Yes, I used to watch captain planet when I was a kid :)
Every problem on earth is because of one thing - power. People want power. They don't want the admiration of others or money or any of the thousand other reasons that we think of. Most problems boil down to an individual's or a group's thirst for power. Power over land, power over money, power over other lives.
The medium they choose to establish power has changed over the ages but the intention has remained the same. Humans seem to have an innate nature to move towards inhuman practices. So much so that I sometimes doubt whether "being human" is even part of our nature - it is probably a state that we always strive to achieve.
In the olden days, power used to be the ability to procure food. Later, it was more about providing food and providing protection from enemies. Later, humans became more "civilized" and power was vested in the hands of those who provided salvation from sins. Those who bargained with God on your behalf. Those who created heaven and hell and got you a place in either of the places depending upon how you fared in their estimation. After that, it was in the hands of the orators and mesmerizers like Hitler. They made people turn a blind eye to mass murder, plunder and misery. They encouraged them to nurture their selfish nature. It is evident from how many involved in the large scale butchering of lives called the second world war reminisce (sometimes with a nostalgic smile) about those days when they mercilessly stole from a person while sending him/her to death in the gas chamber.
Now, it is wealth. If you are rich, you get subsidies. If you are poor, you get free poison to remove yourself from the equation. All over the world, people are fighting merciless corporations to survive. We somehow seem to have got this idea stuffed into our brains that automation is the one solution to all problems.
Automation is good, but it does not always have to mean removing people from the picture. Tools must be used only to enhance human efficiency. Not to replace it. That is the only way to maintain some kind of balance of life on earth. When we remove living beings from a process, it ceases to help life. Period. The false efficiency that we see when we remove people from a process is going to come at us hundredfold and hit us hard. So hard that we cannot stand up again.
Look what we have done so far! Medicines save lives, but polluting our natural resources, and then creating medicines to control the damage we caused, and trying to profit from that is outrageous. Educating our children to become worker bees rather than creators - that is another great mistake of ours. It is not too late yet. Let us wake up.
Let us walk that extra stretch instead of taking the motor vehicle. Let us boil water and drink instead of buying packaged water. Let us peel that fruit and consume fresh juice instead of drinking soda (A friend rightly said, "Why would anyone pay and put CO2 into their body when it is throwing it out every minute?"). Let us pay some extra money and buy organic food - it will save our posterity a lot of expense. Let us bring back the kitchen garden concept in our own little way. Let us not rush to the hospital or pop some pill for headaches and colds - ask your grandmother for a natural cure. Teach that to your children. I am doing most of these, and trying to do the rest.
Let us come up with ways to connect back with nature. Let us let other lives live. Let our children live in homes surrounded by gardens, animals and birds with pure air to breath in the future, instead of living in concrete jungles with dark colored jump suits as predicted in sci-fi movies.
