Adjusting to a Sick Society

By: Bikal Dhungel 

This is only a short briefing of few things that we are doing wrong. Wrong in a sense that this has huge consequences to our survival and at the same time of the Earth and plants and animals living here. This all started with our greed of living materialistically. We created the idea of wealth. We set our goal to accumulate wealth and ignored the costs of it. As our wealth grew, we ignored the consequences on this planet. Now there are 7 billion of us and will soon be 10 billion. 10 billion consumers who aim to possess a good house, a car, 5 iphones and other electronic devices at home. Every year we want to upgrade. As everybody upgrades, the older devices land on waste containers. People will be taught about Green Recycling but 100% recycling is not possible. At some point, the waste turns entropic and there is no 'going back'. That day is the end of our civilization.

Our society is a growth based society. Our economy needs growth to survive and this growth needs materials and materials cause waste and waste destroys our planet. According to the World Bank, half of all the waste worldwide is created by OECD countries and South Asia and Africa produces the least. However, due to the lack of technology, waste lands on land-fills, or even in many cases in public places especially in slums. As economic growth is expected to skyrocket, the amount of waste increases and will cause several other health problems. Once a health issue is rampant, it can leave inter-generational impact that even the babies that are not yet born but will be born in the future will be affected. Never to mention about the plants and bio diversity. Pro materialists will tell you about efficiency that today's machines are efficient and we use one iphone instead of several devices but can you then undo the environmental harm that were done by machines from the past ? can we awake dead animals that were slaughtered for the factory ? So, Materialism kills.

Nr 2 is animal farming. The clever homo sapiens has found out which animals match its traits for farming in the last 20 thousand years. Although there are hundreds of animals, only 14 are close to humans and hence they are farmed as they generate profits. they are chickens, lamb,  pigs, cattles, dogs etc. So, they are farmed commercially. Unfortunately in such a dire condition that most of these animals are sick, they are stressed, they suffer under mental problems and we eat their meat. We are eating the meat and milk of sick animals. This of course cause environmental pollution. No only because of farming but also because these animals need feeding. According to FAO, about 4000 liters of water is needed to produce one kilo of Beef and imagining about 4 billion domestic animals and food they require, the pressure on earth is immense.

These two points are more or less in societal level. Combined, it is a global problem. Then we are harming ourselves in a way we live. In individual level, the 7 billion people, the limited job opportunity and the competition we face today have left us being cold individuals. We see other people as potential competitors and we have forgotten to be supportive as we once were. To keep ourselves on top of the list, we then work nearly to death without regard of our health and inter-personal relations. No wonder that one third of all people in western Europe has some form of mental health issues like Stress, hyper tension, depression etc. Yet , for the majority of us, we have no time to stop and have a look around about how the society is doing. We look at a successful man and wants to be like him and we dont want to see hundred other unsuccessfull who fell down on the way, suffered with Depression. Until we are one of them. Fact is, we overestimate success and we ignore other costs , like on our health, our family, environment. Yet, most of the people follow the trend and try to adjust with the sick society that now lives on a sick planet.

How we should aspire is opposite of it, where a health individual with healthy mind creates a healthy society and a health planet. Only then our civilization will last long.