We are approaching a crossroad - Ramesh Shrestha

Our roadmap

Subject to one's belief we kind of know where we came from. If one believes in religion we were created by God, irrespective of which God one believes in. If one trusts in natural science, we are the product of natural evolution. Based on Charles Darwin's theory, the modern Man, Homo sapiens is the best product of the natural selection process through the doctrines of the survival of the fittest. Palaeontologists claim that Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens and became the last surviving species of the Genus Homo. Did Homo sapiens simply evolve into Homo sapiens as claimed by palaeontologists or did Homo sapiens eliminate all other species of genus Homo based on the principles of survival of the fittest? If it is the latter, this is the killing instinct man still has today, which we continue to display in every decade for centuries as the rich and powerful continue to physically eliminate the weak and the poor as is happening even now. But we preserve the culture and lifestyles of the weak, the minority and the poor in museums for future generations to know how they used to live. How generous?

Since evolution is a continuous process of nature, an obvious and a critical question now is, are we still evolving? If yes, what form the future species of the genus Home would look like. We are approaching the crossroad where the future of humanity with its agenda of development is on a collusion path. The result of this collision could be the end of human civilisation. Could there be a second path to avoid tis collision?

We have developed

Philosophers believe that human beings have altruistic ethics derived from our social behaviour, which helped us develop socially and intellectually. Human's intellectual capacity and curiosity helped invent numerous creations from stone age implements to bow and arrow to modern hypersonic missiles. Man has improved the speed of train from 38 km/hr to 460km/hr with new inventions. Man has produced energy from the thin air by developing wind turbines. Satellites floating in space enabled people to communicate anywhere in the world in real time. Man has developed vaccines and treatments for almost all infectious diseases. The economic output of the world is at the highest peak ever. The average life expectancy of men has reached a peak of 74.5 years while in some OECD countries it has reached 83 years with a gender gap of 5 years less for men. The world GDP exceeded 100 trillion dollars in 2022.

Did we reach the peak of development? Or are there more to come without risking our own survival? What will be the future of human beings? Seems uncertain.

As we begin to realise that there is a price to be paid for some of these developments such as the serious consequences of warming the atmosphere and the loss of biodiversity. Since both of these may not be reversed will our trajectory of development remain on the same track or will our development slow down? Will further development produce more negative return? Did we fail to acknowledge that many superficial value systems of modern 'developed' man with modern technology are against nature and could play against our own survival? We certainly failed to take timely action in preventing global warming which was known to politicians and business leaders for more than five decades. We knowingly avoided assessing the consequences of our actions on the wellbeing of mother nature. For how long should we expect nature to cooperate with our agenda for development, which is based on maximum exploitation of nature? We may be arriving at a crossroad to decide our path for the future.

Our failures

Humanism emphasises human dignity but we failed to dignify nature which sustained our life on earth with all its resources. We promote human rights and liberty but we forgot our responsibility we owe to the planet. We forget to be rational beings when we think of individual needs. We forget our social values and systems in our quest for development and technological advancements, which is innately driven by profit. Our desire of wanting more as part of development is intrinsically destroying social behaviour of man and nature at the same time. We are even encroaching the world of future generations by stacking financial debts on their heads long before they would be born.

We have become over confident in our abilities, abusive and deceptive to nature and to each other, which is one of the main reasons for collapsing geopolitics. Is it really the spirit of a 'developed modern man'? Could our intelligence, creativity and arrogance likely lead us to our own demise? Do we really have control over the planet Earth just because we continue to invent new technology? Some of our behaviours also contradict with our world view such as advocating for peace while spreading weapons markets, sitting under the umbrella of nuclear weapons. Is this really humanism? We are talking but we are not thinking and of course with self-adoration, our listening competence has degraded to a near zero. We only like to hear our own voices. How long can we survive with all these crazy contradictions? These days modern man is not even hiding his hypocrisy and criminality. Modern man has left the concept of compassion in the altar of guillotine. Very soon, the word compassion may even disappear from the dictionary. What made our leaders so delusional?

Did we lose our roadmap?

We are arriving at a crossroad where we are facing simultaneous challenges such as geopolitical crisis due to arrogance of politicians, dwindling natural resources, severe fallouts from climate crisis, undue influence of celebrity culture and social media on young generation and the demise of independent media, replaced by hyper-inflated fake media. To add to these complexities, we are also living with the threat of nuclear winter. We must be proud and should be happy with all the positive outcomes of our development but we seem to have failed in managing the byproducts of insatiable technological development and self-inflicted blindness of politicians?

We have enjoyed the fruits of development without understanding some of the negative outcomes which cannot be undone such as depleting natural resources. But can we at least undo some of the damages we have done to our society? Can we revive our social practices to counter individualism that has mutilated the very notion of family, kinship and a sense of community and our social organisations? Can we reinstitute our spiritual values which are essential to maintain human relationships, our traditional value system and a sense of community belonging? We have damaged our society in the name of secularism and individual rights by killing social and cultural diversity in our communities globally. We have even killed unique traditional food habits of hundreds of thousands of customary societies. The modern consumption-based culture has foolishly classified traditional values as outdated beliefs and people blindly agreed!

The politicians often say that we live in an interconnected and interdependent world. Yes, we are, but our interconnectedness and interdependence are like a one-way traffic, imposed by the culture of superiority, righteousness, ego, wealth and power not by knowledge, compassion and spirituality. In the so-called interconnectedness and interdependence, the weak and poor have no voice. There are of course many advocacy forums for such groups but they have no authority to act anything substantive.

There is a serious and urgent need to change our lifestyle, and shift our local and global thinking on all aspects of our lifestyle and life itself. We may even need to deindustrialise to a certain extent to preserve nature and preserve human civilisation. It could be as simple as drinking water instead of bottled soft drinks; just imagine how much energy and fresh water we could save with this simple act! Saving humanism might not be that simple but we need to take it seriously, away from development without an end, if not for nature but for our own survival. We are really at a crossroad and seem not to know how to navigate anymore.