By Rai Chowdhary
On the bright side – we just achieved a milestone in space exploration via a flourishing public private partnership. SpaceX became the first private company to send astronauts on a space mission. This touches me deeply and reminds me of the project I worked on to produce materials in micro-gravity conditions in space during the early 1980s. Well done NASA and SpaceX.
Dark and menacing clouds
The shine of this stellar event was over shadowed by several events…
- Two most powerful nations are on a collision path and it is going beyond just a war of words
- The pandemic continues to wreak havoc as it sweeps across the world even as attempts to re-open economies are under way
- Social unrest has been ongoing in many parts of the world (most recently it started in the US), meanwhile
- Arson and looting of people’s property, shops, small businesses, and more keeps happening. While this allows for a release of anger – it does more harm than good. Small business owners are already hurting and should not have to shoulder “more” economic hardship.
- On a broader scale, damage to the planet continues unabated via aggressive de-forestation and expanding our food chain to include newer species of wildlife.
Given this is the case in many parts of the world – I wonder if we can even call our species human, and “smart.” How can we morph the right to protest into a right to harm others and damage property?
Learn before it is too late
The bigger question is how long can such behaviors continue before something even more drastic happens? The rich can hitch a ride into space and probably escape, unlike commoners like you and I.
Can we do better? Perhaps looking at historical events when mass protests happened and world changed forever will help. Remember Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela? Shall we learn some lessons from them. Ah – that would happen only if are teachable. Are we?
Rai Chowdhary's blog 