By Leonardo Padura and - -
HAVANA, Feb 2 2007 (IPS)

Human beings have never been as thoroughly warned about the gravity of their actions against nature as today. Hair-raising data, apocalyptic predictions, frightening evidence follow us each day to announce that disaster is drawing closer and close, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that never before has the thinking species had the responsibility to fight for its own survival on the planet where the miracle of life was made real. Humanity has come to a crossroads with its awareness that it is even possible to calculate how much time is left for action in this third act. Intelligence has been the hallmark of this species capable of lifting itself above the others. Today only its extraordinary capacity of thought and reason can save it, although at the rate things are going, with so few world leaders and individuals willing not only to think but to take drastic action, everything seems to indicate that the bells will ring and we will not be able to ask for whom: they ring for all of us, for our children and theirs.

Without knowing the ultimate reason of the gods, Amaliwak must prepare a giant boat that will accommodate his family and a pair of each of the species of animals that live on the earth. As the reader will recall, what Carpentier calls a ”rain of the gods’ anger” begins to fall and batters the earth for a period of time that the wise Amaliwak is unable to measure. The magnificent twist in the tale comes when, after the earth has been drowned and the rains cease, Amaliwak begins to come across other ships similar to and different from his own which are carrying people from many parts of the world and from many other times, all “warned”, like him, that a great catastrophe was nearing.

An ancient man with yellow skin had saved himself and his family and beasts from the Reign of Sin; from the land of Olympus, the chosen were the King of Pythias, Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and his bride Pyrrha; from the chosen land of Yahweh came ancient Noah; the Babylonian Utnapishtin, warned by the great god Enlil, travelled from the region of the Mouth of the Rivers. All had the divine privilege of crossing the borders of the future and receiving instructions from the secret realm with the mission of saving life on the earth in a moment when the Creator, enraged by the perversity and corruption of humans, decided to destroy everything with a flood. The story brings together in its few pages various legends on the great, purifying flood. ”What is important is knowing whether mankind emerged better from this event”, Amaliwak thinks, and Carpentier advances towards the end of his tale.

The prophets and wisemen of the beginnings of thinking humanity, so close to their creators (Noah according to Genesis belongs to the tenth generation of Adam and Eve’s descendants) are privileged that their divinities warn them about the consequences of the depravation of the human race, which will be cruelly punished for its acts against nature. Men of the 21st century, so far from gods that at times they have refused their help, are fortunate that science (and reality itself) give us similar warnings which we may still have time to heed without it being necessary to build boats in our backyards.

It is clear that human beings have never been as thoroughly warned about the gravity of their actions against nature (the nature we are a part of) as today. Hair-raising data, apocalyptic predictions, frightening evidence follow us each day to announce that disaster is drawing closer and closer. Never before has the thinking species had the responsibility to fight for its own survival on the planet where the miracle of life was made real.

But the predictions are increasingly disheartening. Only evidence that polar bears are losing sleep because winter comes so late, that the melting of the arctic glaciers will raise the sea level, or that the year 2007 will be one of the hottest on the planet since the death of the dinosaurs, will suffice to make us face what is obvious and violently stop us.

Certain local actions, increasingly widespread, have begun across the world to save nature and with it man, who lives off it and exploits it. However, the global slowness in addressing the greatest challenge that has ever faced humanity, and the laziness with which many governments (the most powerful are among the most lazy) risk a future of larger and larger natural disasters in order to preserve the profits and power structure of the present, are a cause of real terror and shock at the level of responsibility involved.

A few centuries ago, the descendants of Deucalion and Pyrrha established a dialectical game between excess and punishment. Man would seem to have had enough time since then to learn the necessity of equilibrium in his actions and in relation to the world around him. However, this has not been the case, and unfortunately it doesn’t seem that things will change enough in this direction. Tidal waves, hurricanes, massive rains, droughts, extreme hot and cold spells — these are the warnings of the ”gods” of the excesses of humans. Are we so deaf that we cannot hear these calls of nature that our ancestors placed in the mouths of divinity?

Humanity has come to a crossroads with its awareness that it is even possible to calculate how much time is left for action in this third act. The exhaustion of petroleum reserves, the shortages of water already suffered by millions of people, the inability of the planet to absorb all natural (including human), toxic, and even radioactive waste; the emission of unacceptable quantities of greenhouse gases, have set the alarm on the geological and historical clock for modern man, and the appointed time is drawing closer and closer.

Intelligence has been the hallmark of this species capable of lifting itself above the others. Today only its extraordinary capacity of thought and reason can save it, although at the rate things are going, with so few world leaders and individuals willing not only to think but to take drastic action, everything seems to indicate that the bells will ring and we will not be able to ask for whom: they ring for all of us, for our children and theirs. We have already received more and better warnings than Noah and Amaliwak. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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