Some scholars assert, perhaps rightly, that the anthropocene (the age marked by increased human activity that greatly influences the climate and environment) began with the Industrial revolution that has changed not only humans but also the planet on which they exist. It’s not that human activity was nonexistent before it. But with the advent of it the quantity as well as the quality of human activity exponentially increased which has impacted everything, animate and inanimate, on the earth, even beyond it.

Prior to the Industrial revolution, religious beliefs advocated the concept of conquering nature for the benefit of humankind. Bereft of its metaphysical dimension the concept has been carried forward by our modern age. It is clearly posited on the superiority of human beings on a planet that has living creatures beyond count. The corollary is that the planet, even the entire universe, is meant to serve the interests of human beings. Practically, it means that humans have a licence to do whatever they think benefits them. And this is exactly what we do; we tamper with everything we find in the natural world.

Neitzsche, the thinker familiar with the dark impulses of human nature, said something profoundly prophetic: “the earth has a disease called man.” He discovered the ‘disease’ in the 19th century when human activity was neither as intense as it is today nor it had damaged nature as recklessly as it has done today. But who listens to the madmen who dare to envisage what could be beneath the surface?

What adds to our comfort and profit is whole-heartedly swallowed regardless of the consequences. Such a worldview thrives on yet another fallacy, the notion of planet’s infinite resources. But it conveniently ignores the fact we have a finite world which cannot be a fountainhead of infinite resources. The admission of the fallacy would have consequences; the entire edifice of unfettered consumption driven by profit motive could come down tumbling. Those who run the show would never allow the world they have built on such a postulate to be upended. As to efforts to rectify the fraught situation, they would encourage patchy performance rather than addressing the core issue, the transformation of the worldview.

The degradation of our planet is universal but its results can be seen locally. Just look at nature, climate, environment, wildlife, air, seas and skies. The wild has been destroyed, mountains denuded and hollowed, lakes turned into fields, wildlife wiped out, seas polluted, air poisoned and skies muddied. All this because of human activity. We now see the onset of winter pushed ahead. Mid-September was the start of winter, not in the distant past. Now even in the third week of October one has to run a fan if not AC. It has become difficult to breathe in our cities; air has become toxic and landscapes hazy because of fog and smog caused mainly by auto vehicles and industries but blamed on the farmers who allegedly burn stubble in their fields.

In our folklore, separated lovers would spend their night fully awake counting the stars in the sky. Now the sky is so wrapped in murk that one can hardly see the stars.

In the words of poet/mystic Baba Farid (born 1173) Katak (mid-October to mid-November) was the month when flocks of cranes from Siberia landed in Punjab. Have you seen any? It has been an amazing sight till recent times.

Shah Husain (16th century), our beloved rebel saint and poet, talked of lions frequenting the banks of the river Ravi that brushed past Lahore city. His contemporary Damodar Das Gulati of Jhang who composed the legend of Heer for the first time in Punjabi, talked of white lions roaming the jungles. Emperor Jahangir mentioned in his Tuzk-i- Jahangiri that he hunted a lion in a jungle north of Lahore. Waris Shah showed us starling does jumping in the air. As late as the late 19th century poet Mian Muhammad portrayed a moving image of a deer grazing in the Bar destined to be hunted.

The situation has come to such a pass that even birds have become invisible in our cities. Some have been hunted to extinction and some have fled finding their habitats destroyed.

Poet Taufiq Raffat felt that sparrows would survive. Sadly, he has been proven wrong. We no longer hear their songs in our homes in ever increasing cacophony produced by machines. ‘The flocks that settled the river beds have fled,’ says Baba Farid.

Until the year 1980 clean drinking water could be found about 200 feet underground in Lahore, Now one has to dig at least 800 feet to get clean water fit for human consumption. Imagine the pace at which the process of depletion moved.

The dust raised by us has discoloured the sky over our head and the chemicals we injected into the soil have made the earth poisonous under our feet. To salvage the situation what we urgently need is to shed our skin of human superiority. We are one of the innumerable creatures produced by nature on this planet. We have done better by perpetuating our existence through the gradual development of our body and mind but it has been at the cost of so many other creatures and things who had equal right to exist. If we are left all alone at the end of the day, it would be our own end. Our life on this planet depends on a web of complex relationships. Undermining it would be tantamount to undermining our very existence. Since we have acquired the power to disturb the delicate balance that exists between nature and us and between other creatures and us we have to be far more responsible. Others’ destruction would eventually lead to our own destruction. We already have more than enough weapons to annihilate ourselves. But a far more destructive weapon we have is our worldview that places ourselves at the centre and treats the planet and what it has as peripheral. Choice is stark; all or none. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2024