“Well that's where we are. You say we're on the brink of destruction and you're right. But it's only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve. This is our moment. Don't take it from us; we are close to an answer,” said John Cleese, enacting the role of Professor Karl Barnhart in the movie, ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, while trying to convince the alien, Klaatu (portrayed by Keanu Reeves) who was going to wipe out the human race from Earth in an attempt to restore the planet to its former life supporting and creating state. Due to the pollution caused by humans, Earth was on the brink of destruction and the only way to save it was to eradicate the species that was destroying it. The humans. But Professor Barnhart explained that every civilization, at a point in time, faces extinction due to some or the other factors. It is at this point, on ‘the brink of destruction’, is where we change the way we live to prevent complete annihilation and uplift ourselves.
But that was just a movie.
We are living on a planet which is fast being deprived of its natural stability. Oil reserves, the most important resource to the human race, will get over in the next 50 years. Fresh water is now a limited resource. The very air we breathe is being polluted 12 times more than the maximum capacity of filtration of all trees on Earth put together. And not to forget, the amount of forests being destroyed every year is off the charts.
In every sense, we are looking at an apocalyptic future. And this apocalypse wouldn’t be from the Bible or the Koran, but our very books of history, geography and science. Our race has now known for a while, that if this continues, we are waiting for an impending end. But not much has changed with that knowledge. We are still polluting air, cutting trees, waging wars and in general, writing our own deaths.
But, a change can still save us. A change that affects the way of human thinking, believing, acting and reacting. History has provided us with enough examples so as to know that every time a civilization of higher order thinking species faces the danger of extinction, it has come out on top to beat the odds and make itself stronger.
Take Japan for instance. After the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing, the country was almost in vain. But they endured it. After World War II, with some major changes in economic and educational policies, Japan made a huge economic recovery, in process giving companies like Sony, Nikon and Nissan to the world. Currently, it is one of the best economies in the world with minimal unemployment rate and most of its resources being imported.
Israel is also a good example of the same. After gaining its independence in 1948, Israel faced a huge economic crisis. But this was the least of their worries. Due to a very dry and arid climate, the food that the country produced was not enough to feed its masses. With a huge breakthrough in the field of agriculture, a method called Hydroponics was taken to use and this was the base of their progress. Currently Israel is one of the best economies in the world at the position of 16 in 138 and hydroponics is going to be taken up as the foremost method of the mass production of plants in the upcoming years in most countries.
Small Pox considered one of the deadliest diseases ever, haunting mankind since 10000 B.C. and killing almost 16 trillion people through its known history is now the only disease which is completely eradicated from the face of the earth.
Someone has truly said that ‘Necessity is the father of all inventions’. We are facing an anomaly. We need the change. This is our moment. If we don’t pick up the pace, we will be writing our own doom. We all know what happened to the dinosaurs.
Let’s learn from that and evolve.
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