Wall of Laughter

Wall of Laughter of this ‘wall’ is a world of great joy—the world of Paradise. In contrast to Paradise, this side of the wall, where we presently are, is a world of hard work and struggle. The story of the ‘laughing wall’ is as it were the story of the whole of human history. By his very nature an individual seeks a life full of joy for himself. He is a joy-seeking being. Ancient man, faced with a life of challenges and sorrows, began searching for ease and happiness. For this purpose, he invented many things—such as, for instance, the wheel—following which a person’s quest for a life of happiness continued apace. You could call this the ‘Journey of Civilization’. After a long period of many centuries, this journey entered the phase of what is called ‘Modern Civilization’. This civilization, based on modern industry, has led to the ‘Age of Consumerism’, when all sorts of consumer items that promise physical comfort have become super-abundant and are very easily available. In this way, human civilization negotiated a long journey and finally arrived in the 21st century. But having got there, a new, exceedingly serious problem arose. Man’s ‘laughing wall’ has now become a new sort of ‘wailing wall’! People are now being forced to realize that the world that they sought to build for themselves after so much struggle and effort is not the world full of joys that they hoped for. Rather, it is a world full of problems. And so, in the 21st century, human civilization has entered a blind alley, synonymous with what can be termed as ‘The End of History’. Why and how did this happen? The answer to this has much to do with the nature of modern industry, of which pollution is an indispensable part. In order to create the world of our dreams we need pollution-free industries, but to create such industries is simply impossible for human beings. In this way, the problem of industrial pollution, which has assumed epidemic proportions today, has negated a great deal of the achievements of modern civilization.