Saving soil to save our souls

I came across this movement (Conscious Planet) last week. The aim is to make the human race conscious about saving the soil. It claims 52% of agricultural soil is already degraded. And it’s only a few hundred crop cycles before we will see a huge shortage of food in the whole world.

I don’t want to talk about the obvious things, environmental impact, and impact of trees in saving soil, I just wanted to explore a bit on an old phrase “માટીનો માણસ” (Translation: Men born from the soil).

We are what we eat

Independent of whether you believe in “We are what we eat”, one must agree that in the bio-cycle, every human being eventually eats soil and gets nourishment from that.

• A seed is technically just a tiny part of a plant which is just a seed that got its nourishment from the soil
• Herbivores eat those plants, so technically they eat transformed soil, and hence are nothing but soil and water
• Omnivores eat herbivores, so they are also nothing but transformed soil and water.

Are we the problem?

Maybe

The claim is that “soil used to have more nutrients than what it has now”.

Does that mean we are inferior because we are eating (or were born from) inferior soil (food)? Or are we the superior part it lacks now? Is soil ill because we (the better part of the soil) are not part of it anymore?

Extending the same thought, some people might believe that not giving birth to the next generation is equivalent to returning the nutrients to mother earth. And by doing that, one also waives the claim for resources for the next generations to come.

In a fantasy world, what if dinosaurs as species realized that they’d been selfish. They should rather not consume more nutrients from earth and keep the population low. And maybe in an attempt to be a bigger person (dinosaur in case), every dinosaur renounced to have the next generation?

Another book that’s not written yet

In any culture that does not grow in a controlled manner, a dystopian future is inevitable. Be it algae, or the human race. After a few thousand years, none of it would matter. But that shouldn’t be our excuse for inaction.

It’d be like drowning oneself to save one from fear of drowning.

A short-term goal could be to hear, “At least they finally realized, and tried to fix/contain it” from the next generations.

“માટીનાં રમકડાં માટીમાં જ ભળે ને ભલા”.
We are all toys carved out of the soil and will dissolve into it one day.

But maybe we should save soil just to save our souls from the regret of not doing anything.