A Little consistency!

Around 38 million sharks, 35 million cows, 100 million pigs, 8.39 billion chickens are killed every year by humans for food in the US alone. That's 23 million chickens a day, and we are not even talking about the countries like India and china and their massive populations.
This is a generously short introduction to a very long list of animals being killed by us everyday for meat, and other industry products such as leather.

Every year in the United States alone , more than 9 billion animals are killed for food; millions more die of stress, suffocation, injuries, or disease in the food industry. In his or her lifetime, the average American meat-eater is responsible for the abuse and deaths of some 2,400 animals, including approximately 2,287 chickens, 92 turkeys, 31 pigs, and 12 steers and calves.
How about having some memorial stones for these animals too?

After looking at this photo here, it seems more than appropriate to have memorial stones for these animals as well.

My point here is that - Our actions are utterly random and rarely are these actions backed up by sound reasoning.
What sense does it make to have memorial stones for a few dogs who had nothing to do with the war in the first place. They were just forced to perform certain tasks in exchange for food. I don't think they signed up a contract with the marines to serve the country till their last breath. I bet they didn't even know whose side they were on.

I think that if a few dogs deserve a memorial stone for assistance with the army on war efforts, which in turn leads to killing of more people, then the billions of animals giving away their life for our survival deserve a memorial stone in every city of the world.
All I ask for is a little consistency and mature reasoning in our actions.

Peace

Let's talk a little about Peace, because I think it is one of the most widely used words, and yet it remains to be understood appropriately by the majority. Most people just get lost in symbols like the one right above, and fail to understand what those symbols really mean.

What is peace exactly? Is it just the opposite of the word War, and nothing more?

If the meaning of the word itself is not clearly understood, then how can we ever know what we are trying to achieve and decide how to go about it?
Even though peace could mean the opposite of war, it is not the complete understanding of what the word peace stands for.
What would happen if all the countries of the world decide to destroy all their weapons and end all the wars? Do you think that current human civilization would be free of all conflicts, murders, rapes, robberies and fights?

I think NOT.

The majority of the human population today continues to live their daily lives semi-consciously. But the good news is that more and more people are waking up to the truth everyday than ever before in the recorded human history.

In order to understand the true meaning of a deep concept such as peace, an individual needs to be a conscious and an extremely open minded person.
After all it's only a matter of evolution.
Every new piece of information that improves the understanding of a human being is evolving him every moment of his/her life. According to scientists, every physiological interaction, every new experience that a person has in his life time leaves its mark on his DNA.
Our lives, and the current times that we live in are nothing but a small step along the long process of evolution.
Most of us humans still haven't evolved enough to thoroughly appreciate the nature of concepts like 'peace'. Well! Some of us in the past have, and most of us look up to them as public figures and leave it at that.

When I say most of us humans still haven't evolved enough, I don't intend to belittle anyone. Neither am I trying to suggest that most of us are ape-like and only few have evolved enough to be called human.
According to me, the physical evolution from one species to another stops with us humans in our branch of evolution.
The evolution that we see now is the evolution of our consciousness and understanding of nature of things( or science) that's occurring through the free flow of information.
A research that I came across a few weeks ago proves that even if our brains grew any bigger, it wouldn't make us any smarter. So, that in a way leaves us only with evolution of our consciousness.
So one thing that separates a consciously aware individual from a not so evolved person is Information.
As a man gains more information, his understanding of things improves, and that makes him more aware. And that's all you need to understand the notion of peace. A completely free, open, and well informed mind.

You all know how everyone wants to feel superior to the people around them in some way or the other, may be through a better mobile phone, a better car, house, clothes, accessories , educational qualifications, professional qualifications and other social divisions.

There cannot be peace in this world until and unless we humans evolve enough to understand that all living beings and so all human beings are equal, and learn to look at everything around us in the same light as we see ourselves.

One of the most fundamental building blocks of our current human society is hierarchy, which is any system of persons or things ranked one above another. Such a society can never find peace, unless the society itself changes. But the society in turn is nothing but a collection of people. So it turns out that unless the individual people change, the dream of a peaceful world will only be a dream.

So its clear that waiting for your governments/leaders to establish peace is an enormous waste of time. Everyone who wants to see peace around, needs to become the change they wish to see. In fact if the people of the world change, governments will have to follow.

When we have no urge to feel superior to anyone else, the world will know peace. Because when everyone learns to see everything as one, the concept of superiority/inferiority will be obsolete.
Religion, caste, regionalism, color, sex, Nationality, Patriotism. These among many others are a few concepts that divide man from man.
But they hold no value, because most importantly we are all humans living on this one planet together breathing the same air, drinking the same water and cherishing the same sun and the moon.
Besides, when our sun becomes a dead star and destroys our solar system with it, isn't everything on our planet going to become one with everything else in our solar system? We will all go back to what we came from - Energy.

If we learn to love one another and everything else around us unconditionally, then we will know the true meaning of peace, love ,and happiness.

Everyone needs to find their own way to understand peace, and unconditional love. So if you really want to see a peaceful world.

CHANGE...

The Moon

Today I decided to pass by our very own Moon after reading an article titled
"India's lunar mission finds evidence of water on the Moon"
Click here to see the article

It's an immaculate article as far as the format, and the language is concerned. Besides that, this discovery is an exciting one, and could have a lot of impact on the coming future.
I am also quite surprised that NASA failed to find traces of water on moon after all their efforts, and ISRO found evidence with their very first lunar mission. It looks like to me that somebody has been keeping secrets.
All that aside, the part of the article that I think needs to be talked about is and I quote -
"The discovery is a significant boost for India in its space race against China."
Another excerpt from the same article
"They will also provide a significant boost for India as it tries to catch up with China in what many see as a 21st-century space race."

Now this is where I think we are losing our ground as a species.

Let's start with the main motive behind the various lunar programs owned by various different countries.
The factor that gave birth to the space expedition programs was our need as a species to understand the universe better. To find out if there is life on other planets as well, so that we can evolve our understanding of nature and universe as a species.
But somewhere along the line we lost track of our priorities and are now fighting with one another over who discovers life first. Isn't something wrong here? Shouldn't we think about this for a while?
Shouldn't it be about celebrating as a species that we found water on the moon? Shouldn't the media and the governments be talking about -What this discovery by our fellow country means for us humans? Shouldn't all the countries be working together on exploring the space?

Wouldn't it be more efficient and peaceful if we worked together on the questions that face mankind?

But nobody seems to notice. Instead people take pride in these kind of events, somehow everybody wants to feel superior to everybody else. I am sure there will be a lot of people out there today talking about how proud they are to be indian. Even the news channels will be asking people how they feel about India being the first country to discover water on moon.
Every channel is out there sending out the wrong message and they have no clue they are doing so. Their motto is - "anything that sells".

And then we blame the media. Media is merely out there showing you what you want to see. Anything that gives them higher ratings. Of course the main stream media is politically fueled and controlled, but if we don't buy into their gimmicks who would the media cater to?

We need to self educate our-selves and be critical thinkers. Not just accepting the point of views thrown at us by other people and the society, but rather we should all have our own point of views. No matter how absurd they may be.

I see discovery of water on the moon as global triumph of humanity, and I am not one bit proud that India discovered it.

Time travel

Now, now before you let your imagination get better of you after reading the title of this post, let me assure you that this is not about complicated scientific theories related to time travel. But rather about our understanding and common use of the time frame.

Some of you might already know that time is not a real thing, but rather an imaginary concept that we humans have created in order to help us understand various events that take place around us.
Those of you who do not understand that time is just an illusion, there is nothing to be worried about because what I have to say here can be understood otherwise as well.
Having said all the confusing things that I have already, let's get back to the topic at hand without further complications.
When we talk about time, we think of three possible ways in which time can be divided. Namely, past, present, and the future. When we think or talk about any period in the past, we tend to form an image about the living conditions or standard of living of humans in those times. For instance if we think about the 18th century, we instantly form a very generalized image of that century in our minds based on our knowledge of that time.
We do this for a very simple yet an important reason, and that is to have basis for comparison with other periods in time. What we fail to understand is that our ideas are highly generalized.

What I mean to say here is that while many of you reading this blog are living with the comforts that the 21st century has to offer, most of the current human population is living a 17th century lifestyle. For a lot of people today electricity, phones, televisions are still a dream.
The things that we take for granted in our daily lives are still a dream for majority of the current human population, and this according to me holds good for any point in time. Be it past, present, or the future.
In simpler words, a few people in the 18th century would have lived more comfortable a life than many of us in the 21st century, while many people in the 21st century are still living a 18th century life.
The image above shouts out loud about the very same thing. It's the sad story of mankind.

It is a tragedy that in this so called Modern age, where man is already exploring the outer space, there are many of us who are still living in the stone age, and nobody seems to care.
For most of us fortunate ones ipods, high speed internet, fancy cars seem to be the definition of the times we live in.
But ask the not so lucky folks and see if they have even heard of or seen these things. They would be content even if they got a meal a day, but even that doesn't come easy.

This problem and others are all a result of our thoughtless actions. We humans have failed to explore the inner space before setting out for the outer, and that is the root cause of all problems.

A wise man once said that - we humans as a species, lost our way a long time ago, and we need to find it again, and it's only going to happen one person at a time.