A few days back, I was wondering about the movie Elysium and one thing led to another and I ended up wondering what if we really did have another planet. I kept thinking more about it and ended up with so many other what if’s popping up in my mind, which actually inspired me to write this article.
The first thing that came up in my mind was, like I mentioned above, what if we had another planet except Earth, where life existed? We might have not had over population, shortage of space, poverty, or even lack of education. Honestly, who knows? With another planet on our side, we could have had an endless stream of opportunities – robotic form of life, urbanization, anything and everything possible with just a touch of button and the possibilities keep continuing as one thinks about it more and more.
Next, I came down a level, and wondered what if there were no countries, no borders, the whole planet as one single country, with one government, one economy, one currency and various states? I probably think the problem of world peace, equality, poverty, and different paces of growth would definitely come down, a notch, to say the least. There would be no constant threat of nuclear wars, no division, and most importantly, the whole planet would be united as one – one single country. There might be definitely cons for this scheme. I haven’t listed or considered them, as that is not the point, the point is to imagine differently.
The next obvious thing I could think was what is there was no religion? It doesn’t mean that I am asking people not to believe in God. All I am saying is that although religion brings faith in people, makes them better human beings, but there are so many riots and confusions and problems because of different religions. There are so many people killed or sacrificed in the name of religion, which according to me is not right. So maybe, having a single religion, or no religion, would help us much better, than so many different religions.
Coming down, to the lowermost level, what if there was a single or rather no gender in human beings? What if we didn’t have to classify people as male or female? There might have been some other system to distinguish, or there might have been no gender at all. Just everyone would be considered equal, with no gender biased prejudice. Well, it surely would have helped a lot in decreasing the crime rate, at least here, in the capital city – Delhi.
Probably, the most important question, the one that is sure to get your attention would be what if there was no internet? And actually, it’s not a what if question, as this was the case, some twenty – thirty years back, which made me realize, that life did go on at that time as well. It was different, sure, but it didn’t stop. Agreed, that now we have much easier accessibility to various sources; we are much more in contact with friends and family, through the medium of social media. But the point is that even if there wasn’t internet, there were other ways to communicate or gather information, which leads to the fact that, life, does go on one way or the other, with or without technology.
The main thing to realize, through this thought of “what if”, is that everything that exists on this planet and outside it is structured in a definite manner. What I mean is that its occurrence in nature is defined in a set pattern. But then some questions which come to my mind are, who has defined this occurrence? When did they do it? How did they come to know that this particular occurrence would be the best? I don’t have the answer to these, and although science might be able to answer and provide a lot of justifications as to why things are the way they are and why do they occur in a definite pattern, but the purpose of mentioning them here was that it’s important to think and realize that our surroundings are structured in some definite pattern and these patterns go on and on without failing. And when they do sometimes fail, nature finds a new way to build the existing patterns or define some new patterns, but it never stops.
Many a times we ignore the obvious occurrences around us but it is these very obvious occurrences that are vital in structuring the way we are living today. So sometimes, just stop, take a look at the world around you, gaze at it, and wonder why it is the way it is. Ask yourself a lot of what if this and what if that, and in this regime of answering yourself you’ll enter in your world of “Imagination”, which we – the blog writers would like to call as “The_Realm_Of_Imagination”.
In the end, I would just like to leave you with another what if question, and let your imagination run wild, as you think about the possible solutions. What if there was a parallel world, or universe, which was running in an older time era, and where we were yet to be born, where we may have had four hands instead of two, or maybe where we weren’t termed as educated yet irresponsible citizens, powerful yet who are unable to stand for the needy and happy to be born and brought up but stupid enough to regret having a girl child.
Leave a Reply