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Every human life is created by decisions.
Decisions make your and my life too! Some are made consciously, while most are made without our knowledge. But we lead on our lives as if it is all God given. Truly, we make our lives.
So, it is with nations. Decisions make the nations. Come on, the entire human civilization is based on decisions that we, meaning our ancestors, took during the evolutionary stages. Some civilizations just vanished from the surface of the earth, because they took the wrong turn at the evolutionary fork!
Many of the decisions taken by our ancestors could also be wrong and we are possibly paying the price for those today! I can almost hear you saying, ‘Ha, now you are talking! I can see where you are coming from. You want to blame our forefathers for all the mistakes in our lives’.
No, ladies and gentlemen! I am not saying that. Not just yet!
Many of us believe that history is made by political heads. The wars, the battles and numerous conquests, et-cetera might appear like epoch changing or epoch-making political decisions. You cannot be further from the truth!
History is made by technology! Believe me!
Subtle, silent, homogenous, constant, ever changing, never ending technological and scientific changes have always been the ones that made history. Did you notice that I have made constant and ever changing, next to one another? If you did and understood how constant could be ever changing, then you are in sync with my thought process and you have evolved well!
For those of you who don’t believe that technology is the root cause of all things that pervade this society, just an example.
How do you think Modi, the strong and all-powerful leader was created? Technology, gentlemen, technology! But for Whatsapp, twitter and the whole gamut of social media, you will not be having the PM at his chair today! Technology is the change maker.
The major turning point in human evolution as an intelligent animal happened with fire. Fire was the start of technology.
About two to three million years ago, human beings led a simple hunter gatherer lifestyle. Then, if you lived through 20 years, you have lived long! Men and women lived closer to nature, possibly nothing to wear. Men knew no shame. Shame meant nothing much to him at that time. Possibly, shame was what you felt when you were kicked by a running rabbit!
If something like that ever happened, then of course, everybody would make fun of you. And that possibly was shame’s starting point to be extrapolated to the point that we experience today.
Maybe, it was one such person who was shamed and in a fit of anger sat far away from his group, throwing stones at other stones lying on the ground. And accidentally created the first fire and possibly, the first fire accident!
On seeing the fire, he should have raised a lot of noise. Hearing him cry, all his group might have come running to his help, to put out the fire.
What the hell happened? How did the fire come to be? There was no lightning. Neither was it too hot. After the hunt it should have been evening! A little bit of high intensity research would have shown them how fire could be created. He invented how fire could be created.
Luckily, he did not patent it and the entire human race soon caught up with him! Nobody knows till today who that greatest of all inventors was.
For millions of years, human beings have been literally playing with fire. Fire has taken different shapes and sizes since that wonderful day when an accidental stone lit some dried leaves. Do you realize that the day when fire was created by human action was a fork in the human evolutionary path?
It changed the dynamics of politics in the world. For centuries, the guy who managed fire was more successful than the rest. So much so, half of the human race was left at home to tend the fire.
Fire meant light, heat and of course, protection from animals. Not to talk of cooking food that literally killed all the germs, but also creating tastier and easier to eat food.
At the fork of human evolution, man took the path of fire, emitting carbon! That continues to burn even today, emitting more and more carbon. We are facing climate change today. Paying the price for the decision made by our ancestors! We are a community that blames the dead and gone. That blame is enough to redeem us from our destructive path! Jai Hind!
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.