With the cloud of grenade smoke mixed with smithereens of human bones, hovering over the skies of Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, India and at some point of time hovering over almost every part of the world has lead to Stephen Hawking’s  recent doubt, “Can humans survive another 100 years?”. With our collective effort to destroy our shelter and its inmates, Mr. Hawking’s doubt might actually be a negative reality.

Had the question of human survival been on biological and medical grounds, there would be no worries because the laboratories around the world are busy to immortalize humans, so much so that they are growing human organs through stem cell technology. However, our survival is jeopardized in the present social, political and economic scenario. Human history is stained with blood and replete with killings induced by the passion of power, wealth, vengeance or pure sadistic pleasure. But over the centuries, we survived them all, the barbarians, Vandals, Goths, Alexander, Hitler, Napoleon, British colonialism, etc.

Despite physical and mental frailties of the plundered masses, they stood the test of severe and several internal and external invasions. So had the threat of survival been posed only by Hizbollah, Hamas, Al Qaida or LeT (Laskar-e-Taiba), there was a fair chance of our withstanding them and living through it. But the tragedy of our times is that, invasions and attacks are not the only mammoth problem we are living with. The vulnerability of our survival is further increased by the invincible personal, social, political and environmental issues.  

The irony is that, today we cannot differentiate between our heroes and villains. Politics has turned into a filthy game of unabated selfish manipulations. Walter Bagehot’s statement, “A parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people”, never seemed more apt. The promises and policies of our leaders are prejudiced and idle because they are influenced by personal selfish motives.

While we are so equipped to wage wars, why do the initiated peace processes never result in anything concrete? The reason is because we have lost the basic honesty of our character. Peace and harmony is never intended, it is just a trick on the minds of the gullible masses and take advantage of their underlying ignorance. The rockets, grenades and bombs will be a part of our life till the killers are killed or there is no one left to be killed. In such circumstances, our survival even with a steady population growth rate of     1.14