The Planetary Society of Japan : Column

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YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

June 3, 2009

Humankind reaching the prime age

I often hear people say, “When you get old, class reunions look all alike.” After the greetings “Hi, its been a long time”, they start talking about their children and grandchildren followed by one’s own illness, fumbling in the bag for drug tablets to take them in the end. During adolescence one may be allowed to run to excess over one’s health, but it is absolute must to take care of oneself at reaching late middle age.

Ever since mankind started biped walking several thousand years ago, they developed technology at a slow pace in the beginning and later accelerated its pace to have finally controlled the entire planet. Human beings have utilized everything possible only for their own benefits; consequently brought about troublesome incidents for other creatures on earth, which caused extinct species both for animals and plants solely due to human behavior.

A human belief that mankind would be happy by ever raising productivity is now facing a big turning point because of the invention of nuclear weapons in 20th century and grave influence to global environment. It is obviously becoming clear that if these two issues were treated only by political tactics, then it will, sooner or later, lead to entire perishing of human beings.

That is to say, we human beings have contained within ourselves grave problems that must be handled with careful attention as “accomplishment” of our total lives so far. Mankind has reached the prime age of its life. At such time like this, I wonder if there would be some way for our homeland Japan to become the savior of humankind. Such feelings are piling up in my mind piece by piece.

In the middle of 20th century, this country was speeding along under the slogans of income doubling and scientific and technological powerhouse, blindly believed in number-one priority in technology and economic growth. I really hope to change such country of ours to the one, “paradise for children” and “wonderful country respectful of lives” which were unanimously said by all foreigners who once visited Japan in past.

Today, not just foreigners but we ourselves don’t believe this is such a wonderful country. To begin with, we must make efforts to regain our pride. If we seriously confront the crisis of Japan head-on, this is directly connected with the problems human beings are facing today. There lies risk and essential nature of the modern globalism. I wish to further continue our efforts to promote bonding in families and communities all over this archipelago with always being perspective of the universe in our view.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)