ARE WE ENJOYING QUALITY LIFE?

By: Reza Nasrullah

Lecturer at Industrial Engineering Department-Engineering Faculty
Universitas Islam Bandung-West Java-Indonesia

Imagine that you just have bought a new luxurious car. Certainly you and family are very-very
happy. Combined with good income, you and family shall enjoy a rising quality in life. You’ll no
doubt conclude that the life is so good. Wherever you go, you feel comfortable, don’t you?
Our Behavior and environments
That is the way we observe our life during good times. But when bad times strike we observe
the contrary. In fact this is the nature of our behaviour. In fact we almost always perceive the quality
of our life ONLY from our own perspectives. We unintentionally ignore other people’s perspectives.
We usually lose conscience and ignore that those others who can not afford to buy car are side-
affected by the emissions from our stylish car. And this happens not only in the matter of car
buying. Other products we enjoy also have some effects to our environments, physically,
psychologically, economically, socially, etc. Finally all these interact interdependently and
complicatedly resulting positive and negative influences to our life as a whole society.
Our One Earth is suffering
Understanding the above phenomenon, we can get insight of why the earth on which we are
living is undergoing deteriorations. Experts confidently predict the current global warming will
eventually melt the iceberg at the two poles and consequently rise the sea level. The rising sea level
globally means some islands will sink and some parts of continents will become sea. While the
global warming is caused by the so called glass-house effects. These effects are formed in the
atmosphere around the globe due to emissions from the vehicles using the fossil-fuels as the source
of energy. But those factories producing CO2 and other gases are also responsible to these effects.
Therefore there are so many kinds of people who are responsible to the accumulations of these
glass-house effects. And the glass-house effects have already been inflicting the global climate
changes. This situation is so critical that the UN had to hold a conference on Global Climate
Changes in Nairobi, Kenya, 6-17 November 2006. And Sir Nicholas Stern reported: there are too
many scientific evidences showing that climate changes are the human-made threats to the
sustainability of life on earth.
Our Quality of life
Other situations are also developing causing the quality of our life AS A WHOLE not
INDIVIDUALLY is deteriorating. These include chemicals used to fertilize soils in the agriculture
activities which toxify the soils continuously and consequently the produces we consume contain
those toxic chemicals. The water we drink is also contaminated by chemicals entering the rivers and
the soils produced by factories and minings. Our body is also undergoing continuous pollutions

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from the food and drinks especially from those industrial products. Because they generally contain
preservatives, flavourings, colorings, and other chemicals. Although they are at safe levels, but
consuming them habitually will make liver and kidneys desperated to clean them. In the end, the
uncleanable chemicals inside our body will damage the cellular metabolism and in the long
run(undetectedly-unanticipatedly-unexpectedly-unprecedentedly-and unsuspectedly) cause
degenerative diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, rheumatic, uric acid, arthritis, stroke, hypertension,
coronary artery, osteoporosis, parkinson, etc. The toxic pollutants also come from the air full of
emissions from which we continuously breathe.
The hazardous invisible ball
So we are living in the midst of toxic pollutants everywhere and every moments. Because the
exposure is so massive and comprehensive. We are like inside an invisible ball containing
pollutants. The risk will only end when we die. The hazardous ball is the great achievement of
humankind of our times. We choose to live within it through technological advances we seek and
we are willingly enjoying this kind of quality of life. We always want to enjoy our technological
advances and we do not care of the adverse effects of the advances. The keyword is: want. We have
a lot of wants. Our wants always ascend higher and higher. It never end. Until we die. And our
technological capabilities advance to accommodate these wants. And we are always successful.
But the threats implied by fulfilments of our wants, i.e the negative side effects of those
technological advances are so serious, more serious than science is capable of calculating. The
invisible ball is really a bleak picture of life’s future on earth. And we are blinded to this fact by our
intricate and more and more sophisticated wants. When our wants are fulfilled by our technological
greatness, we conclude that we are enjoying a quality life. Yet are we? And what about the qualities
of our mind and soul?Do they improve in our present daily life or deteriorate? The answers are
already there inside our own pure inner heart.@

(reza.nasrullah@gmail.com)
www.freewebs.com/kliniksehatislami