It
normally takes at least 9 months to cultivate human life through processes
peripherally explained by science. Inherent in the process, are deep mysteries
that manifest in various ways and continue to leave human kind with more
questions. In this whole drama of cultivating life, especially human life,
several still ask “when does life truly begin?”
When
I was little, I used to trundle items over ants neatly lined up in procession
looking for food. It excited me to tie plastic bags over a stick and set it on
fire and watch plastic fire balls drop on ants and termites like bombs with
whistling sounds. I did these a lot. There are other examples that include
insects, trees, and so on. Well, I was a child.
As
a grown up, there are certain things about life that fascinates me. You have to cut down a part of a tree for it
to become useful to you. You have to kill an animal before it can give you meat.
A seed is plucked from a tree and planted to rot before it brings forth life.
The best example for those that believe, is that Jesus Christ had to die on the
cross to open the door of eternal life for us. Judgement is coming!
Life
is interesting to reflect on. For me, life as we know it, is the middle stage of our entire
scale of existence from an abstract point of nothingness to eventual eternal
uncertainty. The middle stage of any process is a significant one. It can decide
how well the process ends and the quality of the produce. For us, the middle
stage of this scale is the only part we can influence through our actions
because we have the capacity to reason and make choices. Incidentally, our
middle stage is the shortest part of the entire scale of existence.
Looking
back at what I did to several ants and termites, I feel bad, and I should have had
more respect for them. At least, I should not have killed them for fun. Respect
has a lot to do with the amount of importance we attach to tangible or intangible
things that may or may not be useful to us. How much respect do you have for
nature? Nature is God’s creation. The usefulness of an item to us determines
the level respect we have for it. Think about human relations like family and
acquaintances or a rich friend versus a poor one. The point is, we should have
respect for all items we encounter in life whether they are useful to us or
not. To every one of us, all life forms fit into a scale with extreme values of
“useful or not useful.” The beggar you pass every morning on your way to work
may not be as useful to you as the security guard you pass by into your office.
Now, what makes you a high quality human is being able to respect both the
beggar and the security guard equally, as people who have life just as yourself.
Even though the quality of life may be different for us all, whatever keeps us
alive is the same. Now, let us make this broader. All living things, from the
single-celled organism to the behemoths in the oceans, have life, and thus are
alive. They all deserve our respect including those we kill for food.
How
much respect do we have for other forms of life? How much respect do we have for
our own kind? I look at the world today and I don’t see a lot of positive
answers to these questions. Many of us are wasting our middle stage of
existence on frivolities and in pursuit of vanities. The worst part is, we are
going about our exhibition with utter disrespect for our own kind. According to
media reports, about sixty persons own more wealth than half of the world’s
population. Most of us won’t live above 100 years and you are almost useless to
yourself at 80. Whatever titles you acquire in life will follow you nowhere. The
truth is that anyone who embezzles huge amounts of funds or acquires illicit wealth from business malpractices is not different from a terrorist who blows up a plane.
Our actions of neglecting the very poor among us is no different from the holocaust.
If we agree that every human life is important, then we should respect and care
for each other more with less regard for conditions of usefulness. There are
several videos on the internet today about how people responded differently to the
needs of people who pretended to be destitute and others who pretended to be
affluent. Does this really typify us?
In
north central Nigeria today, something incomprehensible is going on. Thousands have
been killed because nomadic herdsmen tread through farming communities, and react
violently to farmers’ agitations. The sheer scale of the horrific massacre of
men, women, children and babies reminds me of the genocide that occurred in
Rwanda some years ago. You have to become inhuman to be able to stare at some
of the pictures. In order to stem the menace, some states have boldly enacted
anti-open grazing laws with commitments to support willing herdsmen to ranch cattle. However, this may have moved this horrifying reality to
neighbouring states that have no such laws. Though all life forms deserve
respect, I fail to see the parity between human life and cattle, which is used
as justification by nomadic herdsmen to perpetrate massacres against the inhabitants
of the immensely fertile and resource rich north-central Nigeria. Surely, the motive
is deeper. Similar horrors have been perpetrated by terrorist organisations in
north-eastern Nigeria and other parts of the world.
I fear deeply that,
as I tore through colonies of ants and termites with terror, and treated other
life forms with disrespect as a child, humans may have overtime extended these
kinds of actions to our own kind. Human life has become meaningless to so many
people. The trend of killings without respect for human life is really disturbing.
As savages, it was excusable. But with the current level of civilisation, it is
unacceptable. All life forms are important, but human life has sanctity
attached to it. We all must keep writing, talking, and acting, to keep the
sanctity of human life. If not, many may lose appetite for beef.
