Walking the path

Finding UNIBuds  is a joy. It brings
back the memories of IMU and INCOVAR…

Not working this weekend, I decided to
join Unibuds for their Sunday activity, “Bush Care”. I was not
sure what the activity involve, but it is a chance to escape from the
routine of hospital life.

There were 5 volunteers from Unibuds
and a few pensioners were there for “bush care”.  The city
council worker who was supervising, explained that our mission was to
pull out weeds among the native plants.

According to him,  when the Europeans
first arrived in Australia 200 years ago, they started to keep a
record of the different types of plants seen in different areas of
Australia. Based on these information, the bush care workers believe
that they are able to identify native and foreign plants. They
believe that with mass influx of foreigner into Australia, there are
a lot of foreign vegetations being introduced. Some foreign plants
are taking over the habitats of the native plants, therefore reducing
the number of native plants. Some native plants are believed to be
endangered. Therefore the bush care volunteers aim to remove the
foreign plants so that the native plants can thrive again…

This philosophy does not really fit
into my existing believes…

It is arbitrary to use the 200 year old
European records as the guide to which plant is native and which
plant is not. The plants in Australia 200 years ago may very well
been introduced by the other settler before the European Era. The
native plants 10, 000 years ago could be very different… Just how
long does the plant need to be on this piece of land to be considered
native?

Similarly in human history, certain
racial/cultural/religious group claim ownership of  certain piece of
land, stating that they are the native and deserved special right.
Just how long does a certain group of people need to be living on
that piece of land before they are considered native? Does living on
that piece of land for 5 generation make someone native?Does being
born on that land make someone native?

Is it right that Mugabe “weed” out
the white farmers? Does the Jews or the Palestinian own that piece of
“holly land”?

This principle that is being used in
“Bush Care”when applied to human beings is causing too much pain
in our world. We don’t really own any land… We are all just passing
by…

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 6:13 am and is filed under My Thoughts, The Epic Journey.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.