Warning! Keep this Earth Out of Reach of Idiots

(Please note: this is a rant. Look away now if you've got a bit bored of those.)

So we have this world, yes? Whether given or loaned, accident or design, for now at least, we have it.

So why do we have so little clue what to do with it?

We travel to visit the Tropical Spice Garden in which we take a cooking class to try to bring home some of the magic of Nyonya cooking. Beforehand, an enthusiastic guide takes us on a tour of the various herbs and spices growing in the extensive tropical garden, which feels less like a garden and more like a fantastic and slightly more cultivated jungle. Complete, of course, with the ubiquitous monkeys and even, excitingly, a horned lizard, looking spikey and grumpy on the bark of a tree. 

"So many of our ailments can be cured with plants" says our guide, sadly, "but they grow only in rainforest and now we are cutting the rainforests down."

There is a pause. She visibly takes a breath before continuing.

"Moving on, this is a little known spice which can be chewed in small quantities. Some say it can cure cancer."

Now admittedly, some of the write ups of these plants manage to rival even the Daily Mail in their professions of cancer curing properties, but it is undeniably true that many plants do have enormous healing potential and are key ingredients in modern medicine. And there are probably more to discover. It's possible that the cure for cancer, or part of it, might be out there growing in a rainforest somewhere. And equally possible that we might destroy it in the pursuit of something else.

In the evening, the key film being showcased at our second Tropfest screening, is a Cambodian film directed by Chhay Bora, about the Khmer Rouge regime.

In it, the harrowing family history of Chhay Bora's wife is retold, a mother watching one family member after another, die at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. One of the most common causes of death in that regime, both in the film and historically, is starvation or exhaustion through the mishandling of natural resources, the working of people in rough landscapes without sufficient food or water. 'Natural' deaths in so far as it is not an active move against them by human hands. Deeply unnatural in so far as the labour and conditions are forced, bringing about the deaths and twisting nature into a weapon.

We have this world. But we either destroy it or we use it to destroy each other. Civilisations who take nature more seriously are considered primitive and, historically, overpowered by force and by guns. As a result, however much more humane we may consider ourselves now, we are losing their wisdom. The ancient tribes of Mexico and America knew more than we have begun to discover about the natural balance of things. 'Primitive' or 'quaint' civilisations have knowledge we never bothered to acquire - or have forgotten. You only need to look at the Sea Gypsies of the Andaman Coast, and their evacuation of their beach side dwellings as much as two weeks before the coming of a tsunami for which no one else was ready, to see that.

War, pollution, destruction, recklessness. It seems to me that, despite our many years on the earth, we have simply not learned. Like children, we continue to play with a toy, the value of which we do not understand.

In the case of the Khmer Rouge this analogy is unapologetic. The actions and mentality of the regime seem to me like children, illogical and defensive, making it up as they go along, without empathy, a grasp of consequence or expertise in the field they dabble in. They played at bring farmers because it seemed more 'good' but the men in charge were academics. They knew nothing of farming. They burned crops whilst trying to become prosperous through growing them. They set unrealistic rice targets and expected untrained workers to achieve the impossible without sufficient food.

And how many have replayed this same story, over and over, back and forwards in time? How many dictators, how many climate change warnings, how many new pollutants, how many more unnatural deaths?

We are children, playing with a world we are too young for and might break. I would say someone should take it away for safe keeping until we are old enough. Until we have learned.

But will we ever learn?

I wonder if there is life beyond our planet. I wonder if we will eventually be able to travel between planets ourselves, and establish human life on others. On the one hand perhaps we should avoid this achievement to prevent the destruction of other systems. On the other, maybe we should be nomads, moving from planet to planet and leaving as soon as we get bored, before we start to really destroy it, leaving something to be salvaged by an older, wiser life form, who can move in once we have vacated, treat it properly and let it thrive.