The Mankind – A Catastrophy For The Earth
Just like the catastrophe on Easter Island, the catastrophe on Earth would be man. The humankind is making progress in contradicting ways(both good and bad). We(the mankind) don’t know where we came from, what is our role on earth, what are we doing and most importantly where we are going in the future. Humans have the same traits as the Easter Islanders. They are making the same mistakes, they are laying out their self-destructive progress traps, by harming the environment, using the resources which would finish one day causing chaos and confusion, resulting in war, destruction among themselves and an end to mankind. The Easter Islanders and Humans are different in ways as we have technology at our hand, which is the most powerful, yet the most destructive tool on the planet. We have the power to re-grow trees, use renewable resources at par, which in a lot of ways affected the early extinct of the Easter Islanders. The population of Easter Islanders grew in number to about 10,000 on a 64 sq. mile island, which was too much. The island was once well watered, green and had a rich soil supporting the woods.
There had not been a single disaster, drought or disease. The islanders had built good and fancy houses and now as they progressed they were socially divided into different classes. The major progress trap was using natural resources without knowing the future and religion(for which they built the statues, to connect to their ancestors). They wanted to build bigger and better monoliths which they called as “moai” with all the available resources. In order to be superior to one another, they kept building bigger statues and not once did they realize what their future was. The resources all finished, they were stuck with no food no transport and no more resources. The last tree, the last boat was all gone and there was no way to escape. Quoting from the book- The people had been seduced by a kind of progress that becomes a mania, an ideological pathology. They were boundlessly confident in their religion and the faith in moai gods, which in turn promised them prosperity on building more statues. The islanders were at war with each other(killing each other which resulted in cannibalism and destruction of the island) which resulted in the catastrophe of the island(not because of the environment, but because of man). We(the mankind) who consider themselves the master of the future are the same as the Eastern Islanders, in terms of faith, religion and self-destruction. We have absorbed from our ancestors and we on board the greatest and biggest ship of technology and advancement which is only going further into the future and we cannot turn back.
The population is increasing by the day, as it increased on the island and the planet cannot hold anymore. We are consuming all the natural resources provided to us without thinking of the consequences and the future generations. We have experienced natural disasters at a much common rate now than ever before. We are stranded in the cultural bonds and are ready to fight each other at any cost without thinking of the consequences. The planet is crying at the current state. The humans need to realize the importance of the resources before they vanish. We need to break these cultural boundaries and need to stand together in order to save the mankind, to save our future, to save the planet or otherwise there would be another historical extinction. We are only different from the Eastern Islanders in a way that we are more technologically forward. We can through our recently gained intelligence improvise on certain processes. We are different in a way when we like to think that we can prevent the destruction and catastrophe with technology, but we cannot. We will not have an escape out of this just like the Islanders did not have one. We are living in a modern myth.
According to studies, we have already used so much resources, that there is no going back to the past and no further scope for errors. We are overusing the resources still and we find alternative ways to extract them, by pretending to cause less harm to the planet. The water levels are rising already, the ozone layer is getting depleted, so many species of animals that we might not even know of have gotten extinct, the climate is changing at a very fast rate(yearly perhaps), the glaciers are melting, the carbon footprint is rising, the trees are being cut-off. Time will not wait for us. We are already in the self created progress trap and we are way too much deep in it. We do not have the time and scope for taking or even considering one error. The end is not far, when it comes to another mass extinction, and this time it would be humans. Quoting from the book-The future of everything we have accomplished since our intelligence evolved will depend on the wisdom of our actions over the next few years. Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world so far by trial and error; unlike other creatures, we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes. The future of this generation might not last long.
