The Battle Against Booze

Man always seeks pleasure and a way to hide from fear, sorrow, and misery of life. Unlike other animals, human needs are complex. The man has a lot of concerns other than finding food and mating. He invented the concept of recreation. Finding pleasure has become the lifelong quest of mankind. The man has a verity of ways to get pleasure in which drinking alcohol plays a prominent role. Consuming alcohol or in other words “Drinking” is not only a recreational habit but also a part and parcel of the culture.

The root of drinking goes back to the prehistoric era. Before man settled down for farming in valleys they lived a nomadic life doing from place to place seeking shelter and food.  Alcohol was introduced when man accidently discovered fermentation when they drink wild barley fermented water. They surely started falling love with it because it has the “feel good effect”. That fermented drink resembled beer. Barley was one of the first crops to be domesticated thus introducing agriculture which shaped the human civilization. People no longer needed to roam from one place to another to gather food instead they grow them. In medieval times, Europe was literally drunk because the only drink safe to consume was liquor. Drinking water was mostly polluted but alcohol brewing process requires boiling so unknowingly Europeans kill the bacteria in the water used. Drinking has been evolved from generation to generation along with the culture.

Why people like alcohol this much? We all like to get pleasure and forget our worries. Alcohol precisely does that. When someone consumes alcohol, it goes to the small intestine through the stomach. Walls of small intestine quickly absorb the alcohol and add them to the blood stream through which it goes to all of the organs in our body while the Liver tries to remove alcohol from the bloodstream. However, it takes very little time for the alcohol to reach the brain. Alcohol decreases the activity in brain’s some neuroreceptors and increases activity in others. It also increases the chemical dopamine in the brain’s pleasure center causing the “feel good effect” that occurs after taking a drink. Dopamine is called the “Pleasure hormone” because of this effect. According to a report published by World Health Organization, world average alcohol consumption is 6.1 liters of pure alcohol [1]. Alcohol also results in 2.5 million deaths per year [2] surprisingly more than the number of deaths from AIDS

Temporary effects of alcohol will be gone after several hours and the drinker will be back to the normal sober stage. Alcohol makes a person’s mind free, his animalistic nature is somewhat revealed. A drunken person seems to be open and fearless. Drinking makes social gatherings possible, people tend to meet up others over a round of drinks at a pub or bar. Even in ancient times, pubs have become a center of human interaction and sometimes intellectual discussion forums for great philosophers, artists, and revolutionists. Even today alcohol plays the main role in social occasions and becomes a tool helping to get socialized.

Although alcohol consumption opens up a person for good, it has many adverse effects; physical and psychological.

There are safe limits for alcohol consumption for both men and women. Pregnant women are advised to retain from alcohol consumption. Weekly maximum alcohol dose for men is 21 units. For women, it is no more than 14 units. A unit of alcohol is 10ml of pure alcohol (100% proof). It is also recommended to have at least two alcohol-free days per week for both sexes [3]. Alcohol is highly addictive. It affects not only the drinker but also his family, friends, and community. Psychological trauma caused by him on his family especially children can be very harmful in the future.

Alcohol is the cheapest method to get the “feel good effect”. Alcohol production, distribution, and consumption are highly regulated by governments but illicit liquor production which is highly dangerous and black-market trade is rapidly growing. Taxation on liquor is highly profitable for the government. Generally, alcohol taxes and ultimately liquor prices are going up every year but those price hikes didn’t help to reduce consumption. An addicted person may find money by whatever means to pay for drinks.

Liquor companies maintain close ties with the authorities and the government. Most of these ties are serving a more sinister purpose. By political lobbying, sponsoring and bribing liquor companies to protest against progressive steps to inform the public the harmful effects of alcohol. People are getting wasted every day while profit margins of liquor companies grow.

Some religions such as Buddhism and Islam forbids alcohol consumption while Christianity usually tolerates, nevertheless regardless of the race or religion, people get drunk. The only practical thing to do is to educate the masses about the adverse effects of alcohol and retain our young people from becoming alcohol addicts. Telling the people to drink not more than their limits is effective than telling them to stop consuming alcohol at once. Gradually anyone with a strong willingness can come out of alcohol addiction easily.

Drinking is bound with one’s culture. Separating people from drinking completely seems impossible. Although drinking helps us to be socialized, to temporary forget hardships in life and to feel joy it has always been a silent killer. Since all out war against liquor is improbable, the best thing left is to tell others to drink responsibly according to safe limits

Photo courtesy : http://imgarcade.com/

 [1][2] http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/en/index.html

[3] http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Alcohol-and-Sensible-Drinking.htm

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Sri Lankan Education System Needs an Overhaul

Education is a basic need for a human being.  The right to education is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We get education until we die. Humans are the only creatures in the world who have the capability to pass their collective knowledge in to the next generation. New knowledge piles up from generation to generation making humans capable of mastering their atmosphere and become the most successful creature in the world. There are two kinds of education systems; formal education we get from educational institutions and informal education. When we look at the formal education system in Sri Lanka, a need to change the system arises.

Formal education is Sri Lanka started with the introduction of Buddhism. Mahaviharaya in Anuradhapura which was controlled by Buddhist monks was the main knowledge hub. Only Buddhist philosophy was discussed at first. Writing was not popular at that time so knowledge goes from teacher to student orally. Sinhalese literature was in its golden age in ‘Kotte’ kingdom. Even our Kings were scholars who were fluent in many languages. When Sri Lanka, came under British rule, old education system had changed. Buddhist temple centered education was replaced by missionary schools.

Later, with the efforts of Colonel Olcott to introduce Buddhist schools and C.W.W Kannangara’s free education, a student is getting education from government schools freely. Because of the education system, Literacy rate of our country is 93% and we have universal literacy rate among young people. Every child is getting a school and sometimes scholarships for education.

Sri Lankan education system although seems to be fine for an outside eye is actually plagued with problems.

Our education system is not up to date. The world is changing and new knowledge is piling up but the content we learn is very old and outdated. New subjects are left out. This situation is mostly present in technical education in which the things which we learn will be obsolete in a couple of year’s time. Knowledge delivery methods are very old. Teacher-oriented learning is still practiced while in education systems in developed counties are already in more dynamic student-oriented system. Our children are still being spoon fed by teachers. That was even present in our university system as well. The disadvantage of the above approach will become apparent to students when they go abroad to read for a foreign degree or when they try to read for a post graduate degree.

From the moment a child is entered to the grade one, parents and teachers are pushing the child only to be excelled in academic achievements. Sports, aesthetic and extra-curricular activities are virtually being thrown out of a child’s time table thus hindering the personality development of the child. Our children’s creativity is much low compared to children in other countries. Endurance (both physical and mental) is nil. Children are getting depressed and committing suicide more often. All because of the imbalanced personality created by our education system.

Fierce Competition for popular schools is a controversial point. It is true that many schools don’t have even the basic resources. Government needs lot of money (of which the government is always running short) to develop schools. Even all the schools get equal resources, people still try to send their children to popular schools in Colombo and other major cities for their prestige and for better opportunities their child will get for being a student in those schools, for instance getting a high-paid job or securing a good marriage proposal. 

 Restructuring the education system is one of the most challenging tasks that lie ahead. We should focus on an education system for the future needs.Changing education system from teacher-centered to child-centered is needed. Child should be given room to discover the existing knowledge and create new ideas from it while teacher should be playing a supportive role.

Sports, aesthetic and extracurricular activities need to get introduced as part of the education process. A rapid update of the content of textbooks is also needed. New technologies and foreign language education should be considered of utmost importance.  This will all become in vain if the resources both physical and human is not developed in schools so infrastructure development is also needed.

Policy makers need to understand the fact that the money spending on education is not a waste but is an investment for the future. Increasing the percentage allocated for education of the GDP is not merely enough. Quality of education should also be increased. Children are our future. Without them getting a good education to take up the future challenges, all of our present work will be rendered useless so it is everyone’s duty is to revive our education system from the sinkhole in which it is buried.  

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Population Crisis; What shall we do?

World’s population is now more than 7 billion and rising rapidly. It has reached that point one year ago in October 2011. As humans, we have an immense impact on planet earth so complications arise naturally with the rising population. Overpopulation is now a major challenge to the long list of obstacles faced by humankind.

Throughout the human history, overpopulation has never been a problem before. Humans like all the other species need resources to survive. If a species have access to plenty of resources, it thrives while that species is starved of resources, its population declines or probably faces extinction (like what happened to Dinosaurs). Usually balancing the population of species is done by nature itself. Story of human population is somewhat different. Until the first half of the last century, the human population stayed under 2 billion. Due to the rapid growth it only took another half a century to nearly triple that population.

We generally think that adding more and more members to our huge human family is a good thing but as any species needs certain resources such as air, food, water and habitat to live, humans also needs those basic necessities and much more to survive and human needs and expectations are getting bigger and bigger every day. Throughout the last 50 years, expansion of quantity and quality of necessities such as energy, transportation, housing leads to perfect condition for a human population boom. Although population rise started with the industrial revolution in the 19^th century, only after the World War 2, it started skyrocketing.

Humans to generate wealth industry, production and economic activity are needed. Those needs more people. With additional wealth humans can breed and feed a new generation which helps to create more and more wealth. This cycle continues to function perfectly until couple of decades before the last century ends.

Above mentioned economic model is obsolete nowadays due to two reasons.

1.       We don’t need much labor and human skills to generate wealth. Smart technologies, industries and production don’t need much labor. The way we create wealth is also changed. World relies more on smart technologies, financial industry and service sector which requires less human participation that age old industry and agriculture
2.  Depleting resources; Humans entirely dependent upon natural resources such as minerals, metals, oil and arable land. Now humans don’t have the steady supply of resources to generate wealth which helps to keep and increase population

Problems

Large population consumes lot of natural resources which took thousands of years t naturally form. Production of those resources can’t keep up with the rising population.

This earth is not only designed for humans but we take the whole world for granted. The truth is humans are mere part of the world’s Eco system. Natural resources and generally the environment are used by every other plant and animal. Over-consumption and rising demand puts strain on the environment as well. This leads to environmental pollution which dangers not only humans’ future but also the whole worlds’ future.

Human standard of living was rising with the increasing population. This means people can live longer. But most of those old people don’t contribute anything to the creation of wealth; it becomes the duty of young to serve their elders from their wealth. This practice is highly appreciated in some cultures, especially in Asia but beyond this duty of safeguarding senior citizens lays a heavy burden in younger generation’s shoulders.

With the rising global population, especially in 3^rd world countries, an emigration boom is created. People are trying to migrate to rich countries in search of opportunities. Most of the Asian and North African people are trying to migrate to Western European countries and to United States. This mass migration creates disruptions between the immigrants and local people. Nowadays when people migrate to other countries they don’t embrace the local culture. They tend to communalize in their own religious or racial segments. Since western countries have lower birth rates compared to immigrants, immigrant community grows faster and creates its own sub cultures. Most of the time immigrant and local cultures don’t jell with each other well. Sudden demographic shifts are dangerous for a county’s future for example, in United Kingdom, immigration and immigrant cultures have become a big problem which has led to racial and religious conflicts more than once.  

Global population is rising in a way that the nature can’t control. Population boom may explode one day but it puts the entire humanity in jeopardy. Experts have found out that the ideal population which should be living in earth is 2 Billion. We have two solutions with us. Either find another plant to put the extra 5 Billion humans or reduce the population.

Since science is not able to find any plant suitable to us other than earth, the one and only option is population reduction. Even with that solution, we may encounter some social problems.

1.       We can’t move population to less populated countries because of cultural problems

2.       We can’t kill old people or reduce health benefits due to social and ethical issues.

3.       We can’t selectively give the chance to live for the healthiest babies like ancient Spartans did (Which sounds like a good idea) but not a single mother will like the idea of killing her baby even for the benefit of entire humanity.

We need a world-wide systematic reduction of births like the Chinese did with their one-child-policy. Like valuation and devaluation of a country’s currency, governments should have a plan specifying how many people are needed for the future to plan the birth policy. If the country can sustain more people, less restricted birth policy can be enforced. If the population is growing, strict laws regarding number of children can be brought forward. While making policy changed, the scientific community should be able to find ways to sustain large population from limited resources without affecting the environment.

We too need to change and adjust their high-end, energy-consuming lifestyles. That surely be uncomfortable since we are too comfortable with our life but if we keep on going like this, the end is painful than ever. Overpopulation is created by us. Before it consumes us and reduce humanity to rubble, we should act bravely and take drastic measures to prevent that from happening. 

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