'If the bee disappeared from the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left' – Einstein
I woke up quiet confused, to this dream at midnight,
and saw a bee struggling to find a way out of my room . Motioning her out of
the window, I was still trying to decipher about the dream I saw
1.The
Dream
I am in a trance state, and I am dying. And I rise out of my body, and I stare down at our whole suburb. The time is speeding up and I see whole generations coming and going and building bigger houses, and then eventually, people start spending more and more time staring at their smartphones. And soon enough they forget to clean their houses, water their garden or even eat food. And eventually all the houses rot and collapse, and the people disappear, vanishing completely into the internet.
We are consumed by our smartphones, our internet, our entertainment. Empathy isn't our strongest suit anymore. Technology is penetrating and killing our consciousness through time. There are more devastating impacts than we can imagine, because of pedal-to-metal digital capitalism, which directly falls on the environment and the global poor. This "out of sight, out of mind" externalization of poverty and poison, doesn't go away, just because we have covered our eyes with VR goggles, immersed ourselves in augmented reality. The more committed we are to this view of the world, the more we see human beings as the problem and technology as its solution. The cycle is feeding itself. As time has evolved, the very essence of what it means to be a human is now treated less as a feature and more as a bug.
We are consumed by our smartphones, our internet, our entertainment. Empathy isn't our strongest suit anymore. Technology is penetrating and killing our consciousness through time. There are more devastating impacts than we can imagine, because of pedal-to-metal digital capitalism, which directly falls on the environment and the global poor. This "out of sight, out of mind" externalization of poverty and poison, doesn't go away, just because we have covered our eyes with VR goggles, immersed ourselves in augmented reality. The more committed we are to this view of the world, the more we see human beings as the problem and technology as its solution. The cycle is feeding itself. As time has evolved, the very essence of what it means to be a human is now treated less as a feature and more as a bug.
The thought process in my mind rippled, and I was unable to sleep neither was the bee willing to move out of my fiefdom, so I picked up a book named Holy Science by Swami Sri Yuketeswar Giri, for reading with a buzzing background score.
(Quick note- Listen the audio while reading for enhanced experience)
(Quick note- Listen the audio while reading for enhanced experience)
2.The
Science
We have learned from oriental astronomy that moons revolve around their planets and planets turning on their axes revolve with their moons around the sun. In about 24,000 years of our earth which causes backward movement of the equinox points around the zodiac. To put it in simpler terms, our entire solar system- our Sun with its family of planets, moon, asteroid, and comets- orbits elliptically, around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, at about 800,000 km/hr. And the time it takes to orbit around the center of the galaxy is around 24,000 years. During the revolution, the sun comes to the place nearest to this grand center - where Swamiji inscribes that the mental virtue, becomes so much developed that man can easily comprehend all, even the spirit beyond the visible world. And after 12000 years when the sun goes farthest from its grand center, brings complete change externally in the material world and internally in the intellectual world- where this mental virtue comes to such a reduced state that man cannot grasp anything beyond gross material creation.
The following courses of events in History make the case even stronger. In about 1600 AD, when Akbar the emperor of Delhi, established peace in India placing both the Hindus and the Mohammedan on an equal footing, Queen Elizabeth brought peace in Europe. In the scientific world, Gilbert discovered magnet and observed and asserted the existence of electricity in all material substances. In 1609, Kepler discovered the laws in astronomy and Galileo discovered telescope. In 1670 AD Hook and Newton discovered the law of gravitation about the same time. In this way science advanced but the theories were gradually reduced to practice as they began to contribute much to the happiness of mankind, until at a point of time around 19th century, when the Sun started moving away from the grand center, the man automatically began to depend heavily on this aforesaid knowledge and couldn’t develop or discover or invent anything beyond gross materialistic things. In the coming centuries, human intellect will become so shallow, that technology will evolve and take over from humans, making them mentally dysfunctional or even pushing them over the brink of extinction. Such is the great influence of time that governs the universe.
The following courses of events in History make the case even stronger. In about 1600 AD, when Akbar the emperor of Delhi, established peace in India placing both the Hindus and the Mohammedan on an equal footing, Queen Elizabeth brought peace in Europe. In the scientific world, Gilbert discovered magnet and observed and asserted the existence of electricity in all material substances. In 1609, Kepler discovered the laws in astronomy and Galileo discovered telescope. In 1670 AD Hook and Newton discovered the law of gravitation about the same time. In this way science advanced but the theories were gradually reduced to practice as they began to contribute much to the happiness of mankind, until at a point of time around 19th century, when the Sun started moving away from the grand center, the man automatically began to depend heavily on this aforesaid knowledge and couldn’t develop or discover or invent anything beyond gross materialistic things. In the coming centuries, human intellect will become so shallow, that technology will evolve and take over from humans, making them mentally dysfunctional or even pushing them over the brink of extinction. Such is the great influence of time that governs the universe.
The book was published in 1894 and the theories of Swamiji were so astounding that even the modern-day scientists are gaping in awe. Doing some groundwork on the World Wide Web, I tried to connect the dots further...
3.The Future
When Stephen Hawking
was in his early 20s, he was told he only had two years to live but survived
another 55. His unlike longevity is something the earth itself needs if it’s to
survive the various calamities the genius cosmologist has predicted.
In his later years,
Prof Haw Hawking warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence, alien
life, environmental degradation and shortsighted leaders. Here are some of the threats
professor Hawking expects the human race to face
- If aliens visit us, the outcome
would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out
well for the Native Americans.It's estimated more than 80 percent of
indigenous Americans were wiped out after Europeans made contact, thanks
to disease, warfare and displacement. Prof Hawking said any aliens that
reach Earth would be by definition more advanced than we are, making
humanity the Native Americans in this scenario.
- One of the major threats to
intelligent life in our universe is the high probability of an asteroid
colliding with inhabited planets. If these bodies impact Earth, they can
cause regional damage across a whole country or even a continent. Last
year Oumuamua, a bizarre asteroid from interstellar space, flew close by
the Earth, and no one even realized it, until it had passed.
- A popular concept amongst
futurists is the idea of the 'technological singularity' - the point at
which computers are so powerful, it's quicker for them to design their own
upgrades than rely on humans. The result is an exponential growth in
computing power that far exceeds the breakneck pace set over the last 70
years, resulting in an artificial intelligence that supersedes that of humans.
Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, won’t be able to
compete and would be superseded.
- Tesla and Space-X boss
Elon Musk has made similar warnings. Also, Recently Mark Zuckerberg,
Facebook boss shut down the development of A.I units for “unknown”
reasons.
- Mr.Trump pulling the US out of
the global Paris agreement, pushed the humanity over the brink. We are so
close to the tipping point, where global warming becomes
irreversible.
"We must...
continue to go into space for the future of humanity," he told Oxford
University students in 2016. "I don't think we will survive another 1,000
years without escaping beyond our fragile planet."
He later downgraded that
timeframe to 100 years - perhaps within our own lifetimes. 
4.The Conclusion
We shouldn’t really
try to “Save the Earth”, instead we should try to save ourselves from the
ecological Armageddon.
We’ve pulled a bunch
of fuck ups, and we are really quite confused, and alone and, frankly,
scared.
We are in the endgame
now, and we can only hope to enjoy the privilege of being a semicolon in
history, rather than a full stop.
The loud alarm clock
drifted my attention, it was morning already. I examined, the buzz was gone,
the bee didn’t move. I picked her up, taking her towards me and I listened
...listened more closely, “Times up” she whispered.
