Jain Digest 2007 04

Author(s): Federation of JAINA
Publisher: USA Federation of JAINA

Page 8

Alm
FEATURE
Jain Digest Summer 2007
I am God... and the Devil too
By Professor Vastupal Parikh, Ph.D.
Human beings consider ourselves to be a very intelligent species. Our ingenuity has conceived and built several systems constituting family, social, religious, political, economic and industrial networks. Our success in these endeavors has brought us tremendous material success. Humans have built homes and palaces to live in, towns and cities for shelter; and roads, cars, trains, ships, and airplanes for transportation. But along the way, development in the name of survival has changed to development as a way to "have" more to fulfill a seemingly insatiable need.
Humans have exploited the oceans and streams for fish, land for nature's mineral resources, and forests for vast quantities of timber. The slaughter of fish and wildlife has become entertainment. No other species kills other living beings just for fun or the pleasure of the palate, and none soils its own nest. Our machines and factories have created still more wealth. So successful has been human inventive genius that soon we even invented an omnipotent God and started fantasizing himself to be in our image.
Such fantasy might have been acceptable but for the terrible record of human species. No other species has developed weapons of mass murder and accepted genocide, religious and ideological wars, empire building, colonization, and subjugation. Yet, here too, human genius is at work! We invented even a devil to absolve ourselves of all our evil acts and to whom we can assign blame. Man is an intelligent genius indeed!
Little do we understand that no one but our self is responsible for our acts....that the devil and the God are both within us! Our soul, if pure, is godly but we also harbor the devil in the form of our passions. We are so egotistic and self-righteous that we have no respect for other living beings. Our self-righteousness makes us believe that our race, our religion, our nation, and our political systems are so superior that we have the right to impose our authority and will on others, or kill other living beings for profit, food, pleasure, or fun. Our ego and cruelty has made us insensitive to the pain we inflict on animals. We wage wars, and build war academies to turn young minds in to killing machines. We have amassed enough nuclear weapons to blow up our planet with the flick of a switch. Aren't these devilish acts? Yet, amazingly, we see ourselves as the most intelligent species!
Our desires have no limits. We designed animal farms for the mass production of animals for slaughter, and trawlers to catch millions of fish in one sweep. Make no mistake these "farms" are not the idyllic settings of Charlotte's
cation International
Web, they are factory-like farms where thousands of cows, pigs, chickens, etc. are stuffed in small cages for all their short lives, fattened prematurely, pumped with drugs, and slaughtered for humans. Our Dairy industry is also a part of this setup, since 30 percent of all beef sold in North America is supplied from spent' dairy cows, and all of the veal comes from male cows born to dairy cows. A 2006
United Nations report concludes that animal farming and animal consumption have the most devastating effect on our farmed animals for slaughter each year. This contributes environment. The world is currently raising over 50 billion significantly to the destruction of forests, extinction of plant and animal species, soil erosion, pollution of ground water, and depletion of fresh water and arable land. Animal farming contributes significantly to the greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide (9%, 37%, and 65% of world totals, respectively) – of which methane and nitrous oxide are 23 and 296 times more detrimental to global warming than carbon dioxide. What are Greenhouse Gases?
Ever noticed that the clear, sunny days in winter months are little colder than the cloudy days? This is due to Greenhouse Effect.
When the sun's rays reach the earth, some are absorbed and heat our atmosphere. During clear days and nights some of this heat escapes back into space, but if the escape is blocked the trapped heat raises earth's temperature (as in a greenhouse).
Water vapour is a natural trapping agent because the clouds form a blanket over the earth and stop the heat from escaping in to space. However, man-made polluting gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are even more effective heattrapping agents causing rapid global warming.
To make the matters worse, we are rapidly stripping our rain forests to acquire more land for providing animal feed for these animal farms. Forests not only provide habitat for several species of birds, animals and insects, but also act as a carbon dioxide sink, converting greenhouse gases into needed oxygen. With the forests depleted, global warming accelerates. Additional greenhouse gases come from our cars, factories, oil and coal burning, and energy consumption. Between 1970 and 2004 the greenhouse gases rose by 70 per cent from 28.7 to 49 billion tons per year. Global temperatures have risen by 0.74C in less than a year and have hastened melting of the polar icecaps. Scientists predict that a two-degree increase in global temperature will raise sea levels enough in few short years to submerge many costal areas and cities. The devil in us must be working overtime!