The New World Order

When one thinks of India, one often thinks of the elaborate caste system that has evolved over a period of millennia and exists to this very day. It impacts all aspects of life on this vast subcontinent. To modernize India, to make it competitive in today’s world, Indian governments have tried with some success to deal with this system.

But there is another caste system, one that I venture to say exists in every country of the world. Like the Indian caste system, it has created several classes of people, with the weakest expected always to yield to the strongest and accept their position in the hierarchy with equanimity – as if it was determined by age old scriptures passed on to us earthlings from all-powerful deities. And, as in the Indian caste system, those who are positioned on the lower lever, mostly desire to enter the higher levels and those at the higher level will use everything in their means to protect and exploit their position. It is all about power and money.

India, China and Africa as I have discovered on my bike travels over the last few years, are building roads, full speed ahead. Like Europe and the Americas our green planet will soon be cut, dissected, sliced up by many more paved roads. Four or five generations ago, just about everywhere on the planet, there were only a few dirt roads on which domesticated animals used to pull a cart filled up with produce of some kind.

Then came the invention of the automobile and automobiles, besides needing lots of steel, plastics, composite materials and even rare minerals, also need vast amounts of paved roads. And over a hundred years ago some deity – it is a mystery where these scriptures come from – declared that cars must be built and then roads must be build widened and straightened so that cars can go faster. Certain laws are somehow downloaded – and a caste system is established in even the most distant areas of the planet.

So today, whether in India or any other country in the world, if you are a pedestrian and want to use the road, you belong to the lowest caste on the planet. As a pedestrian you may be the least destructive individual when it comes to the use of resources required for living and moving around but your use of the road is severely limited. If you and your friends are walking on the road and a bicycle is coming against or behind you, it is obvious that a member of higher caste has arrived and it is “written” and expected that you will yield to the bicyclist.

If you are a bicyclist or a pedestrian and a motorcycle wants to pass you, it is “written” in the new scriptures that you must yield to a more powerful machine or rather to the man or woman controlling the machine. If you have now achieved the new caste level and have a motorcycle, of course you are able to threaten any bicyclists and pedestrians but you must know your station in life and yield to an automobile or to be more exact to the one in the automobile. If you have been born to the right family or you have prayed a lot, and managed through luck or other means to obtain a vehicle than of course you are surely and clearly reaching the highest caste possible, though you must still know your place. When a powerful machine whether it is a sports car, SUV or simply big truck or bus crosses your path, you must bow down. Even though you maybe a member of the highest caste, you must still yield to holiest of the caste that have the most power in the church of the automobile.

So now that you have reached the highest level and own a powerful machine, of course you can use this machine aggressively and threaten the lives of the lower castes. And in case the lower castes do not yield or move fast enough and somehow you end up hurting them or even killing them, do not worry. The deities have arranged things so that your punishment will be minimal. After all, it is written in the new scriptures that the rich and powerful shall inherit the earth.

Note: According to the WHO 2009 study, one and half million people are killed on the roads every year – half of them pedestrians and cyclists.