Homo Sapiens; the World’s Greatest Enemy in a World Out of Control -By Jimi Bickersteth

“That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been…past.” Ecclesiastes 3:15

This early morning, precisely, 5.00a.m, I was heading for work, I had to leave my residence that early to beat the early morning gridlock. The dry moisture-laden air, the condensation that had taken place on the layers of air nearest the earth, became cooled, making ruddy causeways in their patterns.These moisture deposited on the ground, grass, shrubs, flowers and on the trees lined the macamadised boulevard.

The car radio was blaring the early morning newscast and the weather reports. This brought to my memory the conclusions penultimate Tuesday, at a seminar on ‘The Press and Nation Building’, that ‘the Print and Electronic media by their very nature, deal with the ephemeral, but have an important role to play in society. But if they form the principal intellectual diet of the world’s future leaders, one may reasonably fear a decline in the intellectual depth and consequent increase in vulnerability to cheap ideologies, pseudo-religious theosophies and cynical scepticism’. At the end of the news broadcast I came away with the feeling that the end of the world never goes out of style, at least, as far as newscasters and film are concerned and their audiences are captivated by the newsreel and movies depicting the end of the world, because the theme speak their fears.

The fear include the fear of death and of dying. As we grow older, we begin to lose our capricious fears of dying, which certainly, is one of the most basic universal of all fears. It is a fear that to some extent is kept alive by the paganism of the world, which regards death as the end of everything, but ignored what humans are contributing to its own dénouement and eventual early exits.

Certainly, one is not in any hurry to leave this only planet that one knows. I enjoy life tremendously. I’m having a swell and wonderful time. It is a lovely world, not very many ever want to exchange for death which so often has been associated in our minds with gloom and sadness. But one came from somewhere and should go back there. Even those heavenly bodies that come out periodically return on the stroke of the minute.

Yet, with the recent happenings around the world, we have legitimate reasons to be fearful about how and when the earth-might come to an end. In fact, out of the state of hangover of the present day riotous living, state of chaos in developed and developing economies emerged images of the wailing of the flute inseparably connected with tragedy and death wafting in the air.

With this against the backcloth of happenings globally, blanket of pessimism about the future seems to cover everywhere; cover a future we may never have, even as we are almost planning to possess a tomorrow that may never be ours. Apparently, in today’s world, we live life like it is a chessboard, moving with a hand and wind of guesses which has led us to a life that is worse than death itself.

Almost daily the airwaves is jammed with news of natural disasters – elements that had names but no addresses, wreaking havoc around the globe. Terrifying footage of such destruction is replayed over and over on TV and on the internet, (nem.con), no one contradicting. When we are bombarded with images of real people and real places being destroyed, it is easy to view the end of the world as an actual threat and not just the stuff of movies.

In a world that appeared to be at a crossroad of monumental confusion and kept standing upon the feathers as it has reduced politics and governance to a theory of natural selection, that living things develop, survive and die but according to their ability to adapt themselves to their environment.

For the first time in history the physical survival of the human race now largely depends on a radical change of the human heart. This concern must find alternatives to humanly and socially destructive manifestations such as materialism, consumerism, selfishness, thoughtless conformity, exploitation of peoples and nature, and the destructiveness of technological advances without humanistic control.

Meanwhile, there’s never a dull moment with the living. The beaches and lagoons, flotsam and jetsam, alluring
shores and tide altered coastlines shapes have men lounging lazily and women twittering idly under the ball of mistletoe, deep romance of lasting friendship, with no care in the world – as delicious as a dream. You can’t have it any better.

I felt my Mount of Venus, the soft lozenge of flesh in the palm below my thumb, began to itch. I was reminded of the algorithm of the conditions precedence involved in tackling the present global nakedness of a naked world. A world whose nakedness is kept in a bottle of spirit on a shelf; the label on the round bottle said it is poison. Lethal poison!

It doesn’t seem to me a very distinguished pix and setting. The scale and scope, the human suffering which underlies it as well as its impact should rightly make natural disasters a phenomena of greater international concern. It has left nightmares and physical trauma. It indeed provokes emotions.

It kept one wondering why policymakers, had only a rough idea of the consequences of the present action or inaction. It is my take  that rather than oversimplifying the issues, they could make decisions today that might reduce problems tomorrow. Hence, there is the need for a more rational calculations on the complex symptoms and diagnose and embrace intelligent and sound convictions and connections.

Today, the world does not have yet fully convincing answers, and it needs actions to make the world a safer place and to get it there. Ever since the first man, Adam, lost Paradise, for not taking full control of it, the world, his progenies and descendants being alone in their ideas of Paradise, have been on a quest to regain and possibly refit what was lost; getting rather lost in the process of trying to find the station, despising its own civilisation and whatever was regained of the lost world.

With narrow-minded conventions of the developed world, of diverse culture and an established order in chaos, that is attempting to formulate the incomprehension of the world and the impenetrable mystery of the world’s existence. The scientific world-view based on individualism, flair and eccentricities and the deficiency of nuclear energy had not solved the fundamental problems of existence, of organising our world satisfactorily and probably will not.

If the world allows itself to be carried away by the innumerable physical successes of science, it may invite its own doom. Of course, no society exists at all without it, scientific progress cannot be dissociated from physical progress. Man has to see itself as part of something larger than itself. The world is a mere mannequin in a store display, it doesn’t chose what to wear the people do.

Science and technology need to understand society more deeply and more richly through the humanities to make most meaningful contributions to the fast evolution towards a stable society. Conversely, the humanities must grasp the essence of scientific and technological progress enough to anticipate new contradictions that may emanate from technological development and articulate possible dialectics for new synthesis.

There is the need for the world as it were, to have a perspective over much of its geo-space, and to be inspired even as it make conscious global effort that should not be the beginning and end of nothing. A fruitless endeavour – talking about de ja vú! as it contains a world that is out of joint, out of control and one that precipitates both tragedy and disillusionment.

The beaches of our childhood are vanishing. The crops that used to feed the families are been poisoned by salt water. Global warming is no more abstract science, but a daily reality, with accompanying droughts, flooding and catastrophic consequences for the climate and environment, millions of people displaced.

At the same time, rising temperature, intense storms, shortage of water for almost half of the world’s population. Irremediable in the short term, all of this dangers are as potent and dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effect may be less dramatic, but over the next two decades could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.

Global warming has been described as the greatest threat facing humanity and human activities may be a factor. Energy consumption worldwide is breaking record after record. Since the burning of oil and coal produces greenhouse gases, some governments are taking a closer look at nuclear power as a cleaner alternative. But it too presents challenges.

As the hot water normally expelled from reactors threatened to raise the temperatures of rivers to environmentally damaging levels. This situation is expected to worsen if global temperatures rise. The world must solve the climate-change problem if it is going to have and utilise nuclear power.

The word “Armageddon” occurs only once in the scriptures, yet, as a modern metaphor, its use is widespread. From nuclear genocide to a computer virus, the word has been applied to disasters great and small. Terrorists, warmongering nations, or disasters beyond human control is capable of leading to a global cataclysm, leaving the earth unable to support life.

In January of 2017, using the symbolic Doomsday Clock (an internationally recognized design that conveys how close the world is to destroying its own civilization with dangerous technologies of its own making, nuclear weapons, emerging biotechnologies, and cyber technologies that could trigger and inflict irrevocable harm, whether by intention, miscalculation or by accident) to illustrate mankind’s proximity to a global disaster, even though, not everyone believed in an inevitable Doom’s day, it was declared that the world just got closer to the worst catastrophe ever than at anytime in over 60years!

If you are apprehensive or scared outright by the barrage of ‘bad’ news, you are not alone, the world is indeed spinning fast and it appears nobody is able to control it. Yet, it requires noble human endeavours to control the world and avert an imminent global catastrophe.

As the world trust in science and rapid advancements in technologies that promise to fix or is it fox the world, even as scientists gave themselves an above the average pass marks and asserts that the problems the world face have never been greater, their capacity to meet the challenges is outpacing them.

Yet, the picture of world conditions looks bad and showed the world is at the brink of a global disaster, that the world is quite uncertain about its own future with the following appetizers:
i. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Despite their best efforts, the United Nation have failed to bring about nuclear disarmament, instead, defiant leaders scoff at arms-control laws. Countries with a history of nuclear weaponry are frantically upgrading their old bombs and creating many new deadlier ones. Countries that once had no mass-destruction capabilities are now able to destroy huge swaths of humanity.

This unprecedented nuclear preparedness makes the world a very dangerous place even in peace time. Lethal autonomous weapons systems that make ‘kill’ decisions without human input or supervision should be particularly worrisome.

Amidst the display of a panoply of weapons is a world that promises a whole panoply of social and economic improvements – a ridiculous and preposterous proposition with a lot of confusion in a cruel world blundering into darkness, with boys – and girls – fathers – and – mothers with everything against them, bad homes, bad societies, cold firesides, bad luck, disadvantaged and waiting on world’s government and politics to rescue them. It has been hard to count on a normal world, what with politicians and government unsure of themselves.

The world is thus on slight eminence, shaky ground sloping towards the precipice and requires the UN and world leaders to find a capacity for improvisation as it raised a generation in distress, even as it looks a holistically at the issues of arms proliferation, global warming, terrorism with the mixed miscellany of its micro-macro implications and relevance to the teeming mass of humanity.

Giving the resources available to the world for informing itself on all sides of every question. The true measure of a government lies in how well it has served the people in all kinds of circumstances, both favourable and adverse, in times of peace and stability and in times of natural crisis. The world must review its history, errors of performance and failures to act which have delayed its progress be recognized for what they are.

ii. Health under siege. Science can take us only so far when it comes to good health. High blood pressure, viruses, obesity, air pollution, alcohol and drug abuse – all risk factors for disease – are increasing. More people are dying from an array of non-communicable diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disorders, and diabetes in its several derivatives.

Growing numbers are disabled by other diseases, including poverty, mental illness. Today, stroke-infirmities that are the concomitants of old age now ravages in middle age. And recent years have witnessed the unpredictable epidemics as the Ebola virus, Corona virus, monkeypox and the Zika virus. The bottom line: Sickness is out of the control of humans, and the end of it seems to be nowhere in sight!

iii. Human attacks on nature. Factories continue to pollute the earth’s atmosphere. Millions of people die every year from breathing contaminated air. Individuals, communities, and government agencies continue to dump sewage, medical and agricultural waste, plastics, and other pollutants into the oceans. These toxic pollutants poison marine animals and plants, as well as humans who eat contaminated sea life. And a world that is running out of fresh water, faces a water crisis that would be global in scope. Water scarcity is largely a man-made problem and it poses a grave danger.

iv. Nature’s attacks on humans: Storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons and earthquakes have brought about devastating floods, crushing landslides, the white death in avalanches and other types of destruction. More people than ever are killed or are otherwise adversely affected by these forces of nature and it points to a greater potential for more intense storms, deadly heat waves, and more extreme flood – drought cycles – dealing humankind a death blow.

The world is like a runaway train, completely out of control and heading to a catastrophic end whose established boundaries, or limits, on how much damage humans can inflict on themselves. Surely one can think of other grave threats to the earth’s survival.Yet, could not find satisfying answers about the future of the world by analysing all the bad things happening today.

One could say the same thing about listening to politicians and scientists, who have not been able to sincerely find convincing answers to questions about world conditions and the future. The constellation is frightening, our general grasp is superficial and the ailments do not respond to therapies.

On terrorism, the world must curtail and control the excesses of this emotionally numb and violent and aggressive brainwashed characters filled with exaggerated worries, as it tell them to shrink to a size that is hundredths of times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. They must be taught, that real strength lies in the qualities as self-control and mildness.

Even though violence may be triggered by a number of elements, such as, oppression, poverty of mind, socially isolated, economically deprived, its primary roots lies within oneself. Their must as of necessity be a massive hunt for their (L’euffer ce’st les autres) Hell is always for others, leaders.

In conclusion, the world’s development should be a multi-objective process designed to achieve among others, the eradication of poverty and disease, the liberation of the individual, increased productivity within a balanced ecosystem, justice and equity, individual freedom and social security.

#Jimi Bickersteth

Jimi Bickersteth is a writer and blogger.
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