Lamentations for ice and snow are not enough. There are so many, including writers, who lament the passing away of snow and ice on mountains, the fast melting and disappearance of icebergs and the disappearance of Polar bears. The other day I read about the disappearance of the snows of Kilimanjaro; a timely but too late article for the fast receding snow and ice on Africa’s highest peak. This article by MG Vasanji got me thinking that all this is due to the greed of a people gone mad, wanting to possess every legitimate and illegitimate material object available on this planet. But MG misses a greater lament.
Lamentations for disappearance of ice and snow are fine, but our observations of late have become soul-less. In all this material greed and pursuit of physical comfort, we have overlooked the disappearance of the diversity of humans on the continents we have pillaged and raped. The tribes of Africa are fast disappearing like those that have disappeared in North America and other developed continents. The tribes in Africa will soon disappear, just as the snows of Kilimanjaro will soon disappear.
Greed, oppression and political squabbles by rival post-colonial colonizers and their industrial proxies are tearing up entire villages of human souls. They are seeking rare metals needed for space exploration to find life like ours out there. All the while, life like ours exists right here on this planet in a myriad forms of God-created beauty, culture, language and color. Blinded by our greed, we see only, like Narcissus, self-love and self-preservation at the expense of God’s beautiful creation. It’s too late now to lament for material things and the loss of some of frozen water on a bit of rock in the middle of the Dark Continent. Let’s instead lament now for ourselves and the loss of our shared humanity. It may still not be too late to save ourselves.
© 2008 Mahomed Ally Keshavjee. All Rights Reserved. Essay #360.
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3 comments:
I hear you, I hear you!
Dear MAK,
Truly, the dual edged weapons of development and civilisation have driven away the natural diversification that human beings had achieved over the past over 1 million years. This timely blog will remind us of what there once was, and now isn't. Under the garb of the two devils named by me above, humans all over the world are getting "civilised", that is, leaving their tribal roots behind and running to ape the "new" ways of modern people.
Thanks for sharing this idea with us.
Brilliant blog! It's so sad how we are always trying to discover something better as we ignore the beauty all around us. It's like a man in paradise greedily looking for more and more knowledge, not realizing he's in paradise..oh wait kind of sounds like Adam.
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