What We Have Become

Our world has changed immensely. We are surrounded by an abundance of technology, and we are indeed grateful for them. From caves and huts, we have developed strong yet majestic brick-houses. We inevitably continue to progress through obstacles in our lives separately, and as a result, we discover and expand the already large field of technology. As time passes, our wants and needs have been fulfilled by the astounding invention.

But technology itself is destructing our Earth drastically.

We have become lazy, self- minded human beings. We fail to see the weakness in our invention because it has benefited many and the majority of our kind thus far attempts to improve the already advance source. We take things for granted and only rely on the overwhelming devices that can assist us in just seconds.

Our creations of vehicles and industries have contributed up to 32% of the pollution in our planet. Open burnings already populate half of industrial activity whereas transportation is earning up to 19% of the world’s atmospheric destruction sources.

We are taught to conduct campaigns and educate the public on pollution yet we fail to follow the steps in reducing it; instead, we rely on the mere amount of beings that are striving to save our world. We are taught to use alternatives for our natural resources; instead, we use them all up until a day when it has come upon us that we cannot have all our luxurious desires.

We inhabit our Earth as if it were a dumpsite. We create open burnings and forest fires whenever we please, causing us to be enveloped in a haze, yet we are not affected by the consequences of what we have done.

Over 9 out of 10 people would brush the thought away and say, “Oh, this would only happen once in a lifetime. Relax, there are others who would do the job for us in saving our planet.”

We fail to see the severity in our situation because in the distant corner of our mind, we certainly know that there are still a few of us who are striving to change the world for the better and saving our planet from plummeting into who-knows-what.

But the question that we do not actually sit down, think, and consider is that how many people are there, that are actually helping our home be free from its impurities? When we mean “a few”, we assume tens and thousands of the intelligent kind to be rescuing us from disaster. But in reality, how many are there who are literally doing so? Do we expect only thousands of our assumptions to rescue all seven billion people across the globe? Yes. That is what us simple-minded inhabitants conclude.

We do not realize it, until when one of us signifies the severity of how spoiled we are and how we are destroying our only home, only then do we turn back to where we started as poor and innocent folks and change for the better.

Roughly 150,000 people die each day across the globe. Do we not realize that the illnesses that have killed a quarter from this amount derived from our own cause, technology itself? Most may think, “Are you preposterous? How can this wonderful sight of technology kill this many people!”

The righteous ones would not stay put and keep the situation to themselves, but they’d rather give them their word and prove them wrong.

Because that technology is too great for us to identify its harms, we do not see how much worse it can be. As a wise one once said, anything and everything has its pros and cons.

The unused materials end up being burnt in open fire, and for what exactly? For money.

Everybody nowadays are so greedy for money to pay off their expenses so that they would not have too much weight to carry on their shoulders. Greed leads to obsession which is even more damaging. Greed changes a person into a self-centered, heartless creature. In greed, our only goal is to fulfill our wants and needs. We end up destroying ourselves because our greed will never be fulfilled and thus we will feel miserable.

But there is repeatedly a twist when we will reply our savior with a simple “No, that will never happen.” Why? Because we take things for granted.

Some of us are still waiting for that particular moment where it will be dawned upon us that we will plunge into darkness and there will never be hope. In time to come, when this moment arrives and the last light disappears, only then would we flee and regret.

There are plenty who are facing that situation right now in the southern side of the globe. They live amongst brittle wooden shelters and do not earn a single cent. They are engulfed in darkness throughout the night, but they fear not for the creatures that roam around hunting for food. They might say, What is there to fear when you’re free?

Because they are happy.

They find their happiness there because they are not involved in greed. Wherever money is available, we immediately fall into its trap. Some of us might even evolve into a slaughterhouse just for a hundred-dollar bill.

While they are free from money and filled with their happiness, we here are stuck with modern-day cities and sprouting economic activities which involve only what? Money.

As you’re reading this, you will wonder, what other way would there be to save our only home from plummeting into this?

Now, I myself do not have an answer to that question. I do admit that I am one of these self-minded people. My only response would be this: If we continue living like this forever, our future generation would never be born intelligent. We have no other hope but to continue this path we’ve chosen, because technology itself is the culprit. There aren’t lots of ways to abruptly halt pollution, because if not, where would we dump our waste? It would pile up forever. We cannot just throw it off the planet.

My only advice is to stop inventing new things. We already have enough luxurious goods to fulfill our desires. You see, entertainment is not one of our basic requirements. It is our greed to indulge our mind in those wants we do not actually need to live with. A one-generation technology for a certain project would clearly be enough. Greed is unnecessary, unless of course you’d like to live in darkness each day.

If we still excuse it as “it will only happen once in a lifetime”, I define it as rather a collapse of our population and we will no longer exist, therefore it is once in a lifetime.

Reducing pollution and these sources of Earth’s demolition is the same as reducing technology. In another way, not all of our inventions are great. It’s time we noticed that.