Does Weather Affect Us?
Why the obvious signs of climate change were easily ignored.
Although it is not being acted upon as an emergency that it has turned, climate change is no longer a topic anyone can avoid. Such a relief! Not a definitive reassurance but a transient relief. Whether it’s the looming dread of a catastrophic future, a disseminating ideology to profit from, or a trending content to share, this consequence of the suicidal human avarice has now manifested to an extent that the collective psyche can no longer ignore it.
All the three instances in the previous sentence are extreme. Our addictive compulsion for the extremities is not a result of evolution but of a halfway lost regression. This addiction is acquired and forced into our natural senses. We enjoy the smell of rain but hate gloomy overcast, love sunshine but run from the heat, relish snowfall but curse the cold. Between these extreme feelings, sleeps the benumbed sense of the weather.
I must talk about senses when it comes to climate. Climate is the state of the external environment. We interact with the environment only with our senses. Are we aware that we can sense the weather? Not to predict seasons but to feel the state of the climate in the now. Yes, we are aware but we have developed deft mechanisms to subdue this awareness and continue living in the delusional human environment detached from the natural environment that contains us all.
A delusion cannot be permanent. It needs to be constantly fueled and then turned into a device. Very much like the VR goggles. If everyone wore VR goggles displaying the same content then virtual reality would become the only collective reality. It will always be injurious because the body and senses exist only in the natural world. The regulated delusion empowers the virtual reality believed as the only reality. ‘There is no other way the world can exist.’
The world does not need a particular way to exist. Life does not need a fixed way to be lived. The ways to live depend on the environment we interact with. The virtual reality of the detached human environment is fueled by consumerism. If we have not depended on machines to subdue our sense for the climate we have sensed and hence resolved the climate change long back. Nobody believed in global warming because no one practically sensed it. Now the burning forests are perceptible to the extremities of senses. We sensed it only when it was too late.
The fuel to keep the virtual reality is, of course, consumerism. When it is chilly we have heaters. When it is hot we have coolers. We have all sorts of equipment ready to tackle the climate. It is a war against the natural environment. A war that is played on the screen of the controlled virtual reality and we helplessly squabble with our bodies in the real reality, left completely drained. We are nature. A war against nature is a war against ourselves.
When it comes to consumerism we only think about the consumers. But without the product how can one consume it. It is not only the need of the consumers but the greed of the providers that grows in the shadows of consumerism and is encapsulated by shifting the blame on the consumers. The basic living needs are manipulated in a way that profits the most. This voracious greed needs the collective delusion to exist. It has spun cobwebs in the economy in a way that even if the mind is out of the delusion it cannot live. To exist, life needs to feed this greed.
Our technologies are devoted not to fulfill the need but to keep creating new needs. We have equipment that does not help but make us depended on them almost addictively. Anything natural has a life span, if it does not, it is always harmful. In the gamble of profit and prosperity we bet lives. Not other’s lives, but our own lives. Business and economy are the words approved without a second thought. We live for the economy forgetting it was created by us, for us.
Because there is no other way. To live one needs food. It has been made impossible to get food without money — the biggest shame of humanity. This is not economy. If you are wondering what is my credential to question the economy, I would say my credential is being a human, alive in this world, desiring to live well. There’s no other credibility needed for a human to question the system. The intelligentsia of economy confirms the economic malpractice.
If you have doubts, read their books (read the books and not some snippets on the internet) and come back to me. I would love to discuss it. No matter what you or I believe in, we are all in this together. The climate crisis needs urgent action by the very few of us who hold the resources. Being a mindful consumer is a necessity but there’s no time to sit back feeling we have done our parts. We, the mindful humans, must keep demanding the world leaders to correct the system until its corrected.
A consumer struggling with living expenses has no option but to focus on the cheapest and not the sustainable product. It is the providers who need to make everything available sustainable and not just a few options that are charged unreasonably high. The majority of the disturbingly large human population (a major topic that is silenced) struggle for basic needs. And the rest struggle with the marketing baits of an unrealistic prosperity. Consumerism needs to be reformed by the providers as they are the ones who execute it.
Recycling plastic will never be effective till plastic production stops. There are multiple ways to replace plastic but it still dominates the market because the providers prefer it. Meat, a cheap source of protein, is still accepted as the only source of protein due to the ancient dogmas. Racing the treadmill of success throughout life in the name of being busy keeps the reality unreal. The industrial practices that caused this crisis are kept alive by the providers more than the consumers.
Collective awareness is no longer an option. Reforming the system is no longer a demand by some low-life hippies. It was always the reality. It has been skillfully averted. Now it cannot be. World leaders are greenwashing the worried minds by the promises of a long-haul zero net in a ridiculously distant future. Actions must be taken IN THE NOW. There is no other time to take action. If they cannot do that then why do we call them leaders?
The benumbed senses only sense the consequence. Our senses are capable to detect errors in the process if not benumbed. The change was always possible. But change comes with resistance. Resistance always dominated change but this time it cannot. Because now our senses are awake. By bringing mindfulness to our senses we are bringing the change that is needed. Doesn’t matter what you think, where you are, or what you do, we are all in this together.
We only need to obviate the resistance.
