Slow down! We're going too fast

Tharani Tennakoon

TRIBUTE: The world was in utter chaos during the Second World War. The drastic attack by the Americans on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing, maiming and deforming tens of thousands of innocent people, shocked the world.

It brought to light the results of the development of science and technology. Later even the Americans themselves repented what they had done but then the damage was already done.

The generations of Japan today, still carry the sufferings of that catastrophe. Deaths and sufferings due to this world war made people think about the results caused by the so-called 'development.'

Some people saw the harm and wanted to think more, but others still wanted the world to develop - fast. Inventions came after inventions, bringing both good and bad along with them. The people were not on their way towards moral development. So they started using more, the bad sides of these inventions, causing destructions all over the world.

Industries are also a contributing factor to the world's development. But since they are always competing with each other they forget about humanity. Other than this they don't care about their surrounding environment too.

They ignore it completely and allow it to be polluted. The waste materials of these industries enter rivers and our atmosphere, killing various living organisms. They clear woodlands and forests to expand their premises, never once stopping to think of the harm that they are doing.

This also leads to global warming. The world temperature rises and the sea levels also rise due to this. Scientists have predicted that global mean temperatures will warm 1.8 - 6.3 Fahrenheit by the year 2100. It has been found that this rate of warming exceeds all others in the 10000-year history of civilization.

The use of some chemicals too harms the atmosphere - the ozone layer - the protective covering around the earth. Because of this we are exposed to more harmful UV rays from the sun, causing dangerous diseases like cancer to the mankind. Both industrialised and developing countries now equally share the responsibility for the protection of the natural bases of life.

Not too long ago, the Internet was the last, best hope for the revival of personal expression and political speech. But now it is looked at as a mega shopping mall- opening doors to ways in which one could become an instant billionaire- dishonestly.

Computer technology is developing so fast that it can even lead to major cyber wars. Computer games - another form of developing entertainment - teach not something good but something bad to the children all over the world.

They give them the idea playfully, to kill people and get something in return for it. The children's minds are affected by these games. They become feeling less, and killing someone becomes a simple matter for them. Are they supposed to be our future generation?

Another new stream of developed science is genetic engineering. Genetic research is based on the western idea of improvement and progress and benefits of science. We are going headstrong into this new biology without really recognising the fact that not all people, not all cultures, share these values to the same extent.

This has also led to another stream of science - cloning. No one can figure out where this road will take us. If this technology goes into the bad hands no one can even imagine the destruction that will be caused by it.

It could also be used as a biological weapon of war, especially if people were to be cloned. In the earlier days motherhood was something respected and something filled with pleasure. But now there is no respect for it.

We have come to a time where wombs of women are for rent. Hasn't this lowered our values of life? Hasn't it turned the most wonderful things that we treasure to everyday normal things in our lives?

Even on the roads people are running a race - going too fast - without any discipline. Vehicles try to overtake other vehicles recklessly and end up with accidents. And all these while companies are producing vehicles that go faster than the earlier productions. This is a reason for the increase in the number of road accidents.

This could not have happened if we had have developed morally, disciplining our behaviour through self-awareness.

Some developments also lead to other complications. It has been found that a 20-year-old person's reflexes drops to a 70-year-old person's reaction time, if he is talking through a mobile phone while driving, other than causing road accidents, taking so many lives on the road.

Though companies are making more and more sophisticated mobile phones, new researches have found that the rays emitted by them are dangerous to human health. Once upon a time, forests were the drape covering the planet like a lovely green carpet. It gave life and protected most terrestrial life.

Now this carpet is in rags - slashed by suburban sprawl, deforestation and plain human carelessness. Development has made us forget that we are human beings. We have turned into monsters, devouring everything that the mother earth gave us, forgetting that these things were what gave us life and helped us live.

They have destroyed this nature around them. Now they are feeling this loss and trying to compensate for it, by building artificial environments. In the recent news, there was a story where a Japanese person had started to grow vegetables underground on the concrete floor with artificial lights.

Also a Japanese firm had grown roses inside small glass bottles to beautify their surroundings. The famous 'bonsai trees' are also another example to show that people even want an artificial environmental beauty to enjoy.

Are all these called development? People find ways to kill other people more quickly and efficiently. We are now in a time where we cannot trust anyone. A friend stabs another friend over a simple matter. Mothers try to sell or kill their own children; children kill their own parents or chase them out of their homes.

There is hardly any love left in the world. Very few people help one another. All they think of is surpassing the other fellow. Jealousy and hate are what is left. In almost every country, nuclear weapons are being made.

If there happens to be another world war, what once happened to Hiroshima could very well happen to any other country in the world.

Psychologists have found that there is a connection between a person's mind and body. It has been almost proved scientifically by the quantum theory. Imbalance of the mind is one cause for diseases like cancer, diabetes, arthritis, blood pressure, heart troubles, etc.

Therefore people should consider about their mental happiness rather than running after material things. Even billionaires, who had everything, have committed suicide because they lacked that vital thing - happiness.

The rate of suicides has also risen during the past few years, showing that development is not the only thing that we should care about. Now our mother earth has decided to punish us back. Caught up in her fearful rage we are powerless. No one - not even the all-powerful America - can escape her wrath.

She has already started her war with us. There is an increase in the number of tidal waves, landslides, floods and the most recent tsunami disaster topped it all, killing more than two hundred thousand people.

But still our people are blind. After these disasters they started questioning their Gods, asking them where they were when theses tragedies happened. What these humans, caught up in the craze for development, cant realise is that, they themselves are the ones to blame for all these disasters.

Have we ever once sat down and looked at the sunset? Have we ever listened to the singing of the birds in the early morning? Have we ever had the time to just sit down with our whole family and discuss something other than work? We can't even enjoy the beauty and coolness of the moonlight that illuminates the land because of the blinding artificial streetlights that drown the night.

These are the things that we have to give up to keep up with the development monster. But, are giving up these little things really worth being buried under these development ideas?

We are going too fast along our road of life. We have no time to appreciate the beautiful things around us.

We should learn to stop for a little while and enjoy the little things around us, because one day when we look back we will realise that the little things in our life were really the biggest things in our life. So as the saying goes "Remember to stop and smell the roses."