Who is the dominant Species?

There is a recent report prepared jointly by the World Health Organization & World Economic Forum that India will incur an accumulated loss of $236.6 billion by 2015 on account of unhealthy lifestyles. 

The report suggest that chronic diseases like heart attack, stroke, cancer, diabetes which are ailments of long duration and slow progression will dent into peoples earnings. 

India is already the diabetic capital of the world with close to 30 million people affected by diabetics. Non communicable diseases are also on the rise due to lack of healthy diets and inadequate physical activity. 

What is more alarming is the fact that this will affect more economically active people and almost half of the people who die from these related ailments will be in their productive years. Incidentally India has the largest working population in the age range of 20-40… 

The only silver lining is the fact that China will be ahead of us ( J ) or probably may be worse off.  :-) 

Now an interesting story…. 

Once Aliens visited the earth and wanted to conquer it.. And they decided that if they can conquer the dominant species present in earth, they can conquer the whole of earth. So they sent two aliens to watch the activities happening in earth. 

The two aliens began watching the activities and the daily happenings on earth. 

Early Morning a guy (Cleaner) comes and takes out a beautiful Car from the shed. Cleans it up. Then another guy (Driver) comes . Checks the car. Fill it with Petrol. Takes  the owner of the car to his office. Then evening drops him down at his home and keeps the car in the shed. 

The Conclusion the aliens made? The Car is the dominant species on Earth.

Why so?

The Car is given a special place to rest. It has a servant to clean it up, a servant to feed it and take it outside. Last but not least… It has a servant to earn and constantly feed it!!! 

The conclusion… strange this may sound… is what is happening to most of our lives. Are we becoming slaves to technology?? Consider the fact that there are already days like “No E-mail Day” “No cell-phone day” (Courtesy Google.) Isn’t such things height of madness?? 

There is always a concern for social implications of all these endeavors (To create new technology). Is the new technologies and machines releasing us from the endless toil of the centuries? Or is it in a way limiting us from being the dominant species? Its true that technology is there for the betterment of our lives.. But are we using the way it should be?? The reports from WHO & WEF suggests otherwise. 

I just conclude with words from American writer and critic Henry David Thoreau… 

“We’ve become the tools of our tools... One day, something vast and cool and strange may read these very words – and chuckle with amusement. Welcome to tomorrow.”