Shame

Recently I saw the documentary "The Cove". I am no animal activist professionally nor have I done any work in this field, but yes like many other sensitive human beings, I am an animal lover to the core. A person who believes that every animal and plant deserve the same amount of freedom and respect and protection that we have or we get. I am not sure how many people love life (in every form) to this meaning.

I was broken, disgusted and hopeless after watching that documentary till the end. I have always wanted to do something fruitful of my life, help the helpless and save the vulnerable. That one documentary brought my whole understanding of science and research and development to a big question mark. Why are we doing all this, what makes sense, who is benefiting and how long do we go on like this? To most of the people I will sound emotional, illogical, ignorant, and what not, I am falling short of such words myself! I am not against scientific research if anyone thinks so, but all I want to know if there is any categorization on issues that is there in front of everyone and on issues which we don't even know how fruitful and helpful their outcome will be. A research that helps making life easier and comfortable is beneficial and acceptable to all.

To those who dont know what The Cove is all about, its a documentary movie that won several awards in the year 2009, recording live what happens in the Taiji region of Japan every year, starting from September, and continuing up to March. There is so much about this documentary that anyone can Google it and know the in and out of it. The gist is that thousands of Dolphins are caught and slaughtered, severely inhumanly everyday. Why is it done, no one has the answer. No one is allowed to see or capture this event on any kind of picture or film. When it is so strictly protected from disclosure then these fisherman know what heinous act they are performing everyday. Still they do and have been doing for I don't know how many years.

I am not bragging about just one kind of animal being killed in the world, but to this number and like a tradition which has no ending, I am not sure if any slaughtering can be compared to this one. Dolphins, to some researchers, are equally or probably more intelligent than we human beings. Well there is nothing humane about being a human being these days. On many occasions they have saved lives of swimmers who have come under life threatening circumstances in the ocean. People find them intriguing, Dolphins like being around swimmers. An animal which is so much social like us, does it never occur to those butchers to give it a second thought?

Well why it is being done and feeling sorry and miserable about it is not going to help and change anything. I am trying to find it for myself how I can bring my life and my understanding to any use. There is so much agony now that any kind of our activity seems useless. We are doing so much research on finding life on Mars! Such an irony! The life that we have here on our own planet, we are progressively destroying it, and we rejoice of finding extra terrestrial life!! Trillions of currency is being put on to find life on other planets, do we even think what if there is anything which does not want to be found! We have our own one big planet to look after, what about that? All the major wild life protection organizations are working through donations! (The government has money for Mars but not for Earth!!) It only makes me shameful and laugh on our disgraceful development. Who is the person who can decide what should be given more importance to? Things that we know there is or things that we don't know there is? It fills me with despair to see how ruthlessly we are enjoying our stay at this planet and amongst other living beings and treating everything around us as something of our use or entertainment or food or pest.

I am no longer afraid of any cataclysmic event, in fact I am hopeful that it might be the only answer to the type of life sort deserving this planet, given to the current scenario what we have made, we definitely don't.

Predator or Prey

A friend of mine recently put up this argument between us, are we humans born to be predators or prey? I don't quite remember the exact phrase she used to put up this question, all I was interested in was the question in itself. Wondering what made her come to this, she said she was reading a book and that made her wonder whether we are as mighty as the most dangerous predators or as feeble and vulnerable as an infant.

Instantly, I put my hands up and say that we are born prey without the slightest of doubts. We don't have claws or talons or big teeth or fangs or venom or sting or anything of that sort which we might inject or bite with to any other living being and that becomes our food in no time. Humans don't come with such features, what we do come with is an exceptionally sharp and unimaginably capable brain. The power to think, contemplate, memorize, configure, coordinate and come up with a formulated structure and procedure has made us sit on the top of the food pyramid, as some say, and not only that, have also made us the most advanced and successful living species on this planet.

Many of us would agree to this, as a matter of fact, quite proudly! Now what I fail to understand is how can a comparison be done between two things in two different circumstances. What on Earth would you say is the biggest predator? Alright as someone said, we sit on the top of the food pyramid, so let us see ourselves. Put me on a barren field with nothing but me. I am being told to survive on my own like the other living creatures on that field. Search my own food, fight for my existence, make my own shelter, and try and complete my life cycle in that field. I wont be surprised, if I'm bitten by a snake, bitten by colonies of red ants, my food might get stolen by field rats, attacked by mosquitoes and insects and if by all unlikelihood I survive them all, I might end up having a bacterial or viral infection taking me to my end. So the most intelligent thought of species perishes within no time and quite shamelessly. There wont be a difference if the surrounding was changed from a field to a forest or inside water or on air, we would perish soon enough!

But then we knew this could happen to us, so we invented things. We made houses, big and everything proof! We made shoes, we made insect repellent and we also made guns! Guns which some use for protection, some for recreation and yet some for livelihood. But why use it to make our dominance more specific, more widespread and more strongly held? I am not a person who is against technology, but I also feel that a little less advancement and development might not have hurt much. The way we cut trees, kill animals, invade and evade their habitat, stop the course of a river and make a dam, tame a wild animal for our recreation, hunt down one because it might be dangerous, eat it because its exotic, wear it because its fashion, undoubtedly we are at the top of the food pyramid!

But looking at all our activities, one will definitely have a laugh of his/ her lifetime! We make something so big and beautiful, that we spend most of our livelihood protecting it from getting destroyed! We invent hamburgers, pizza, fries and dough nuts, only to become incapable of eating anything else after eating them for sometime! We make cosmetics, hair colors, to look young and beautiful, only to know that not using them altogether might have let us look younger for a longer time! We built biggest of cars only to have to come back to ultra small cars, this time out of compulsion! We make medicines one after another, yet never came up with anything that guarantees, its not ultimately God's wish!

So what have we accomplished so far? Where has civilization brought us so far? How capable have we become to fight and sustain a natural holocaust? How protected are we to live wild? How big are we to be the biggest predator?