This blessed land has gone through many trials and tribulations from its pristine beginnings. She offered shelter, sustenance and solace to the many waves of inhabitants that traversed these lands, some in transit, while others settled in riverine and mountainous settings.
Then, the land was covered with fauna and flora, and the clear river waters teemed with fish, while the seas overflowed with crustacean and other aquatic life.
And the inhabitants then were contented with God’s largess and kept their activities in balance with nature and all other of God’s creatures. Legends and lore that personified the natural environment and natural phenomena in the form of spirit manifestations were regaled and held in awe, to better guide the inhabitants towards a more meaningful existence.
Such legends and lore were respectfully handed down from generation to generation to ensure the veneration of nature as a source of sustenance and survival, as well as ensuring the co-existence between man and nature.
These narratives became the folklore and oral tradition of early man, who were mainly preoccupied with coexistence and survival. Man then stood as a sentinel to preserve and conserve nature for future generations.
But then man became civilised, and began to abuse nature to satisfy his lusts and greed; he thus, created as he destroyed without due regard for nature.
Man began to be possessed with visions of grandeur, and obsessed with adorning himself with material accoutrements to fuel his ego.
He acquired knowledge about the nature of natural phenomena and the use of nature’s resources to fashion and adorn his existence. While some men used this knowledge for the good of mankind, others misused it for evil intentions.
Thus man became violent, full of aggression, plaguing and plundering the weak and the ignorant, enslaving their minds and bodies and reducing them to be mere chattel.
Mayhem, slaughter and rape reared their ugly heads, debasing humanity and scarring the land with such an affront to nature.
Thus the emergence of the Existential Man, which focuses on individuality and his freedom of choice and decision, and is ultimately responsible to him and not to any supra being. This man exists on, and for, his own volition. He became self-centred without due consideration to communal affiliations. As a consequence, he arrogates unto himself the notion and powers of a demigod. For demigods can do no wrong and are beyond the confines of regulatory decorum.
In tandem with the rape and slaughter of humanity is the rape of the land perpetrated by Existential Man, with a mindless cohort in cahoots with his destructive tendencies.
The land cried out in agony when her protective mantle was stripped bare to fuel man’s insatiable greed. The flora was depleted and the fauna lost their homes and their search for new shelters moved into human habitat, which were formerly their homes that man had encroached.
Where once trees swayed magnificently in the wind, cleansing the air and cooling the earth, it has now become a swath of uncovered ground, exposed to the merciless heat of the sun, causing the ground to be parched, caked and cracked into thousands of fragmented segments.
Rain then drenches the ground, and without flora to retain the moisture to be released progressively, muddy runoffs become the norm, eroding the earth, flooding the plains and swelling the rivers, which carry sediments to the sea.
The land bleeds and becomes scarred. Her riverine veins suffer thrombosis, depleting and choking the lifeblood of the streams. They became toxic from pollutants discharged by man.
The once clear waters of the rivers and streams, which once teemed with fish, have now become muddy and filled with trash and other human refuse.
The smell of the forest, and the algae and pollens, are replaced by the smell of rotting wood and decomposing carcasses. The river of life has become the river of death because man squandered Mother Earth’s beneficence.
When once man lived in simple communal habitats regulated with tradition and unwritten codes of trust and sharing, he is now ensconced in concrete structures that are exclusive and anti-communal, as he has now become self-centred and harbours mistrust towards his own kind. Greed and avarice have replaced the caring and sharing of yesteryear.
There are men who have lost their conscience and no longer reflect on the moral and ethical precepts of their actions. They are bereft of any guilt for they serve only themselves, with an animal instinct for survival.
And some have even morphed into animals, whose actions and reactions are based on instinct, rather than reason. They have reverted to the herd mentality and self-preservation and the instinct of “kill or be killed”. They no longer exercise their critical faculties when they follow the herd without any notion of its direction.
Like the man of yesteryear, modern man, too, likes to regale his exploits. But, unlike the manner of yesteryear, when such regaling served to inform and educate, modern man indulges in such activities to confuse and misinform, and to beguile the masses to show fealty without regard to ethics, morals or integrity.
Man has debased himself in favour of personal gain and resorted to dubious means to endow him with material benefits. For, Man has sold his soul to the devil and dragged his compatriots into the hellhole of fire for eternity.
But, there are also men of reason, who believe God is the ultimate arbiter of their earthly actions. They are, however, muted and powerless, intimidated by the men of greed and avarice who inherited the land through foul and devious means.
These good men need to be acutely challenged by way of oppression and loss of freedoms to galvanise them to save the land and the people.
This blessed land and its inhabitants have been ravaged, mutilated and desecrated by man himself. He arrogantly assumes that the earth is his alone, and all other creatures are inconsequential and exist at his behest.
Such notions gained currency because in his ranks are menials, sycophants and the ignorant who corrupt and bastardise themselves to curry patronage and advance the agenda of the spectre of evil.
The code of existence that balances man and nature is torn asunder by the willful destruction of God’s acres and His creations, while that of man among man, which was once based on mutual respect and understanding, is replaced by mistrust, greed, avarice and acrimony.
How will future generations fare in the light of these physical and cerebral ravages?
In the midst of a destitute existence, amid barren land, they would regale themselves with the times of yore, when their forefathers abused God’s gifts to satisfy their lust for power and materialistic gains. Retributions came later and on their offspring, rather on the perpetrators.
There is time yet to reconsider and repent, to save the land for future generations. Man need not just resign his destiny to Providence, but use his ingenuity to save humanity and the environment. Otherwise, man’s present actions will reverberate and ripple to create a state of mental and physical anguish and deprivation that would challenge man’s existence on a desolate land.