Survival
Many people, except a few percentage who are wealth, are just making ends meet daily or living averagely. This means they cannot afford to stop work. A common saying - ‘Stop working means stop eating’. Even those who are living slightly above average are subscribing to the same philosophy. They are also carefully monitoring their little wealth so that it will not go burst. But then in the recent episode of ‘credit crunch’, we can learn that their plans do not always work well. This is a message of SURVIVAL - the natural instinct of living beings. We work and save for the rainy days and some for their children (much less these days). People instinctively will move and migrate to a better and ‘greener’ pasture. The world is now like a global village with lots of people moving across borders and boundaries. It is like a borderless world. People too do not stay put in one place for a long time. More and more people are moving according to the suitability and sustainability of the place and environment. Though we are not the shifting cultivators of old, we can still be considered the neo-nomads of the 21st century.
Comfort
People these days are not easily contented in terms of wants. They keep climbing the economic ladder and unfortunately sometimes with unethical and immoral means. We praise and admire those who can still climb the ladder though legitimate, healthy, proper and competitive medium. Once people travelled by foot, and later cycled, and much later drove. Today people are not talking of driving as a means of transport rather the type of cars they are driving; similarly they are also comparing the type of houses they live in, branded clothes and shoes they wear, holidaying in the hotel rated with the most stars, changing the wardrobe as frequent as possible, the number of credit cards they have, etc. These have inevitably created a lot of wastage.
Consumerism adds to the problem of garbage disposal and elimination of natural resources. Someone recently lamented that the people of today has already completely used up all the resources that belong to this generation and the next, we are already using the resources of the generation of our grandchildren. All these are done in the name of COMFORT.
PRIDE
Basically, we cannot deny that we are a proud people. We feel that we are the cream of creation and the climax of God’s creatures. We felt that we are being told by God to have dominion over everything in the world, we have no problem doing that. In fact we have overdone it. We now do not only have dominion over the things of the world but we have also managed to exploit it. This is the PRIDE of man. We call ourselves BOLEH (which in Malaysian means POSSIBLE). We receive satisfaction by competing with each other to become the Best - even in the area of exploitation, extinction and destruction. We boast that we can do it by ourselves. We sincerely appreciate those who can and have done it according to proper guidelines and permissible limits. Sadly, there are many who have done it through unscrupulous means. Corruption is a deadly disease that has been eating up many nations and peoples. Many governments have not put enough efforts to eradicate this cancerous gangrene. Corruption has brought about many abuses - such as abuses of the environment, mental, health, politics, social behavior, communal living, religious beliefs, etc. People are still taking these abuses lightly. Many just close an eye to them.
Some thirty years ago, there were no such thing as bottled water on sale. Today everywhere we go, we are supplied with bottled water and are told not to drink unfiltered water due to water pollution. In the near future, we may have to purchase bottled oxygen because of air pollution. In the past we used to eat fresh foods but now we are told to eat healthily. But there are so many packet and can foods in the markets and we are also told to eat them and after that take food supplements. The foods we consume today seem less nutritious and are affected by insecticides, steroids, preservatives, artificial colouring, toxic ingredients, etc. Almost every other person is now eating health food supplements in order to stay healthy.
The abuses of the environment have also created a rapid and massive deterioration to the world we live in. The garbage waste and the environmental pollution have reached an alarming level. It has caused global warming, ozone level diminishing, unpredictable weather condition, unreasonably scorching sun-blaze, instability of the subterranean seismic plates, rising sea-level, depletion of agricultural land and green trees, destabilization of fresh water and sea-water desalination, irregular and extreme storms and cyclones, etc.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Be conscious with our environment! We are made in the Image of God. This is not a call to mismanage God’s creation rather a call to good governance and management of God’s world. We need to put aright the wrongs, deny the exploitation, reduce the excessive, reduce wastage, live simple, be contented, improve the environment, speak up against the violators, press the government to eradicate corruption and pollution, teach our children to be responsible humans, live as friends and good neighbours, communicate love and sharing, promote peace, restore humanitarian assistance and compassion, always ready to do good and slow to get angry.
By so doing, we can at least live a happy and meaningful life in this world; even if its volcanoes are going to erupt or the tsunamis are going to come. It is worth everything when we can live together happily without racial, political, social, economical, educational discrimination. We are not supposedly made or designed to live in war or terror. No God will ever command or teach its followers to kill or steal or destroy each other. Unfortunately, we have misinterpreted God’s good intention for our own PRIDE and EGO. This is exactly, at least we are told, how Satan has fallen.
Let us rise above the storms to return a world of peace, goodwill, fellowship, harmony, sharing, and with many meaningful and happy memories. It is not to late to begin now. WILL YOU?
Read the following report and think and pray over it seriously.
Indonesia hit by deadly tsunami, volcanic eruption
MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia (AP): A volcanic eruption and a tsunami killed scores of people hundreds of miles apart in Indonesia - spasms from the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” which spawns disasters from deep within the Earth.Tuesday’s eruption of Mount Merapi killed at least 18 people, forced thousands to flee down its slopes and spewed burning ash and smoke high into the air on the island of Java.
Meanwhile, off the coast of Sumatra, about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) west of the volcano, rescuers battled rough seas to reach Indonesia’s Mentawai islands, where a 10-foot tsunami triggered by an earthquake Monday night swept away hundreds of homes, killing at least 113 villagers, said Mujiharto of the Health Ministry’s crisis center. Up to 500 others are missing.
A rescuer wheels a man heavily burned in the eruption of Mount Merapi at a hospital in Pakem, Yogyakarta, Indonesia,Scientists have warned that pressure building beneath Merapi’s lava dome could trigger its most powerful explosion in years.
But Gede Swantika, a government volcanologist, expressed hope the 9,737-foot (2,968-meter) mountain, which sent rocks and debris cascading down its southern slope, could be releasing steam slowly.
“It’s too early to know for sure,” he said, adding that a big blast could still be coming. “But if it continues like this for a while, we are looking at a slow, long eruption.”
A 2006 eruption at Merapi killed two people, one in 1994 killed 60 people, and a 1930 blast killed 1,300.
After refusing to budge from the volcano’s fertile slopes, saying they wanted to tend to their crops and protect their homes, villagers started streaming by the thousands into makeshift emergency shelters late Tuesday. Many carried sleeping mats, bags of clothes and food as they settled in.
Officials said earlier that by closely monitoring the volcano 310 miles (500 kilometers) southeast of the capital of Jakarta, they thought they could avoid casualties. But the death toll rose quickly.
A motorcycle lies covered by volcanic ash at a village that is hit by pyroclastic flows from Mount Merapi eruption in Kaliadem, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.Among the dead was a 2-month-old baby, said Mareta, a hospital worker who goes by only one name. The infant’s tiny body was draped in a sheet as his mother cried.
Three people at Panti Nugroho hospital died of burns after being hit by a searing cloud of ash, said Agustinus Parjo, a spokesman.
Even as they contended with the volcano - one of 129 to watch in the world’s largest archipelago - officials were trying to assess the impact of Monday night’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake off Sumatra that triggered the killer tsunami.
The quake, just 13 miles (20 kilometers) beneath the ocean floor, was followed by at least 14 aftershocks, the largest measuring 6.2, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The fault also caused the 2004 quake and monster Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.
After Monday’s quake and tsunami, many panicked residents fled to high ground and were too afraid to return home.
That could account in part for the more than 500 people still missing, said Hendri Dori, a local parliamentarian, adding: “We’re trying to stay hopeful.”
Hundreds of wooden and bamboo homes were washed away on the island of Pagai, with water flooding crops and roads up to 600 yards (meters) inland. In Muntei Baru, a village on Silabu island, 80 percent of the houses were badly damaged.
With few relief workers able to get to the hardest-hit islands - reachable only by a 12-hour boat ride - fishermen searched for the living and dead. Corpses lay unburied because there was not enough outside help to dig graves, according to the Mentawai district chief, Edison Salelo Baja.
The island chain, 175 miles (280 kilometers) from Sumatra, has long been popular with surfers.
A group of Australians said they were on the back deck of their chartered boat, anchored in a bay, when the quake hit just before 10 p.m. Monday. It generated a wave that pushed their boat into a neighboring vessel. A fire soon ripped through their cabin.
Australians tsunami survivors Daniel Scanlan, left, and injured Robert Marino walk on the pier upon their arrival at a port in Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, Wednesday.Ade Edward, a disaster management agency official, said crews from several ships were still unaccounted for in the Indian Ocean.
The quake also jolted towns along Sumatra’s western coast - including Padang, which last year was hit by a deadly 7.6-magnitude quake that killed more than 700. Mosques blared tsunami warnings over their loudspeakers.
“Everyone was running out of their houses,” said Sofyan Alawi, adding that the roads leading to surrounding hills were quickly jammed with thousands of cars and motorcycles.
(October 27th, 2010 posted in another blog)
شركة مكافحة حشرات بالرياض
ReplyDelete