About a decade or two ago, I was not able to read the analogue clock by myself. But I was able to tell time. Surrounded by a beautiful blend of nature and people, I could tell time.
The early morning birds tweeting and making sure every member of their flock carries out their morning duties properly before they jointly fly away on their daily travels. The cries from kids about my age who like myself did not want to wake up and prepare for school. The sweet clean smell of the cool early morning breeze made up a shortlist of things that made me know “ahhh, it’s about 6am or so, I’ll soon be off for school”.
Without being able to read time for myself, I could equally tell if it was a weekday, a weekend or a holiday. Not just because I was spared the trauma of brushing my teeth early in the morning (yes, you heard that right, I really hated brushing my teeth till I turned about 11 or 12 and yes now I have plenty of regrets), coerced or flattered by my mother mocking me into the then abominable act. But because the mood in the neighbourhood felt somewhat lighter.
Instead of the weekday cries from my peers I heard giggling and laughter. The leader of the play group going from door to door gathering us so we could all play together under the biggest tree which incidentally happened to be at the center of the neighbourhood and in-front of my childhood home.
I could equally tell time when the day was over and nearing 5:30pm or 6pm. The security lights in the neighbourhood flickered on to start their shift, the morning chatty birds returned to our favorite tree and were chatty and busy as always. Mothers in different homes yelling their children’s names to return home and take a bath after the day’s triumphs. So yes, I could tell time.
But today, with the advent of “development,” I can’t help but tell time since the digital world shoves it in my face. I can’t even hear the birds tell their busy tales anymore because the tenets of “development” require new settlements. A total shift and destruction of our usual settlements to embrace the cleaner squeakier versions of what a home should supposedly be like. Consequently, all my favourite tall and strong trees meet their doom for this purpose.
These new settlements don’t place us in settlement circles where we watch and learn to live by watching each other, but it places us behind doors of steel in sound proof environments. I don’t hear the cries of kids who don’t want to go to school anymore, nor the birds chatting as they pass along their morning chores.
Lo and behold, “development” scares me. Not because of the beauty it brings along, but because it is obsessed with destroying nearly all cultural ties laying in its wake. “Development” seems to make no room for cohabitating with my cultural ties and things which beautified my childhood. It chooses to reign as absolute master, bringing along its own global culture and staying intent on destroying mine. I seem to have no power to fight it on my own even if I tried, but others don’t seem to notice the destruction “development” comes along with.
Maybe it is not “development” per se that scares me, but the concept of a “global village” it charges forward with that scares me.
If the world is a “global village”, does this not mean there is a chieftaincy dictating what obtains in that village, howbeit global?
From the look of things, don’t they seem to be doing away with the beautiful cultural identity in which I grew as a cherished child of the community in favour of a totally individualistic reality but communal digital world?
So yes, “development” does not only bug me, it scares me. It might twist the mindsets of generations to come. Causing them to be disruptive yes, but will it be for the better? This “development” does away with nature, tips the balance of the ecosystem as well as the sanity of the human mind.
But I do wonder…. Am I the only one scared by “development” and the global village championing its cause?
Great !!! keep it up dear
You aren’t the only one scaring about development. So do I, and for many reasons. When I look at the state of things in the world, what mankind has done to humanity, and which is taken to mean “development”, I just utter the following thought : “we have been walking so fast, so much so that we no longer know what we (humanity) are doing. And now we have to wait our souls to join us”. Moreover, not all innovation or (r)evolution is an improvement, and vice versa.
Thank you, Pearly, for this food of thought and I hope I won’t wait too long for another.
God bless.