Hey, can you hear the world cry?
Oh, it doesn't literally cry -
I doubt she would only cry
if she could.
Hey, can you hear the world weep ?
When animals are treated as second-class;
livestock is a slave term -
enslaving generations of a species.
Separating mother from child.
We should be kinder to those
less equipped to wield power.
That was what I interpreted in her long
ongoing non-existent wail.
If you have heard the world weep,
you must've looked around.
Kept quiet, undisturbed or secluded;
It really is hard to hear a cry so ethereal,
that it has to be conjured up.
For Mother Earth has no vocal chords
to wail, to cry, to throw tantrums.
We, humans, we anthropomorphized nature.
When nature gets erratic and lives get lost
we make it seem like it is crying;
and that we are the culprits.
It is true, we are the culprits.
We live in a world that feeds our manic consumerism -
exploiting nature without a second thought.
Every piece of cheap technology
is made with labor exploitation done far away.
Bauxite, Cobalt; the minerals that technology needs
are sold cheap, in places where interests collide
and no semblance of peace can ever be found.
Such are the fates of resource rich countries like the Congo.
Plastic and fossil fuel, staples of modern life
pollute the world with every purchase.
We may think we don't contribute to pollution,
but we do. Every single one of us!
Here lies the end.
We are at a time where climate catastrophe
is as plausible as nuclear annihilation.
Developing countries will bear the impact,
but so will the “First World”.
When we see the world suffering from freak weather
more and more so;
growing steadily everyday.
I have found that it wasn't Mother Nature that was crying.
We were the ones crying.
We have made our only home uninhabitable.
Mother Earth will survive, humans, humans may become extinct.
But such is life.
We will be the species written on the list of extinct ones,
only for there to be no one writing that list.
Spencer argued that the world is a world of
“survival of the fittest (strongest)”
which became the common slogan for our "victory"
in evolution.
But vain and shallow as humans are -
a species who had the gall to name themselves “wise ape”.
If you read the literature
there are people like Kropotkin
who argued that it was mutual aid
and cooperation in species;
that made life work.
Evolution was not “survival of the fittest”
but “survival based on cooperation”.
Hearing Mother Earth cry
should be a rallying call.
For everyone supports environmental movements;
But we are all far too busy
surviving in a late stage capitalist consumer world.
And the change we need is radical -
our everyday life right now contributes to the problem.
As Kropotkin pioneered socio-biology and evolutionary psychology,
his arguments were not for naught.
And we know now, to be humble.
Among all of nature.
Even humans are ecosystems of their own.
Gut bacteria would wreak havoc
if it was elsewhere in the body.
We are microcosms of life, and we rely on them to live.
It was never Mother Earth that was crying.
It was us, humans, we were making ourselves cry.
For we are a part of nature, that will never change.
Chawngthanmawia, our erudite 6th semester student who's into socialism and European philosophy, reached deep into his readings to come up with this piece which won him Second Place in the "Hear Mother Earth's Cry" writing competition.
