It Is Easy To Be Disconnected From Mother Earth In The Western World

It was only when I moved to Thailand that I realized how disconnected I really was from Mother Nature. It is easy to be so disconnected from the realities of human effects on the planet when you live in a serene, clean, and highly developed country.

Transcript

Hey everyone!

I hope that you're doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Boomshakha and I welcome you to my videos,

Audios,

Wherever you guys are listening to me on and wherever you're listening to me from.

In this one,

I wanted to speak to you about connection with nature.

Recently,

Well I've always been like this from when I was a very young child.

I think I was,

I think since I was maybe 12 or 13 where I could really understand myself and know what my place was in the world briefly and you know intermittently.

I knew that my love for Mother Nature and for Mother Earth was greater than any other love that I had.

And I started talking to my parents about recycling and all those little things that I thought would be useful to save the planet.

I would talk to them about it over and over again.

Now one of the things that I do regret or one of the things I do lament about is that I did not start becoming a vegetarian sooner because I did not realize the impact of non-vegetarianism on the planet.

I did not realize how much it affects the planet itself.

But as I grew older,

Obviously I understood a little bit more but I wish you know I had known a lot more.

I wish the internet was actually there when I was younger.

My life was,

Would have been so much more interesting and there would be a lot more information in my head if I had the internet when I was younger.

Of course there was the the pros to it as well that you know I lived a life without the internet so I actually went out and I played outside and I had conversations instead of being on the phone.

So obviously there's pros and cons to everything but I do realize that the more,

That's one of the reasons I love the internet,

The more I play around with the internet,

The more I learn about how to protect and save Mother Earth and what else can I do for myself,

My own health and for Mother Earth's health and things like that.

As I said one of the things obviously is vegetarianism is a big thing to protect Mother Earth or basically not using destructive farming so hopefully growing your own food would be a big one as well but if you can't then obviously vegetarianism is a big thing in that.

But there's others,

There's so many other things,

So many other little things that we can do in order to protect the planet and I do realize that one of the reasons I think and this is one of the insights that I've been getting into myself and my own life is that one of the reasons why I was so unaware of my impact on the planet and on Mother Earth as a young child and my 20s as well is because of the fact that when you live in a Western country like if you live in Europe or America or Canada as I did or even the Middle East you kind of are separated from the world in a sense,

From nature in a sense because what happens is that a lot of the air pollution,

A lot of the land pollution,

A lot of the water pollution,

All of that's kind of concentrated in the Asian countries or in African countries because that's where a lot of the European and Western countries kind of dump their garbage.

Not sometimes intentionally,

Sometimes unintentionally and sometimes just as a byproduct of the stuff that they buy.

For example,

If you are buying any kind of tech device you're buying it because someone in China produced it or manufactured it.

There's some factory in China is producing it but you purchases it in Canada and you don't,

The only waste you really see is the cardboard box that perhaps came in.

So you recycle the cardboard box and everything is fine and dandy and you're living in a beautiful place.

If you're in Toronto then you really you're living in a really beautiful place,

Lots of greenery,

The air is really clean,

The water is very clean,

You have nothing to worry about.

What happens is that you don't realize that the remnants of that production,

The waste of all that production of that tech device,

Whatever it might be,

That was actually,

That actually happens in the country that was produced in,

Most probably China.

So in China they have air pollution,

In China they have water pollution,

In China they have all of these the sludge of the all this metal waste and all of the minerals waste and all the other mining waste and all that stuff.

It's over there.

It's not visible to us here in our Western worlds and so forth for the longest time as I said I lived in these Western worlds for the longest time.

I don't anymore but I did and so for those few years that I was there it was very,

I was separate from the entire oh I'm destroying the world by doing all the things I'm doing.

I'm destroying Mother Earth by doing the things that I'm doing.

You don't actually see it because you're living in a bubble of the sort when you're living in the Western world because they recycle and they do composting and there's trees all around you,

The air is very clean,

The water that you drink from the tap is very clean.

Especially in Toronto basically it's a bubble,

It literally is like a bubble and so you don't notice that all of those effects of the things that you're doing is kind of taking a toll on Mother Earth because you don't actually notice it while you're living in Toronto or in New York or wherever it might be.

But it is happening,

It is obviously happening and there are effects of your life on Mother Earth but you are able to ignore it very easily.

Yes you might be like oh I realize you know I see things in my post or I see things in my Facebook feed and you think to yourself yeah yeah there's things going on in the world and I need to do something about it and so you turn to vegetarianism or you turn to do this and that.

But a lot of it will not directly affect you as much.

Right now coronavirus obviously is kind of going all over the world so it is affecting people but in general air pollution,

I only started noticing it when I moved to Thailand.

I did not realize how bad things are in terms of air pollution,

People burning things,

Manufacturing waste,

Factory pollution etc.

I did not realize that until I moved here.

I had no idea that people even dealt with this kind of stuff.

I would see pictures of people in Shanghai and Beijing and how the air was so bad over there but I never thought that it would be affected,

That it would affect me.

But when it did that's when it really came to fruition you know I wear this mask everywhere.

You guys have seen a picture of me and I wear this mask everywhere that I go.

I can't go without it outside,

It's important.

Otherwise I would be breathing in all this smog.

Now my skin is still breathing it in,

My eyes are still breathing it in.

But when I was in Canada I had no idea because in Canada the air quality is brilliant.

It's very clean in Canada.

And so this is the reason why I assumed or I think and I've been thinking about this a lot you know why is it,

Why am I so aware of it right now in the air pollution,

Water pollution?

Yes of course because I'm living in Thailand.

Also because the things are really bad here because obviously there's a lot more pollution,

A lot of more population,

A lot more,

A lot less awareness,

A lot less infrastructure and things like that right.

In Canada they recycle and they compost and very little of their garbage goes to a landfill but because they have infrastructure for it it's a rich country they can take care of all those things.

Over here they do as much as they can but there is still a lot of plastic pollution.

There's still a lot of not stuff that's not recycled.

There's still a lot of garbage that goes into the ocean.

So in general if you are living in one of the Western countries in the world probably realize that you're not gonna actually realize the true impact of all the things that you're doing all the things humanity is doing as a general thing not just you as a person but also you as a person.

But you're not gonna realize what humanity's effect on the planet is until and unless you actually go to all these countries that are being affected by it.

You won't really notice it because you just get your product,

Your finished product in in a cardboard box.

You don't realize how much pollution and how much garbage had to be produced,

How much water had to be used,

How many how much slave labor had to be used and all that stuff in order to produce this one item that you're gonna use for a few days for a few months and then throw it away.

And so really like I said it's it's really the impact is unnoticeable when you live in these Western countries.

You might notice a little bit of it in your feeds right like if you see your Facebook feed or Instagram feed and you might see pictures of of terrible pollution all over the world or polar bears eating their children because they don't have enough food because of all the global warming or you might see all these things they're like but when you're in your world and you're in your bubble and you're walking around your your streets they're clean,

The air is clean,

The water is clean,

You have enough food to eat.

You don't think about all those things.

It's very easy for you to shut it off be like all right I'm gonna have my blinders on,

My life is good,

Everything in my life is good,

My water is clean,

My air is clean,

My food is good enough and I have a good nice place to live in so who cares what the hell is going on the rest of the world.

At least I am alright right and I think that's one of the thing the ironic things about coronavirus is that no one is safe from it anymore.

It's being it's affecting people everywhere all over the world and that's really I think that's really fascinating because that's really shows us the future.

You cannot protect yourself by living in that bubble anymore because everything is going to be interconnected.

Everything is interconnected and you're gonna see that interconnection more and more as time goes on.

You're not gonna be able to live in your bubble anymore because everything that's happening on the other side of the world will start affecting you as well and then you're gonna have to really think about how you want to live your life in order to impact the planet properly.

So that's really an important observation that I've had in my own life in the way I live my life and I really do think that I wouldn't have had this assumption or this interaction with the world if I hadn't moved to Thailand because in my bubble in Toronto everything was perfect and there was nothing to worry about.

As soon as I moved out of that bubble I realized whoa what's going on in the real world.

So I hope this makes sense to you.

If you have any questions obviously please do comment below and I shall answer your questions in video format.

Again thank you so much for watching,

For listening wherever you are in the world and I shall see you in the next one.

Bye for now.