventually kill Noah and his family , but one God took pity and gave us another chance.
The situation we are in now is eerily similar to Noah’s story. Massive population, random lifestyle, genetic diseases and wanton destruction of nature. We are 7 billion now and the way we are growing we will likely add 2 billion more in another 20-30 years. The planet cannot handle anymore of us. More depletion and destruction of nature will trigger a full scale mass extinction event. Natural disasters will wipe out every living being as nature seeks to restore her balance. It is imperative that our population on the planet decreases significantly. A war will be nuclear this time and will destroy the planet completely. The only way out is large scale mortality through diseases. Here’s a small story to illustrate how larger population is detrimental to our survival.
This is a cat that comes home for food but doesn’t stay and is not domesticated. He came home sick last week. He isolated himself from all other cats, refused to have food and slept for two days. He banked on his immune system to fight off what had afflicted him and used all the blood in his body to power his immune system. He started having food only when he felt better. If we were doing this we wouldn’t be needing lockdowns. But we can’t because we cannot isolate ourselves completely from others because of our huge population thereby making everyone vulnerable to contagious diseases. This, along with the fast depleting natural resources has made our ever burgeoning population the biggest risk for our own existence and is a significant reason for our increasing mortality rate.
Most people above 60 years have comorbidities and life threatening health issues. A large population of people between 18-45 years are leading sedentary lifestyles. Their lives revolve around A/c houses to A/c cars to A/c office buildings in cities every day. Add poor eating and sleeping habits to this with little to no physical activities. These two groups of people have very poor immunity and are vulnerable to any new disease.
So is there an overwhelming case to depopulate ourselves? Yes. Nature controls population of organisms primarily in two ways: 1) Predator-prey relationship 2) Diseases. Our population increase began when we exited nature’s predator-prey food chain which was accentuated after we found ways to treat diseases. Through population control nature imposes the “survival of the fittest” rule on all living beings. Only the healthiest animals procreate and take their species forward. The whole exercise of yearly migration of animals is not just a journey in search of food. Only the ones that survive all the odds during the journey will return home and reproduce. The survival of the species is always important than the survival of an individual and it applies to all organisms. If our massive population has become a threat to the survival of our own species and of the planet then the only option left is to downsize it. Was the COVID-19 virus released intentionally to depopulate us? We may never know.
But the increasing oddities on the ground are hard to ignore. Manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines are demanding indemnity from any adverse short term and long term outcomes of administering the vaccines. That in itself is a huge question on the credibility of the vaccines. Masking, sanitizing and social distancing have to continue even after taking the vaccines, the reason given being current vaccines may not protect us from new variants of COVID-19 virus. If this assumption is true, we are all vulnerable to new variants of small pox, TB, etc. All the vaccines we have taken from our childhood are useless. I asked this to a doctor and all he could do was to smile.
Moreover, this is a video of a new mask that is being developed to protect us from COVID-19 virus. Sneezing is our biological response to foreign substances in our respiratory system just like vomiting is for our digestive system. When we sneeze we instinctively cover our faces. So the first line of defense for contagious respiratory diseases is masks. Governments have imposed using of masks on all of us without specifying what type of masks will protect us from the virus. Use of random masks will not protect us from any diseases. The logic behind making a mask for protection from viruses like COVID-19 is very simple. Either destroy the viruses on the inside or outside of the masks. Why did no government take the initiative to build such masks? Why did they start vaccination drives with vaccines the efficacies of which are not yet clear? Finally, are we saying it took us two years to come up with a mask and less than a year to make vaccines?
Ironically, if some among us were to indeed execute a depopulation program, it wouldn’t be the healthiest and strongest among us. Rather, it would be the ones with money and power, the ones who have the means and the wherewithal. It is money and power that decides how strong we are in society now and not our immune system. If the healthiest among us become casualties of the depopulation program and only the wealthiest among us with lesser immunity survive, where will this lead the future of our species to? Looks like a high octane topic of debate.
I am hoping that the COVID-19 pandemic and the two conspiracy theories will start entrenching in all of us the need to improve and strengthen our immune system and the realization that only a strong immune system will make us healthy and protect us from diseases. About the rest, let the debates and flow of social media messages continue.
I was on my regular morning walk yesterday looking to photograph anything interesting happening in nature when I suddenly heard a short whirring sound which sounded familiar. I looked around and saw a huge mounted electric transformer on the side. It was the deathly sound of a bird getting electrocuted. Because of overhead transmission cables and transformers kept in the open, house crows keep getting electrocuted all the time.
The crow that was with the one that died was in total shock and was making different kinds of sounds. Helplessly I stood there for a while wondering why do we create and construct things that we know will harm animals but do not care. So many different types of birds die every day because of our fishing nets alone. Why do we have scant respect for nature and animals?
When we look back at our history, we start from the point where we were afraid of everything we did not understand. We do not know when and why but we started worshipping natural elements like fire, rain, thunder and lightning and animals by creating Gods for them. The most probable reason is lack of scientific understanding of natural elements and the higher sensory abilities of animals. This is what became known as paganism. Though we started cultivation and raising livestock with time, in the name of worshipping all the Gods, we conserved and protected nature.
But pagan cultures developed deep flaws with time. To understand and relate to Gods, we started reducing Gods into human forms which resulted in idol worship. Emperors and Kings started calling themselves as Gods on Earth who could communicate with the Gods that were being worshipped. All of these eventually led to the evolution of monotheism, the concept of one God. Monotheism, introduced by Christianity became dominant with the advent of Islam and spread all over the world. As the world gradually moved away from pagan culture, it has had a significant impact on our perception of nature and wild animals.
Then, there is this critically important part in the Bible.
Genesis 1:26-28
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion (7287) over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it (3533): and have dominion (7287) over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.
First of all, the first 5 days of creation as explained in the Bible does not have scientific merit. The Earth and everything we see about it has evolved over billions of years. Then, God says Let “us” make man in “our” image, after “our” likeness. So “God” apparently is made of blood, muscle and bone and looks just like us. Note the usage us and our. So it was not just one God. There were others who were equally powerful as the God and powerful enough to create us. This is a question mark over the concept of one God espoused by Christianity.
Then comes the most important part of giving us the control (dominion) over the planet and all other living beings. To have such control, we needed to possess far greater intelligence than all other living beings on Earth. We have to notice here that we have been given the ability to control only the living beings, not the ability to control nature and natural elements. This could be the reason why we cannot understand natural disasters in advance and cannot escape from them. To understand nature through animals may be the reason why we were given control over them. It may have been left to our interpretation and could be the decisive factor in determining the survival or extinction of our species. We cannot destroy nature and other living beings and survive on the planet. We were given intelligence so that we can understand this as we evolve. This is why by destroying nature and wild animals we are setting the premise for our own extinction.
While I do not intend to state that the Bible is the reason why we are destroying nature and killing off wild animals, the shift from pagan culture to monotheistic belief has definitely had it’s influence on how we see and treat nature. With the tremendous growth we have achieved in science and technology especially in the last few decades, we need to urgently start looking at nature through the lens of logic, commonsense and rationale and understand ancient texts from the scientific perspective.
Now that Hindu God Ram is in the limelight, it is a good time to take a look at the Gods on the planet. Texts from ancient civilizations all over the world are replete with references to Gods. There are some Gods who descended to Earth directly and some who came in different living forms as their incarnations. Gods have very powerful meaning and it is very interesting to compare between Gods of different civilizations.
First of all, there is a troika or Trinity of Gods in most of the ancient civilization. Anu, Enkil and Enlil in ancient Mesopotamia, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades in Greece and Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in India are a few examples. These are all powerful Gods and represents creation, preservation and destruction of life and the Universe itself. But the Trinity of Gods in different civilizations are not comparable to one another. For example, Hades is the God of the underworld but Shiva is the destroyer of life and the Universe.
The Indian pantheon of Gods are far better and meaningfully structured with clear delegations to their roles. In the Greek Trinity, Zeus controls thunder and lightning and Poseidon is the God of the oceans. But in the Indian Trinity, only Shiva has control over natural elements. He controls fire with which he destroys and then uses water from the river he controls in his hair bun to help create life again. Then there are a plethora of Gods for natural elements and other aspects such as knowledge, wealth, etc. Shiva controls water and fire but both have its own Gods.
So why so many Gods in India? It is human nature to give divinity to forces that are powerful and incomprehensible. When we didn’t understand the forces of nature, we created Gods out of all of them. Indra is the ruler of heaven and the God of rain and thunder, similar to Zeus in these aspects, but Zeus is the most powerful God in Greek texts. My granny used to say that the rumbling of thunder is the sound of giant vessels being rolled in heaven for cleaning after they were used to cook food for the Gods. When monkey king Hanuman, as a child, played a prank on Indra, he used a powerful weapon which made Hanuman unconscious and fall to Earth. Maruti, the God of wind and father of Hanuman, in his rage pulled away all the air on the planet and released it only after Hanuman became conscious again.
So what are Wind God, Fire God, Water God, etc? From the story of Hanuman, these could be human or non-human entities that have the ability to control the natural elements. Then there are planetary Gods. A Sun God could be an entity that can control the effect of Sun on our planet. Then where are these Gods? Krishna, when he left for the heavenly abode had apparently said that in the Kali Yug, only he can hear people’s prayers which means the Gods do not have access to our planet during the time of Kali Yug. Then there are animal Gods, like Hanuman the monkey God, Ganesh the elephant God, Vasuki the serpent God, etc. Also, most of the Hindu Gods have animals as their vehicles.
Until the Gods are found and all of these are proved, I will go with a more rational interpretation. Every natural element is important to the existence of our planet. Every form of life is important for the sustenance of nature. The electromagnetic fields of celestial bodies in the solar system exert their influences on our planet and on our lives so this also needs to be understood. It is impossible to make each one of us understand the science behind nature and the cosmos and create respect for them in us, so the best and easy way is to represent them with Gods.
Then there are Gods like Ram and Krishna. Fierce warriors, virtuous kings and extremely popular among their people. Through time, hero worship turned into bestowing divinity upon them and treating them as Gods. Among the Trinity, Brahma the creator God is not worshipped by Hindus. Divinity is given to heroes by associating them with either Vishnu or Shiva. Ganesh the elephant God is considered to be the son of Shiva and there is a story woven around it. The best example of how heroes become Gods is the story of Ayyappa.
During the churning of the ocean of milk (a metaphorical story for the creation of the Milky Way), demons get possession of the pot of elixir that materializes out from the ocean. To steal it from them for the Gods, Vishnu disguises himself as Mohini, a celestial beauty and enamours the demons. The plot ended there but was later extended to include the part where Shiva gets infatuated by Mohini and a child is born to them who becomes Ayyappa. He was supposedly a Robin Hood styled hero in a tribal belt whose stature grew with time and eventually became a God when he was associated with Vishnu and Shiva. This is how the Hindu pantheon of Gods grew to 33 million.
For the longest time, Hindus chose to look at nature and the Universe through the lens of divinity. But India has embraced cultures from all over the world through thousands of years. Hindus can worship cows in the name of the mythical cow Kamadhenu but they cannot enforce this on say Christians who go by the Bible which says man was created to rule over the lands, seas and all other living beings. The rise of Hindu nationalism in India is ironical. On one side, the nationalists want to take Indian society back to the time when every aspect of life was determined in the name of Gods and on the other side they are enamored by western culture, aspire to live in western countries, teach their children in western universities and avail the best benefits the western society can offer.
I am a Hindu and I grew up going to temples and listening to stories about Gods. I also learned science and it became difficult after some time to see natural elements from the perspectives of science and divinity simultaneously. I have never needed to remember a God to respect something in nature. I am completely crazy about elephants but that love has got nothing to do with the elephant God Ganesh. I look up to Ram and Krishna for the qualities they possessed and aspire to become strong and wise as they have been described. Praying to them should be to inculcate the qualities they had in us. Building temples in their name, begging before their idols for worldly pleasures, using abusive language as a ruse to protect them and chanting their name when assaulting, lynching and murdering others amounts to insulting them and giving them notoriety.
Ram will be appalled that he will be remembered with disgust by future generations.
Haven’t we all wondered at least once in our life why we are such a violent species? What are the origins of humanity’s seven sins? Or have we even pondered over these, ever? Rapes, cold blooded murders, looting, arson, hooliganism, the comprehensive list ends with the use of atomic weapons. Right from bullying and ragging in schools and colleges, we have all accepted violence as part of our societal life to the extent where men who cry and cannot endure physical pain are ridiculed and looked down upon. What is important here is, we have been incomprehensibly brutal to our fellow beings. Why?
Animal world is brutal without doubt. Animals have evolved to survive all conditions on our planet. But animals do not kill their own kind other than for mating rights and on extremely rare occasions. Territorial disputes do occur but that gets over in fights and not deaths. Moreover carnivores exist to control the population of herbivores which in turn prevents wanton destruction of vegetation. The perfection of nature’s design is in the fact that carnivores have taste buds that are evolved only to eat meat and not evolved enough to understand the taste of flesh and blood or rather the lack of it.
Human history is replete with violence against its own kind and if we look at our history closely, our evolution has been more significant for the destruction of fellow beings. From wooden to nuclear weapons, we have spent bewilderingly copious amounts of time, energy and intellect in creating and perfecting weapons to use against ourselves. We glorify ourselves for the manner of our evolution from cave dwellers to the technological advances we have been able to achieve in present times, but we do not talk about what we have done against ourselves in the same breath. From Egyptian civilization where soldiers were killed to supposedly travel with their dead Pharaohs in their afterlives to how the entire group of people and soldiers who dug Genghis Khan’s grave was butchered to keep his grave a secret (for reasons still unknown) to the Crusades to African slavery to all the wars especially World War I and II and the atomic bombs we dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our brutality against our kind is dumbfounding. What is more mind boggling is, we use our superior intelligence to annihilate ourselves whereas less intelligent animals know how to protect and conserve their species. Have we ever wondered why or what drives us towards this unexplained behavior?
The primary issue is in the understanding about the origins of humanity. The conflicting theories of human creation and evolution makes it all the more confusing. If we believe in the theory of evolution, there is a massive gap in our evolution that science has not been able to explain. Our intelligence has literally exploded in our evolutionary timeline in a very short period of time and more bewildering is the development of our communication skills especially our speaking ability. There is also the question of how apes evolved into humans all over the world at the same time. There are no more evolved and less evolved humans among us. If we believe in the creation theory, the story begins from Adam and Eve and they supposedly had 3 male children. Now hold on to this thought and then look at the whites, blacks, orientals and all the numerous types of human beings. What is the probability of such humongous human evolution from 3 siblings and that too without any women to procreate with?
Ancient Sumerian texts explain in detail how the less evolved versions such as neanderthals were genetically manipulated by aliens to create us in our present form. That can explain our evolution in intelligence and communication. But how did we start looking so different, developed different societal ways of life and most importantly, where does this violent streak towards our own kind come from?
Looks like the secret lies in the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. There were just humans at the time and not different types of humans. The story goes that the humans decided to build a tower that would rise so high that it would touch the sky and be the bridge between earth and heaven. What does this story indicate? It could be a metaphor for the fact that human development had reached a point where it was at the threshold of becoming equal to that of the creator Gods. So the Gods decided to punish the humans by corrupting their minds and destroying their unity. This video explains it all (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_mTsX6jovc). Now this could also explain why we ended being whites, blacks, orientals etc because the same Gods must have manipulated us genetically, created different versions of humans and scattered us all over the world. To add to this, corrupting our minds against one another is where the origins of our violent streak could lie. The premise must have been that the Gods did not want humans to become their equal or it could be that they believed humans were not ready for what they were aspiring for at that time.
Question is, do we need to believe in yet another fable? We do not need to, but the results are before us in our history. Have we ever wondered why we have so many religions? We could say that newer religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam have more and improved rules for human existence in society but what have they ultimately done? Fragmented humans even more. Now what we have is situations like white Christians fighting white Muslims. Lower caste Hindus cannot drink water from wells “owned” by upper caste Hindus even in the 21st century. Same skin color so caste became the divisor. Psychological assessments of hardcore criminals have revealed that they are themselves not able to explain how they committed the gruesome acts of violence and have no comprehension of their state of mind at those moments. We are all supposedly having genetic information from 7 previous generations. What if the violence was coming from an ancestral gene acting up? Money and wealth tops all other divides now and two new groups of humans are getting created, the haves and the have-nots.
So what can we do about it? Understand ourselves first. We are endowed with unlimited intelligence and resilience. We have always been able to absorb all the after shocks of violence and move on which is why we are where we are now. Every problem has at least one solution but to find the solution the first step is to accept that the problem exists. We have to accept that though we are segregated by many factors, we belong to one species called Homo Sapiens. We have to consciously start look beyond monetary, political, religious and all other differences that separate us.
It could also be that the creator Gods have put us to our ultimate test. Overcoming all our differences and uniting as one species could take us to our next stage of evolution. Maybe that is when we will be able to successfully build the tower of Babel or whatever it represented. Advanced civilizations like Atlantis supposedly failed because even though it achieved technological heights it may not have had a united population of people. All ancient texts talk about the return of someone, Kalki in Hinduism, Jesus in Christianity and so on who would return to unite all humans. If we use our intelligence and commonsense we do not need to wait for anyone to come and remind us that we are humans above everything else. The choice is and has always been ours.
The fact that climate change and its potentially disastrous consequences if left unresolved has been a hot topic of debate for quite some time now. Even school going children have greater awareness to this threat to our planet and our survival. On March 15, they took matters into their own hands. Tens of thousands of them around the world skipped their classes and took to streets to demand greater action to control pollution and save the environment from their governments and world bodies.
Why has the focus on climate change increased? One reason is because scientists and researchers have comprehended that the 6th mass extinction event is underway on our planet. The trademark identification of such an event are the increasing cases of complete extinction of many species of animals because of the overpopulation of one or certain number of species.
Population explosion of humanity and industrialization, especially in the last 100 years has exponentially increased green house effects. But what many people do not know is that this is not the first instance of our planet experiencing the drastic and adverse effects of green house effects. Herbivore dinosaurs had chomped their way through massive forests and expelled humongous amounts of methane gas from their belly after digestion creating massive greenhouse effect.
I had attended a seminar on wetland conservation at the Agricultural University in my hometown a few weeks back. One of the speakers was a researcher on greenhouse effect and he did an excellent presentation on the topic. But I realized that one critical factor was missing from his presentation. If our planet is in the midst of the 6th mass extinction, it means complete destruction of our planet and all its beings has happened five times before. Each time nature has been reset and life has taken roots again. The last time it happened dinosaurs became extinct. But interestingly, crocodiles, cockroaches and turtles survived. So if it happens again, can we survive and what will it take for us to survive? I asked the speaker these questions and he admitted that he had never considered those aspects in his research.
Interestingly, I found the answer to my question on social media the next day itself.
The arrival of the Spanish Inquisition in Central America in the 16th century and the subsequent destruction of the thriving civilization of the Incas resulted in the Amazon forest reclaiming its lost land to people. The unintended effect of this reforestation was the drastic drop in temperature in Europe in the 17th century and large number of people dying because of unbearably cold conditions. We keep adapting to small increases in temperature and changes in weather conditions without realizing that the overall impact of the changes is considerable. Only when the changes are reversed by nature will we know what its effects will be on us.
The floods in Kerala and the destruction it caused is a fresh reminder of what can happen to us when nature resets itself. Kerala has traditionally been a rainfall abundant region because of its proximity to the Indian ocean and Western Ghats. I have learned in school that after Cherapunji, it is Kerala that receives the most rainfall during monsoon season every year. In spite of this known fact, people encroached into low lying areas to build their houses.
While rainfall in Kerala has decreased considerably in the last decade or so, it never meant it would never rain like before. When it did rain, water had nowhere to go. So where water could flow it swept away everything in its path and where it couldn’t flow it got stuck causing massive floods. There was also an enduring image circulating on social media of a bridge filled with plastic bottles and containers, which the water had deposited back on to land.
So mass extinction and resetting of nature has been an ongoing phenomenon on our planet. We can blame human overpopulation and wanton industrialization for climate changes now but that has always been the problem with dominant species as the dinosaur case illustrates. We are the only species on the planet that destroys nature’s ecosystem to create our own. No animal cuts trees to make its own shelter.
Animals adapt to what is available in nature. The reason could be that we were created to rule over nature and not protect it as the quote from Bible suggests. In Genesis 1:26, God says, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to RULE over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.”
The question now is how to control our effect on climate change. I believe we are a little too late to think about it. A few billion of us have to die off to restore parity in nature. But there is a catch here. The few billion of us have to die without disturbing the nature, which is impossible without a natural calamity on a massive scale or a man made disaster like a nuclear war. There is an analogous situation happening right now. Flickr, the online photo sharing community has created a new rule which restricts its free users to upload and retain only 1000 photos on its website. The difference here is, nature cannot tell us the size of the human population it can manage. The onus is on us to find it out, reduce our population accordingly and keep it below the threshold number.
Sounds ridiculous right? We cannot wipe off our own population that too on such a massive scale. What we can do is control our population growth and not increase our negative impact on nature anymore. One purpose all species procreate is to stay dominant in nature. We do not need to procreate like other species anymore. All of us do not have to leave our own unique genetic imprint on our population.
There is something more left for us to do though. Humans have been trying to understand nature from the dawn of our existence. Exponential technological advances we have made has helped us to investigate and understand every aspect of nature closely. Even then, we are restricting our research to simply collecting data about nature. The more we learn about something it is natural that we also learn how to control and manipulate it. This is how the field of medicine has grown and how we have learnt to treat diseases.
But surprisingly, other than cloud seeding to create artificial rain, we have not been able to control weather and climate changes. There are places in our country like Kerala which receive abundant rainfall and other areas which suffer from extreme drought every year. All government departments and research institutions watch this unfold every year helplessly. None of them have even wondered if it would be possible to distribute rain clouds or rainwater to all parts of the country uniformly.
There is a story in ancient Indian texts about the young Hanuman who leapt into the sky to catch the rising sun to play with it. Indra, the God of lightning and thunder, in his apprehension threw the Vajrayuda (thunderbolt) at Hanuman who got struck by it and fell back to earth unconscious. Maruti, the God of wind who was Hanuman’s biological father got enraged and pulled out all the air flowing on earth and relented only after Hanuman’s health was restored. The takeaway from this story for me is that air flow on our planet can be controlled. Ancient Indian texts are treasure troves of extremely advanced technology and interpreting them correctly can answer and solve most of the problems we are facing now.
There are primarily three obstacles we are facing for space exploration and one of them is creating and controlling weather conditions suitable for us on other planets. The key to this lies in greater understanding and controlling weather and climatic changes on our own planet. The fact that children are speaking about climate changes reflects poorly on their parents and exposes the ignorance they have on the subject. People have to start talking about solving social problems and these discussions have to start from educational institutions. The research that the speaker did on the greenhouse effect creates no value because all the effort he put in does nothing to help humanity. What is the objective of doing research on any subject if it is not helping in the survival and evolution of our species?
The Church has crossed all boundaries of blasphemy with the recent revelations about the string of sexual abuse cases in Kerala. I am writing “The Church” to represent all churches in India and across the globe. Accusations of sexual abuse from inside the hallowed walls of the Church have been flying thick and fast from across the world in recent times. I am not a Christian but I have very good friends who are Christians and I do not intend to hurt their religious sentiments in any way with this article.
I had come across an article sometime back stating that religions and especially Christianity is dying in 10 countries. When I was in the Netherlands I had noticed that people were mostly not inclined towards religions and did not engage in discussions about religions. So why is this radical shift happening now? Here is my take on it. Netherlands has a progressive and prosperous society and as they reached the present level of maturity as a society, their tendency to attribute the highs and lows in their lives to external influences must have also decreased. Every religion advises us to live good lives, work hard and become successful and not hurt anyone intentionally. These are basic human values and need not be associated with any religion which is what I observed during my time in the Netherlands. Further and latest endorsement of this is Canada banning all teachings of Christianity from classrooms.
The crux of the matter goes far deeper though. There was no religion called Hinduism till idol worship started in the Kali Yuga as mentioned in ancient Indian texts. None of the Hindu Gods have created Hinduism. Vedas were written to define and streamline the erstwhile society but they do not define Hinduism as claimed by the proponents of Hindutva. Similarly Jesus Christ did not create Christianity and the Church, his followers did. Now here’s the thing. Jesus is referred to as the son of God, so there is God, Jesus and then the Church in Christianity. Jesus never claimed to represent God and neither created a religion called Christianity nor the Church so I believe the Church cannot claim to represent him just like Hindu temples can have idols of Gods but cannot claim to represent any of them. It is a known historical fact that Constantine, the Emperor of Rome integrated the followers of Jesus into Rome and gave shape to what would become a new religion called Christianity. Now the question is, where to put our beliefs. Before Lord Krishna left earth, he had advised that in Kali Yuga, only He can hear people’s prayers so people need to pray to Him. Since Jesus is mentioned as the son of God, praying to him will be the way to reaching out to God. But going by my statement that the Church cannot claim to represent Jesus, is adhering to the diktats of the Church the way or the only way of reaching out to him?
There have been many issues attributed to or plaguing the Church through the course of it’s existence. Thousands of free thinking women were supposedly branded as witches by the Church and burned on the stakes during the Dark Ages, best exemplified by the story of the Joan of Arc. The Church also ignited the Crusades by persuading Britain and France to send their armies to Jerusalem to free the supposedly Holy Land from Muslim rule. Jerusalem was portrayed by the Church as a land flowing with milk and honey but was actually the barren arid land it still is. But the most contentious one I believe in the present times is the rule of confession. The neighborhood around every Church is under the hegemony of the Church’s priest, commonly addressed as father. The fathers are supposed to know everything that is happening in every Christian household under their watch. Done wisely and honestly, this practice amounts to uniting all those families into a community. Treating the father as a mentor and guide and confessing to him about our circumstances and actions, taking his advice and him praying on our behalf are all great practices. But to me, making confessions mandatory is nefarious and not well intended. Religions are never supposed to enforce any rules on its followers. The risk is always there that we could become hostage to our own words in case the father we are confessing to turns rogue. This is exactly what has happened in one of the latest sex abuse scandals to hit the Church. A union minister in the capacity of being a Christian has waded into the issue and is trying to gain consensus to rebuke the attempt by the National Women’s Commission (NCW) to ban the practice of confession in churches (https://thewire.in/women/reject-ncw-recommendations-to-ban-confessions-in-churches-alphons-to-pm). My take here is that the practice of confessions should only be by the free will of people and enforcing it upon them amounts to controlling and enslaving them to the Church which is draconian and law of the Dark Ages and should not be allowed to continue.
I have always felt a sense of vulnerability at young girls and women joining or made to join nunneries under the Church and spending their lives supposedly in the service of God. It places far greater moral virtuosity on the male dominated structure of the Church than is logically comprehensible. Now that this incident of sexual abuse of one nun has come out in the open, the premise opens out that more nuns could have been the prey of sexual abuse for decades or even centuries and they were hushed up and made to suffer silently in the name of Jesus and for the sake of Christianity. Though many serious and satirical movies about the state and affairs of the Church in Kerala have been made in Malayalam, one movie, The Romans, deserves special mention here and is worth a watch.
I am wondering what might Jesus be thinking if he is indeed watching all of what is happening from somewhere. My heart melts at the thought of a poor shepherd who had chosen to teach people to live well, not hurt each other and had died for them and what has got created over the centuries in his name. True followers of Islam have always maintained that none of them can indulge in violence especially against their own kind and the ones who use violence are not followers of Islam. I am inclined to believe this because no human being who prays diligently for 5 times a day can detach himself/herself from the spiritual world and embrace violence. Similarly, the Church can no longer hold on to it’s claim of representing Jesus and continue with it’s orthodox, male dominated structure and let damning incidents such as sexual abuse of women and children happen under it’s umbrella. Every organization and practice needs to be revamped and revised to stay relevant as the society evolves and no religions are exempt from it.
Jesus Christ deserves far better for giving up his life for our sins.
The Apex court of India made a landmark ruling yesterday, setting aside the triple talaq system in Islam and making it viable to be made into law. The BJP is espousing it as the fruits of their labour though no political party has ever moved a finger to take up the cause till now. I have been coming across many influential Muslim women hailing the judgement, but I am not able to see the true benefits.
Before I get there, a little peek at history. According to ancient texts including Bible, Gods created us and then some of the Gods themselves had children with women (who were born as Giants). Mankind was mating randomly like animals creating many issues including genetic disorders. That’s when the Gods decided to destroy earth and make a new start with the help of Noah. Then societal rules were formed and monogamy was enforced, primarily to avoid genetic disorders. Marriage ceremonies and rituals were introduced and families were made responsible for organizing marriages and maintaining the relationship. For the longest time, men were educated and women were meant to learn household chores so that they can extend the families with men. There were times till the recent past when marriages used to be fixed by families and the groom would marry the bride without seeing her. He was allowed to see her face only on the night the marriage is consummated. In some communities that night might come after a few weeks or even after a month.
Coming to the point of divorce, no two people can be forced to stay together against their will. By the unofficial 7 year rule, if the marriage survives for 7 years, then it will keep going. If marriage becomes untenable, there is no option other than to dissolve it. Different religions and communities have their own rules for conducting and dissolving marriages. Islam has its own rules (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_Islam). What has complicated matters is the blatant violation of Islamic rules. The word talaq which means divorce has to be said 3 times by the man to his wife to annul the marriage. This has to be done in the presence of both families and there has to be one month’s holiday after each time the talaq is said. Nowadays, men are using phone, Skype and social media platforms including Facebook and even Whatsapp to say talaq 3 times continuously to their wives and they consider it enough to annul their marriage. This is what the Supreme Court has targeted at the behest of a Muslim woman.
What I am wondering is, if a man believes that saying a word three times to his wife over phone or social media is enough to erase the relationship he has with her, then he does not deserve to have her or any other woman in his life. It just shows that he treats her like an expendable commodity. By striking this down, I believe the apex court has made the suffering all the more for the women at the hands of men. As long as women receive alimony from their husbands, they shouldn’t be breaking their heads over keeping men who treat them so shamefully and disrespectfully. What should have been done are three things:
Imprison men violate Islamic rules and use phone or social media platforms to annul their marriages and shame them in their community.
Prohibit them from remarrying their wives which is allowed under Islamic law.
2 such “small” divorces are allowed and the 3rd one is the “big” divorce. After the 3rd one, if the husband wants to remarry the wife, she has to be married and divorced similarly by another man. This is equivalent to treating a woman as a slave and is a completely repressive practice which needs to be scrapped entirely.
A uniform civil law for all citizens is ultimately what is needed, but in a religiously diverse country as India, it is not going to be easy to implement the law on the ground. Thrusting a law forcefully will only end up in agitations and communal violence. No government would want to create disorder and disrupt their vote banks. Changes will happen to society over the years and religions and the mindset of people has to change accordingly. I am wondering, what if the Supreme Court, instead of striking down the three talaq system had ruled that equality is paramount in an evolving society like ours and had granted women the right to divorce their husbands in the same way?
The fascinating bit is, higher the IQ, higher the sex drive but lesser sex. This has been explained away by reasoning that people with higher IQ are more focused on gaining knowledge than having sex, but it does not get into the details as to why.
People with all levels of IQ are interested in sex, but higher IQ means more neuron connections inside the brain which translates into deeper connectivity in relationships with other people. This is why these people make lesser friends and prefer to be social outcasts because they simply desist being in superficial relationships. Such people simply cannot be in casual relationships or one night stands because they find no mental connectivity in such short time. They would rather prefer to stay away from sex completely or be monogamous if they come across that person with whom they find the deep connectivity they are looking for. This could explain the higher use of sex toys among people with higher IQ as mentioned in the article. They would rather use the toys rather than being in meaningless relationships.
But there is a deeper reason for giving up on sex for gaining knowledge. People in ancient times used to do penance to reach out to God for superior knowledge and powers. Ancient Indian texts are replete with the tales of such numerous yogis. Why did they leave their lives behind and walk into the deep forests to do the penance? They wanted to be away from all relationships and distractions because they had to channel and focus their entire energy into reaching out to the higher powers. They needed all their energy to interact with the supremely higher energy source that is God. There are two activities in our daily lives that are the most resource intensive, digestion of food and sex. Both require the maximum blood in our body to complete the tasks. The more food and more sex we have, the more exhausted and drowsy we become. That is why yogis used to live on fruits and berries and observe complete abstinence from any sort of contact with women. Some of this is still in vogue. In my native state, Kerala, before we go to a certain temple called Sabarimala, it is required to abstain from meat, alcohol, women and even cutting of hair and nails for 41 days. Our ancestors used to walk to the temple through forests for weeks and months. They used to carry machetes to clear the forest area they were walking through. When they leave, their families used to light oil lamps and used to ensure that the lamps burn till they return. 41 days was probably the average time taken by people to walk forth and back and if they did not return in that time period, they were presumed to be dead.
Animals have been considered at a lower order than humans in ancient Indian texts and there are reasons for that. Animals exist to maintain the equilibrium of the planet’s ecosystem and we do not belong to the food chain because we were given intelligence and knowledge to cultivate our own food, domesticate animals and use fire and metals. Unlike us, animals have no taste buds. They do not need to seek higher knowledge so that’s why they have not been given intelligence. It is said that when the Gods created us, we were not supposed to be made intelligent. But some among the Gods defied the rule and passed on intelligence and knowledge to us. The Forbidden Apple eerily resembles the shape of the vagina which could mean that we were told not to get into the infinite loop of procreation like animals and we were meant to use our intelligence to seek higher knowledge.
I do not believe that anyone is born with higher IQ than others. It is said that we are listening and feeling from the time we are in our mother’s womb. What we experience right from our mother’s womb through our infancy and in our growing up years affects our mental makeup positively or adversely. The well-being of relationships between couples could determine the makeup of children even when they are conceived. Ancient Indian texts describe in detail how to live our lives and all these factors have been taken into consideration when writing them down. We overlook everything because of our ignorance and this is precisely why the apple was forbidden.
Ranjeet Menon's Blog 