Nemesis is a determined hunter
 "And
though circuitous and obscure, the feet of Nemesis how sure!"
- William Watson English poet, popular in his time for the
celebratory content and famous for the controversial political content
of his verse.
Nemesis is an inescapable agent: the silent killer of all great men
and women possessed of hubris. In ancient Greece, Nemesis was the spirit
of divine retribution against those who succumb to arrogance; and is a
recurring theme in ancient Greek myth: the man or woman who loses sight
of human limitations and acts arrogantly and with violence, as if he or
she were immortal. Thus, there can be nothing on earth more imagined so
ridiculous, as the miserable and wretched creature called man. Who,
being incapable of being the master of him-self, and being subject to
the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of
the world - a world of which he has not power to know the least part,
much less to command the whole. Man is his own worst enemy; and the
fates that determine him are just: they give him but his own.
Impudence
Nemesis only ripens what his hands have woven. He, being the species
of impudence, thinks he knows all; but realizes not that he can never be
gods; but can easily become something less than human with frightening
ease. His dreams of innocence depend on a denial of reality - his own
form of hubris. Eventually, of course, having felt the piercing gash of
grief brought about by his arrogance, and having lived through it;
having loved to the brink of brokenness, and having learned the
difference between friendships and frivolities; he will take a conscious
step through the invisible membrane that separates hubris from humility,
pride from passivity. Proof that, though victims of their own hubris at
times, even great men will, eventually, break and bow.
Empires dissolve and peoples disappear. It is in our nature to watch
human frailties played out because they are the every day stuff of every
man and woman on earth. The thirst to know and understand the large and
liberal discontent in the hearts of men ought to be the quest of man.
Yet, even lettered ken, sometimes worn threadbare with pride, fail to
understand the hearts of men. When a man's adventure in life becomes
hubris, blinding him to the suffering of the human next to him; he is,
filled with hate and mistrust: the children of blindness. Due to this
benightedness, we hold our hate for light and careless lavishing.
Therefore, the idea that humans are intelligent enough to serve as
stewards of the Earth is among the most hubristic ever.
Flaw
Yet in the eyes of twenty-first-century capitalist culture that
worships at the twin altars of science and technology, greed and gain,
no deep character flaw will ever be visible if some upstarts think they
are capable to serve as stewards of the earth, irrespective of the folly
of it. The Stewardship of earth is a trust placed upon the human kind.
The assumption is that we do not really possess or own anything. Rather,
the world, including us, belongs to the cosmic creative process, and it
is arrogant for humans to think otherwise because we are not owners but
stewards of all that comes into our arena of responsibility - income,
assets, property, goods, time, talents, and our very selves. Yet, our
human weaknesses, follies, failure to be responsible stewards of Earth,
have led to innumerable calamities.
The current ecological crises threatening, global climate stability,
the ozone layer, plant and animal species, pollution of air, the
despoiling of land, the degradation of fresh water, threats to the
health of the oceans, all results from the greed of man and his
arrogance. The loss of forest and arable land in alarming proportions
has tremendous implications for food security. Human population, now
counting seven billion, is placing stress on every ecosystem on Earth;
and man in his arrogance, carries on nonchalantly.
Avenger
While nemesis, a determined hunter as the avenger is a resident evil
pursuing and occasionally travelling along with man; waiting for the
opportune moment to unleash its potential; as humans, what is our
responsibility to avert a global catastrophe? We need a safe operating
space for humanity. We need to understand the risks we face and
interestingly, solutions are increasingly available.
What is urgently required is a set of priorities to navigate the
future. For the first time, humanity has reached a point where our
pressures on fisheries, forests, coral reefs and other ecosystems may
disrupt the entire "Earth System": all the interacting physical,
chemical, and biological processes on the planet, ranging from the
climate system to all ecosystems. Thus, understanding global risks in
our current, increasingly turbulent world is necessary if we are to
forge a path towards resilient economic development. We tend to forget,
or ignore, that human pressures on the planet have reached levels that
may trigger major social-ecological shocks, undermining the gains of the
past and our prospects for the future. The planetary boundaries
framework identifies nine key priorities: climate, ozone, land,
freshwater, fertilizer use, biodiversity loss, aerosols, the release of
harmful chemicals, and ocean acidification. Humanity has a new
responsibility to become stewards of these nine boundaries, which
regulate the stability of the planet. Transgressing these boundaries,
now largely quantified, puts societies out of the safe operating space
into a danger zone. We may at any point slip past tipping points in the
"Earth System", beyond which there may be no going back; not in the
foreseeable future at least.
Catastrophe
The saga of human evolution can be quite sobering. Notwithstanding a
major planetary catastrophe to blame, like the Earth-crashing meteor
some 65 million years ago that brought the dinosaurs and nearly 80
percent of the world's living species to extinction, several human
species have evolved and died off just in the past two-plus million
years leaving only one surviving human species today. With so many
people now taking up so many of Earth's limited resources, does a
similar fate await today's modern humans? Some 2.2 million years ago,
the first confirmed humans appeared on Earth. It was Homo habilis, also
known as "Handy man".
He emerged onto the scene as the inaugural species of the human
family Homo, which includes present-day humans. They are now long gone,
having only existed on this planet for just under a million years. Each
of the succeeding species of humans has died off, except for, of course,
today's human species, Homo sapiens. Such extinct species of humans
includes the first species of man to walk upright and develop human
culture - Homo erectus, and the more popular Neanderthals.
The sole surviving humans that now populate the earth are actually a
subspecies of modern man, who as far as we know appeared on Earth some
90,000 years ago. They are known as, Homo sapiens sapiens. Today's
humans live in a period called the Holocene epoch, also known as the Age
of Man, which began about 10,000 years ago.
This current period, in geological time, is not even a wisp of a
thread in the 4.54 billion years since Earth first formed. Yet today's
human population has exploded like that of no other human predecessor
and developed more of the planet in more sophisticated and impactful
ways than any other Earth species of any kind that has previously
existed.
Sanitation
Yet, over three billion people today live without proper sanitation,
and over one billion do not have access to clean, drinkable water.
Nearly one billion people go hungry every day. About 1.3 billion people
do not have access to electricity. The picture is very clear that we
have some serious adjustments to make.
Common sense says that what we do and the responsibilities we adopt
and accept today will determine the life of future generations. Nature
does not depend on man and therefore will always find a way to recover,
reclaim itself, and live on.
Can Mankind do the same, or will today's existing species of humans,
go the way of its ancestors: replaced by, another species of intelligent
life?
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