Musings of an idle Mind

Now that the elections are over, here are some of the thoughts i have had over the past few days. I have not tried to analyze any of these thoughts, but merely seeked to walk through these lines of thought just like a traveller who knows the destination knows not the path he is going to take. I tried hard to find a conclusion, my logical mind trying hard to reason with some of the facts that was staring right into my face, only to find myself standing with more questions than i started with. Never did i realize that there are occasions when the mind tends to lose the forest for the trees. I was running behind the minute details, instead of looking at the bigger picture. When i realized i was just chasing my own tail, i convinced myself i should stop analyzing and just record my thoughts, for there might be someone with a deeper insight and a clearer mind who with the detachment of a Tibetan Monk can reason it for me. It is with this idea that i am recording this. Please don't think i was thinking about some profound idea, chanced upon when walking through the miles and miles of unmarked cerebral territory, which in my case has been a like a ghost town, long abandoned with few houses of thought, which from the outside sometimes gives a look of a haunted house where I myself find it hard to venture into. But i am confident that one day I would find my treasure trove in this country of mine.

I will just give one thread of my thought, for not all my thoughts are correlated. What do we all think of as success in life? It might differ from person to person, but only in shades just like the color of skin, but basically it will all boil down to financial independence, a safe and fulfilling life and in some cases fame. We all base our career decisions and look twenty or thirty years down the line based on our experiences which if it has any value, in most cases, is merely nostalgic. We all want to settle down with a big house (sea facing preferably), a few cars (luxury models will make them that much more special) and a good dose of travelling to break the monotony. But how many of us pass to think that all this is based on one big assumption? And that item has been a reason for concern for almost a century. Just as with any of Nature's gift, instead of finding reasons to celebrate over it, we humans have come up with every reason to fight over it. Every instrument, however benign has been turned into a weapon, which only a human mind with its own ingenuity and perversity can do it. If there was ever a natural resource which has been more of a bane than a boon for the people, it is this. CRUDE OIL is one which every country in this world craves to get as cheaply as possible and as much as possible.

Civilization as we know it is fundamentally dependent on this. And there are reports informing us that we have already peaked in the production of OIL and it can only go down. How many of us think a little more deeply when we say we are running out OIL? Car pooling, a higher use of public transportation, alternate source of enery like SOLAR, WIND etc., come to our mind, just because we think of OIL as a source of energy (for transportation and power generation). But how many of us realize that there is more to Petroleum than just that. Right from the plastics, to pesticides, to fertilizers, to synthetic clothes, to most other things that we take for granted are by products of refining CRUDE OIL. With over 6 Billion humans in the world, will there be enough food produced in this world to support this population (without enough pesticides and fertilizers)? Even if enough food is produced, can they be transported to every part of the world at a cost that is affordable? Are the governments around the world working even thinking on these longterm aspect? How can we expect the politicians to think long term when we ourselves cannot think about anything other than our immediate needs, typically material and about creature comforts? I tried hard to see if we as a people would be able to overcome this big transition which might come during our own lifetime and as i said earlier, i ended up with more questions than when i started.

I will record more of this in my next post.

C Karthikeyan