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| Image Source: Animo Apps |
As it is, We humans have come a long way from being cave men to
the digital media men. We started 3.5 million years ago not much different from
the chimpanzees and monkeys called as Homo Habilis at the time and reached the
modern species of Homo Sapiens Sapiens which evidently rules the earth. As we
progressed in the matters of mind and technology, we scored comfort and luxury
in every waking aspect of life. We became rulers and technology became the slave
at our disposal. There isn’t an iota of doubt that we have progressed
immensely; we have gained immensely, but for all we have gained, have we lost
something? I know that the answer to this question can nothing be short of a
multi pronged divergent analysis and each prong would again lead to multifarious
aspects never really converging at one point. But my intention of writing this
article here is not really to go to into all that detailed analysis. It is rather
to share a very simple thought that occurred to me after I was just done with
my morning yoga practice. With my breath calmed and soothed, I was staring into
the surrounding woods before getting up from the mat to start the day. It is
when this feeling of having lost the sense of awe crept into my mind. For all we have gained, have we lost some? Pardon
me if your feeling doesn’t resonate with mine but this is what I felt in that
moment of morning silence. Looking at the swaying leaves, my imagination
transported me into a world when evolution was still at the earliest stages. I
wondered about the joy and veneration it must have brought upon man to feel the
breeze on a hot sunny day. How he must have rejoiced to see the gentle sway of
leaves and petals. How grateful he would have felt to discover a tiny brook and
how he would have saved it from getting dirty for the primitive man however resourceful
was short of readymade resources. When he discovered fire, wouldn’t his
reaction had been of awe, veneration and fear combined. That is probably why ancient men practiced animism.
Today we our educated minds dispel animism as superstition but wasn’t this
superstition a sign of sensitivity, watchfulness and intuitiveness. The respect
and veneration to the objects of nature must have been inspired out of a sense
of awe and wonder man must have felt having discovered the bounties of nature
for the first time. Today everything seems so obvious that we have lost our ability
to be awed at things. We have lost our finer sensitivities to the surprises and
wonders of nature. Who cares about gratefulness to the trees when fans and ACs
have become integral? We, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, have become the species for
whom everything material or living has just become a thing of use. We are an
entitled species who use and abuse every resource of nature without caring in
the slightest while destructing the very nature that our selfish gene feels
entitled to. Things are just things for us; no sense of awe or wonder attached,
no veneration to the nature on whose loving arms are we thriving. We have lost
our finer sensitivities to boredom, monotony and mundane. We as a species have
become so utterly selfish that we would terminate species after species just to
make space for our own proliferation. Let alone nature or other species, we as
a species do not spare the kin of our own. Has all the progress led us to being
more cold and thankless? Have we been losing our capability to feel awe and
veneration to the nature that serves us?
I am going to end this article with a question mark and let all
of you readers come up with your own answers for yourself. As for me, I can’t
deny having lost some of it or may be most of it. For those of you who’re
thinking, what purpose does it even serve to be all talk and no action and I won’t
disagree with you. This article doesn’t make me any better than the selfish
gene that’s proliferating at a fast pace. It is just what I felt like writing
and did nonetheless.
