Around the globe, the five elements of nature are up in revolt against Homo sapiens, unleashing fury in the form of floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis. Despite having several warning systems in place today, no one is really sure about what they are going to wake up to.
Hence disaster management has come up as a major focus area in the current years, but while we can gear up for any natural calamity within limits, it is almost impossible to stand up to the unprecedented high magnitude of nature's wrath that we have witnessed lately.
Especially in the case of earthquakes, which are occurring more frequently, there is little one can do to manage the repercussions, for often disruption of electricity, connectivity and other technical foundations that we base ourselves on are the first casualty.
The question that hence emerges in everyone's minds is: what is the reason behind this drastic change in the temperament of nature, which has been revered for ages as the mother by mankind, from the most bountiful to the most ferocious?
Though calamities were not unknown in the past few decades, their occurrence was rare and isolated. According to scientists all over the world, global warming, caused by emission of carbon gases into the atmosphere as a result of greater mechanisation, industrialisation and depletion of green cover, has brought us to the present predicament. They say that earth has been pushed with such great momentum to the brink that even a full and immediate halt to these activities will not free us from its consequences.
The root cause, however, is that man has violated natural laws and plundered resources recklessly to meet his greed, without restoring anything that he took away from nature. His internal nature, driven by selfishness and corrupted by the quest to exploit and profit from that which is free for all, made him greedy and short sighted, thereby inviting his own downfall.
Therefore, the corruption of internal nature has led to degradation of natural resources and the environment. Man has founded the so-called modern world by going against the laws of nature and violated the lessons that that nature taught him — to share, sustain and to exist in harmony with others.
The writer is a spiritual educator and popular columnist for publications across India, Nepal and the UK. He can be contacted at nikunjji@gmail.com / www.brahmakumaris.com
