The Deadliest Peril
Consider human tribes during evolution of mankind. The tribes numbered a few hundred, with a clearly defined, (though fiercely contested) hierarchy and fell into two categories. They were either hunters or farmers. About ten thousand years ago, our species barely numbered 15 million. The planet was a colossal canvas and resources were there for the taking. And our species took them for granted.
Through millennia, proliferation of the human race has been the root cause of decimation of over 95% of other species. This happened through wanton killing, disturbance of fragile ecosystems, introduction of diseases and multiplication of domesticated animals - among other reasons. Humans pollute and rapaciously destroy every ecosystem they inhabit. As of now, even the artic circles and the remotest parts of our planet are occupied or polluted.
Like water lilies in a pond that double every day, our race managed to destroy, domesticate or corral every other species and we could do that because of two advantages that humans had over others who inhabited our planet, (including at least four other sub-species of human-like creatures – whom also we wiped out.) Those two advantages were our superior intellect and adaptability. Humans not only thrive in every imaginable condition of the planet, ranging from freezing arctic to blazing deserts, but also occupy the pole position by far.
But like lilies in a pond that double every day, our species is now over seven billion and running out of ‘living space’. The Nazi concept of Lebensruam or its rough translation ‘living space’ was probably the first articulation of state policy advocating that a race of people who believed themselves to be superior, had the moral right to eject and exterminate other ‘lesser races’. And of course, it was always the ‘superior race’ which decided who were inferior or impure, with latter having no say in the matter.
However it wasn’t just the Nazi Germany who thought that way. Several countries rest on graveyards of entire civilisations exterminated like vermin. The contemporary global upholder of democratic values, USA - annihilated native Red Indians with every possible method including biological warfare! (They did the latter by distributing cholera infected blankets to vulnerable natives.) The aborigines of Australia, New Zealand and several other parts of the world suffered the same fate.
Races of humans exterminate other races of humans for resources - period. They may use skulduggery of race superiority like the Nazis, or denigrate other races as inferior as in cases of aborigines, or build narratives of religious Crusades, or create paranoia by sheer fabrication like weapons of mass destruction etc. - but at the root lies a simple formula. When resources reduce and contenders increase – conflict is inevitable.
And we are plummeting down that slippery slope. How, we as humans, or more practically, as Indians - address the challenge of reducing resources and increasing contenders, will determine our future.
There is an old Bedouin proverb which goes something like this. ‘Me against my brother, me and my brother against our cousins, we and our cousins against the neighbours, we and our neighbours against the other village..’ and so on. If we create zero-sum constructs to subdue those who are weaker, then the same proverb will run its course in reverse. If the dominant cohorts choose to leverage their strength to subdue the minor, then they will solve every future problem or difference of opinion with use of strength and violence. We will try to use force and strength to subdue our neighbourhood, then we will turn that violence on our cousins and finally it will be a brothers fighting brothers.
Many contemporary leaders are trying increase their dominance of the pond with divisive formulas, but we need to realise that co-existence within the pond is the only answer, not elimination of the weak. The former gives us sustained survival, the latter only buys us some traumatic time before cannibalization begins.
The two advantages that humans have - superior intellect and adaptability, enabled our ancestors survive ice ages, rapacious carnivores and thousands of nature’s upheavals principally because we have the ability to sense impending catastrophe and adapt to avoid its calamitous effect. In a world whose resources are depleting fast and contenders are trying to solve every problem with force and parochialism, we perhaps face our species’ greatest existential challenge. Because now we confront the deadliest peril of them all. Us.
The author is former CEO NATGRID. He tweets @captraman and views are personal.
