We are anchored towards are own idols when solving the problem. Recently oil nations wanted to focus on clean up of plastic. Rather than reducing the use of plastic, this is because their idol is money, and each one of the involved nations was trying to make the most money for themselves.

Had the cause been anchored in the future of the planet there would have been a totally different approach to tackling the issue. Even if there are different views on the matter.

All of creation is in submission it is humans that have agency to submit or not. But what does this submission mean? Is it just mechanical obeying of some commands? If this is so then the authenticity of commands comes into question. That would mean all commands are objective and cannot(or should not) have other interpretations.

Another way to understand the idea of submission is to look at what it goes on with other creations and how they are in submission. According to my understanding we have animals that model one type of creation that are more instinctive. Static nature in the world like trees mountains and all which have another way of submission more static waiting for commands from God. And then we have angels that encompass the working of everything in the physical (seen and unseen) world. For me angels are also the little biological proteins that are constantly working in our bodies to get it functioning to every small thing in the universe, which we are yet to discover. Anything the works mechanically to keep the world and up functioning without issue are angels.

I recently saw a caterpillar in the garden and it got me thinking of its lifecycle. All it does since its birth is to eat. Eat as much as it can. And one fine day it just builds a cocoon for itself and undergoes a transformation. Out comes a butterfly. Does this caterpillar know about the existence of the butterfly?

Our life is not very different from that of the caterpillar. Here were are eating and preparing for the next. We don’t know when comes next. We just need to prepare for death. There are some hints from spiritual and religious traditions. But all we can do with that knowledge is reflect on it. Even thought it hardly makes sense to us. Just like the caterpillar.

Malcolm was a man of his time, shaped by the society he lived in. What is most remarkable about him is his eagerness to evolve himself. When in prison, he read everything he could lay his hand on developing his beliefs and philosophies. After prison, he spent the next 12 years in dedicating his life to the Nation of Islam, towards transforming the lives of his Afro-American brothers using the philosophy of Elijah Muhammad, as it had once transformed him. During this time, he fought and blamed all Whites for the current condition of the Black community. When he finally broke away from the Nation of Islam and traveled the world, he soon came to see beyond racial lines and then became a staunch human rights activist.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind/ by Yuval Noah Harari, aims to “..explore[s] the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be ‘human.’” A rather ambitious goal to fit in less than 500 pages.