In the garb of so-called advancement, marvels of science, engineering, are we not really living in a dark age?

Question

All of us know that this universe is made up of 5 elements, all of which are being polluted by the second. Most of us have gone so blind that we have forgotten lakes, rivers, fresh air, mountains, and a lovely stroll in the greenery which only the lap of Mother Nature can provide.

What use is even the best of our inventions, if it pollutes Nature. All of us know that we are only as good as we feel inside, and only our conscience is the chief source of peace and tranquillity, which make life sublime.

Seeing all round me that only the external is development, which constitutes 0% of the source of joy, and total ignorance and inclination (in action) to do what is good makes me feel that I am living in a DARK age!

The only hope is in going back to Nature, as they say, and in the belief that we all have equal rights.

Answer 1

While I myself think exactly as you say, I hesitate to express it ......in the worry that people will mistake me to be a failure in life turned cynical.

I believe that the day we thought we were successful by twisting the arms of the nature, by trying to control nature for our short term requirements, we stopped evolving because evolution is adapting to nature in the long term interests of survival........ and we began unwinding towards gross destruction..... with the passage of each day, our speed of downward journey towards disaster is increasing. Will our survival instinct wake up in time to save us?

Answer 2

Yes, we should take care of the environment, but don't take it too far. Ofcourse we should dirty up a little bit of nature in order to get things we want. You are saying you would rather have every tree left in place than to have one medical textbook or a picasso painting?

The fact that you say "our only hope is in going back to nature" shows that you must be a little ignorant. Nature is not a Disney movie. In the past, people lived short, brutal lives. They spent all day working the fields, doing manual labor in the sun. The average life expectancy was into the 40's (that is if you survived the terrible rate of infant death).

Here is a thought expirement: The Green family owns a farm. But the use of the heavy machinery causes the ground to vibrate and is slowly deteriorating the foundation of their house and it will surely crumble in 5 years. The parents, wanting to leave an intact house for the children, decide it would be best to cut back on production to do as little damage to the house as possible. 10 years later, the kids inherit the house as it is beginning to fall over. The estimated cost of repairing the house is 5 million dollars. The youngest child, who is an accountant, shakes his head in despair--if they had been working at full production, they could have had the 5 million to fix this problem five years ago.

So for the Green family, it would be better to do a little more damage now if it meant they could fix more in the long run. We should care about the evironment, BUT ONLY to the extant that it is useful for survival to humans.

Also, examine what you mean by equal rights. Do you mean equality in life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness, or do you mean equality in outcomes, where everyone is entitled to what everyone else has (hint: one of these is bullshit).

Homo Sapiens are very unique in the respect that most animals have to adapt to their surroundings to survive--humans adjust their surroundings for their survival.

So it seems you are the only one who is living in a dark age if you can not appreciate the achievments of science.

Answer 3

This is where you are wrong. We are living in the age of enlightenment. Mother Nature is just the victim; would you kill a species of animals off entirely to talk with God, or to understand your purpose as a human being? This is what we must do. This is life; man has the innate ability to destroy what he loves, even when he doesn't mean to.
This is the absolute most exciting time to be living in. Right here, right now, this is it. Each day, we progress closer and closer to a universal answer. 10,000 years ago, hominids decided to exist. 5,000 years ago, we built empires and developed religion. A hundred years ago, we developed the airplane, but forty years ago, the space ship. We are achieving more and more each day as the populace realizes that it must advance to survive.
We are by no means in an age of darkness. In today's society, free thought is running rampid and we learn and create more and more with each passing second! Nature just happens to be getting hurt by us, but no more than it has been since our existence. Discovery of fire spewed smoke into the atmosphere. Agricultural advances destroyed fields of grass with corn and irrigation systems. Our pollution from factories and nuclear waste is making us stronger, is making the environment stronger, and eventually, we will all learn to cope with what we have become. We are just advancing so fast, we will begin to see evolution through generations instead of over long periods of time!
Nature is what we come from, and we cannot forget this. This is why we go hiking or we cut our own firewood instead of buying it or we camp/fish/walk places we normally wouldn't. We still hold the value of appreciation for nature, we just don't utilize it as much.

Answer 4

We are certainly out of balance, and I agree that we need to reconnect with our natural roots and stop treating the earth like it is nothing more than a big toilet or garbage dump. But I also think that science and technological progress are wonderful endeavors and they are an important part of human spiritual evolution. The problem is not science and technology, as such; the problem is rooted in our poisonous social/political systems. Our mindset is one of "everything is a resource for my personal gain". We've lost the true sense of spirituality. Spirituality is not a particular tradition of beliefs (Christian, Muslim, or whatever). Spirituality is a deep sense of curiosity, wonder, gratitude – a yearning to explore, understand and connect.

This is not really a "dark" age, but it is a very "murky" age in which it is increasingly difficult to live holistically. Science is actually part of the LIGHT of this murky age; it is part of the human quest to explore and understand. Science is actually giving us the ability to understand our interconnectedness in ways more deeply that ever before. The darkness comes from social/political systems that push for conformity – push for obedience to the economic drive for personal gain and material success at all costs. The almost purely market-driven mass media plays a major role in this. It is one of the primary means by which the poison is shot into our spiritual veins. The darkness comes from everyone being taught to push harder to make money in order to stay ahead of everyone else. The darkness comes from a lack of understanding of, and respect for, the fundamentally DIVERSE nature of Mother Nature. We are not all meant to follow the same path, live the same lifestyle, own the same kind of widget, etc.

There are a great many wonderful potentials is this "dark"/"murky" age, but it's like a video game. The more we advance to higher levels in certain areas, the more powerful and nasty the monsters become. The monsters of our age are self-absorption fed by political systems that value weapons and power over human life and a mass media that consists of mostly marketing hype telling us that we are too fat so we should eat more junk food, drink more pop, drive big SUVs, wrap absolutely everything in plastic, then take diet pills and pay someone to let us exercise and get a nice golden tan.

Answer 5

you need some time in the woods .make every effort to spend time in the woods at the beach were ever you need that conection

Answer 6

i feel your pain my friend i truly do, yes we are living in some dark times,