Independence from everything

human walking in the dark

The last 100 years have been dramatic for the human civilisation. We have
multiplied at an incredible rate to fill the planet and have taken technology
to dizzing heights. Technology is no longer simple mechanical tools , we
can now harness electrical waveforms and lasers. While this was happening
our climate has changed and we have started a mass extinction movement
of all other lifeforms in this planet. Biodiversity crisis is real but it is also
hardly noticed by the majority. If such a huge event is happening why is
that we are not feeling it in the day to day life.

In our homes nothing has changed. In our office nothing has changed. The
reason for this indifference is that we had already reduced the biodiversity
around us to a negligible amount.

The elimination of biodiverity is also a journey of independence from

natural world.

Afterall why would “supreme” humans like to be dependents on the sixth

sense lacking animals, insects, plants etc ?

Being alone on the planet and surviving means we are independent of

other life forms which gives us the power to do things as we wish. This lack
of dependence on other lifeforms is also a prerequisite for exerting
dominance over everything. That “everything” now includes fellow humans
as well. This urge for independence from everything is so overwhelming,
that it guides us in most actions of our life.

How does this urge playout in the real world where interdependence is the
basis of the natural world ? As much as a kid is dependent on parents, the
kid is also dependent on a plant which grows and produces fruit. Since we
have taken control over a plant's growth , we can now rather replace the
plant with the human intermediary, the farmer. With this concept of a
human intermediary we now view everything only with a human
perspective. In other words, plant is not important rather agriculture and
farmer is important.
Farmer and plant

To understand how our journey of independence from natural world we

have to go back in the timeline.

We humans started off in forests as one of the life forms among the other
millions of lifeforms that existed. As our power started multiplying because
of technology we slowly started to remove other life forms away from us.
When we lived in jungle the biodiversity was abundant. I would like to refer
this as “biodiversity bubble” which comprises of all the life forms with a
fixed radius. So as forest dwellers our biodiversity bubble was huge
comprising of thousands and thousands of different life forms.

Then came the settlements which were inside forests but the little patch we
claimed as our own was devoid of predators and other physically harmful
things to us. As these little settlements evolved to villages, that patch of
land was no longer habiatable for the majority of lifeforms from the forest.
Now our biodiversity bubble had started to shrink.

Tribal village

As agriculture was invented , the biodiversity just outside the village in the
name of forests were no longer needed for our survival as we can grow our
own food using a few plant species. The animals which were earlier part of
the forests and were considered as food suddenly became pests. For
example a Wild boar which was hunted for food and considered as a lifeline
for a community is now a pest because it ate few of our crops. All this
meant that our “biodiversity bubble” was shrinking continuously.

As we progressed further with agriculture and produced more food , we

had people who can do things which are not related to growing or finding
food. This is an important step in the journey towards independence from
natural world as it meant that a person can live without interacting with the
land and other lifeforms.

This meant that he or she can sit in a room and

still live.
This disconnect meant that the world had become a room with boundries.
A person can live and die in a room as long he is provided food from
outside. The entire world is necessary to make that plate of food but since
it is someone else's job , the plate of food is just a formality. From the view
point of the person the world is not needed , just the plate is needed.

Since sustenance was taken for granted and came from outside , the room
became the world that the person relates to. In this new found world , Man
is the King and he does not need to share it with anyone. In this stage we
reach the next level of degradation of biodiversity bubble. In this room ,
man no longer tolerates even simple lifeforms like ants, spiders etc. Either
all these lifeforms are deemed harmful or classified into aesthetically
degrading.

Killing cockroaches

At this junction, we have to take note that man is gone from removing
dangerous predators around him to eliminating the other placid lifeforms
around him.We now have pest control services to “clean” your home. This is
only a prelude of the next step which is eliminating the life forms which are
invisible.

As technology advanced our knowledge base extended to the microscopic

world. As we looked deeper through microscopes we saw algae, single
celled organisms etc and when we looked even deeper we saw bacterias ,
viruses etc. This new knowledge took us to the next step, elimination of the
microscopic world or in modern terminology, “sanitising”. All that was
needed is a push from product makers to brand microbes are bad and tell
that you or your child is in danger. With our sanitising spree we are
removing even organisms that we can't even see in our biodiversity bubble.

sanitising

With most of the lifeforms eliminated from our immediate vicinity what do
we do next ? Elminate our own species from our vicinity. From large
interconnected families , we are now reduced to nuclear families or loners.
While technology enabled us to live in large groups initially, too much
technology enabled us to survive on our own individually.
We live in a city of a million people but we survive alone.

As we are able to survive individually more and more of us can now opt for
a life where we do not have to meet anyone else. In a country like India we
are only in the stage where transition from large families to nuclear families
is taking place but in more advanced economies shift to a lonely culture has
already taken place.

This situation is very real in countries such as Japan and Korea. So the
question is what hapens next when we have eliminated everybody around
us ? What do the loners do , they go online ! In a dramatic shift from a
living and breathing world , we have now reached a situation where a
person can now live two lives - “one in the real world and the other as a
online avatar whether in social media or in games”. These games are so
immersive and addictive that people are now attached to it 24/7. The
endless possibilities that a online avatar provides is always a means to
escape the real world. Afterall where can you fly, where can you roleplay,
where can you die and comeback alive ?

Game screenshot

We live in a city of a million people but

we survive alone.
Even though this trend in it's nascent stage , it will be the future. When you
couple online freedom with virtual reality, it will start looking like a person
can “live more” in a virtual world than in the real world.

What is so fascinating is that even for doing all this , food is still needed .
We have to feed the physical body and keep it in working condition to live
in the online virtual world. This seems to be to an endpoint in the journey
towards “zero life” but maybe it is not. Based on whatever we have done till
now I can say one thing about food, it too will be automated and brought
to our door if not our mouth.
Already we have automation in agriculture, we have lab grown meat ,
automated delivery to our doorsteps etc. So hypothetically if you have
money you can order all the food you need for your lifetime and schedule
it daily , so that you can live your life online.

In your virtual world you can fly across the universe, live life as a God, flirt
with imaginary beings and do just about everything else you can imagine.
By the way it is not just your imagination you can live in , you can live the
life of all the people's imagination potential. All that limits your life is now
the human body that degrades overtime and has the irritatable limitation
to be fed daily and ejected daily.

Now if the online world has so much potential and since it promises
endless life should we even live our life in a human body or is it only logical
that we live our life in a machine which can be endlesslly replaced or in a
virtual world which cannot be shutdown? When we start pondering over
these ideas and make that leap we would have truly and surely replaced all
the life around us and brought the biodiversity bubble around us to zero.

Biodiversity banned

Call it science fiction or call it a thought of an alarmist or a pessimist, the

truth is that we have eliminated much of the biodiversity around us in the
name of survival and cleanliness.

The thoughts of a common man are always guided and boxed within
his/her capacities and information. As attention seekers we will always have
a few people who will experiment with new stuff and all it takes is for some
industry to catchin on a trend and make it a mass phenomenon.

Will we really find true independence in the online world ? It all depends on
what a person expects. In search for that imaginary utopia we will venture
everywhere and in that journey we will lay waste to this world and all it's
inhabitants including majority of humans. The real question is do we really
want this kind of independence or is it something a few crack heads at the
top want ? Do you want to live with the planet or live draining the planet?

The real answer is that we do not have choice as we are slaves of the time
we live in.