Fruit fly: scourge of fruits and vegetables

Fruit fly: scourge of fruits and vegetables

Today the fruit fly (Dacus) has become a cosmopolitan pest of orchard, garden and field crops.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Fruit fly (Dacus dorsalis (Family Tephritidae, Order Diptera) on banana and mabolo.  
Note the nature of damage, and size of the mature insect. (Photos by the author, UST Botanical Garden)

Old folks used to tell us kids in our time that the first rain in summer brings in the dangaw (Ilk) or fruit fly rendering native fruits, like duhat, macopa and guava, unfit to eat. 

True enough the first bite reveals tiny punctures, and when fully ripe. tunnels with tiny maggots squirming and catapulting to our disgust. We would throw away the whole fruit, and spit what we had hastily eaten. 

But in those days the fruit fly had few hosts, until new varieties were developed and introduced. These became readily vulnerable, triggering the buildup and spread of the pest. 

New frontiers were opened, more kinds of crops cultivated, more varied agricultural practices developed breaking away from the natural cycle of the environment. Today the fruit fly has become a cosmopolitan pest of orchard, garden and field crops.    

What a havoc the fruit fly can create on a mango tree laden with fruits.  Or macopa in season. Guava. Caimito and the like. Orchards and plantations are ruined by this pest, a direct relative of the housefly. 

And that's just part of  a larger ruin. Trellises of ampalaya, squash, cucumber, and fields of pepper, tomato, eggplant, and other vegetables virtually go to waste. 

Unless heavy doses of insecticide are applied  - poison that coats whole fruits to repel the gravid female from laying eggs, poison to cover whole fields so that no place is left to harbor the pest for a second round of attack.  And poison that can penetrate the ensconced maggots before the pest could do further damage. This is the most potent pesticide ever formulated.  It is systemic poison because it circulated through the plant sap, like blood, and any insect that attacks from the inside or outside is certain to die.  

It is a fact that poisons in food, air and many items cause cancer.  Pesticides are culprits to many cases of cancer.  So with kidney and liver problems, fatal or lifelong disability. Pesticides being mainly nerve poisons affect the brain and the senses, and therefore behavior and quality of life in general.are impaired.  

We relate the issue of pest to global warming which has disturbed our climatic pattern and modified geography. Rainfall has become erratic,  Seasons unsuspectingly come early or late.  Sometimes there is summer. Force majeure is more often and severe. Thus the need of new agricultural strategies.  

Now we have greenhouses of tomato, melon, bell pepper, but  greenhouse products are more expensive than those produced on open fields. Geneticists came up with Genetically Modified crops - like FlavrSavr tomato. Genetically modified organisms or GMOs are dangerous to health and human development, particularly among children. That is why GMOs are branded Frankenfoods (from Frankenstein, the man-made monster in Mary Shelley's novel of the same title.) 

The fruit fly is not merely a pest.  It is an element that has sown destruction to agriculture, and therefore to the economy. It is changing the way we live. Let's control it before it does more harm.        

Let's control the fruit fly (not to be mistaken for the Drosphilla melanogaster) PHOTO, that has evolved into  several species under the genera Bactrocera, Dacus and Ceratitis. They have become major pest worldwide of orchards, farms and garden, on avocado, banana, citrus, cacao, coffee, cucumber, guava, papaya, pepper, eggplant, tomato, melon, cucumber, and a host of other plants - not to mention the most important host, the mango.   

Let's control the fruit fly by cutting off its life cycle, before it lays eggs on fruits  - young and ripe -  that ultimately causes them to fall or rot on the tree; and in its feeding introduces bacteria and fungi that exacerbate damage to the tree and plantation, not to mention the harmful effect it has to humans. That by keeping strict sanitation, collecting damaged fruits as possible breeding material, and eliminating alternate hosts to bridge the next season, its population can be kept on a safe level. 

Let's control the fruit fly by bagging the fruits early  with paper bag, cut newspaper, and other suitable materials, before the gravid female oviposits on the fruits, popular a practice on mango, nangka, cucumber, ampalaya, and other crops that are convenient to protect in this laborious means. Bagging also protects fruits from other pest, injury, excessive sunlight, and reduces blemishes and deformities.     

Let's control the fruit fly by prudent use of chemical pesticide, applying it only as a last resort after all safer means are exhausted, and applying only at a threshold level determined collectively by growers in the area. Overuse of chemicals have spawned mutants in the pest population leading to increased resistance among survivors which they pass on to the next generation. Thus higher dosage or more potent chemicals are required in succeeding seasons.   

Let's control the fruit fly through cooperative farming, following specific schedules of planting, cultivation, and harvesting, among other cultural practices, like crop diversification, use of resistant varieties, roughing affected plants and residues and burning them.  Quarantine control is easier to implement, so with other government rules, and specifications of products for the local and foreign markets. 

Let's control the fruit fly to bring down the price of fruits and vegetables at affordable level, assure quality products and reduce crop loss, increase income of producers and processors, and reduce dependence on imported fruits and vegetables. And encourage backyard self-sufficiency, promote proper nutrition and good health.   

Let's control fruit flies with the same resolve in suppressing global scourges of crops (tungro of rice, blight of cereals, borers of corn),  and livestock (foot-and-mouth disease, mad cow disease), epidemics affecting human populations (HIV-AIDS, Ebola, Avian Flu), through personal initiative and or in support to national and international organizations. And through research and extension, through the academe and R & D institutions.~ 

 

 

Cucurbit fruit fly (Dacus cucurbitae), representation of  a typical fruit fly (Dacus sp); baiting fruit flies with diluted vinegar in plastic bottle with punched holes to let attracted fruit flies to enter and get trapped), bagging of green mango fruits. Acknowledgment: Internet www infonet-biovision.org

Quiz in Biology (True or False)

 Quiz in Biology (True or False)

Dr Abe V Rotor

1. Life begets life, and there is no exception. This principle puts to rest the common notion of Spontaneous Generation, such as mushrooms come out after heavy rainfall and lightning, and flies coming out from the bodies of dead animals.

2. As the chemical world has its organizational hierarchy (atoms to molecules, elements to compounds), so with the biological world (cells, tissues, organs, organ-systems). This is true with algae, fungi, amoeba, paramecium, and other protozoa.

3. The tropical rain forest (PHOTO) has the highest biological diversity because this ecosystem contains the most number of living organisms, both in kind and number, as compared with other ecosystems. This kind of ecosystem is found in the tropical region which includes the Philippines, Australia, China, Pakistan, South America and Indonesia.

4. No two organisms are the same even if they belong to the same species, or even if they are identical twins. This is the basis on forensic science using DNA Analysis. The DNA of leaves belonging to the same plant is however, exactly the same.

5. Today it is possible to have a plant such as corn bred with a bacterium such as Bacillus thuringensis, thus their offspring is a kind of corn containing the genetic material of the bacterium. (Bt Corn). Similarly, we have now Bt cotton, Bt eggplant, and the like.

6. Organisms reproduce by sexual and asexual means, that is through the exchange of genetic materials (generally through union of sex cells), and by vegetative means such as cutting, grafting, fragmentation, spores, etc. Bacteria and protozoa reproduce by both means.

7. The reason why close relatives are strictly not allowed to intermarry is to prevent in-breeding (inbreeding syndrome). The gene pool must be invigorated now and then with new genes, more importantly dominant genes. This principle explains the importance of hybridization, cross-breeding, and the buildup of resistance and hybrid vigor.

8. Nature saw to it that dominant genes must prevail by various means in order that the species becomes capable of facing the ordeals of a changing environment. Certain dominant genes however, though they may be transmitted to the next generation do not contribute at all to the enhancement of species’ survival.

9. The most controversial subject matter between science and religion is Evolution. It has always been confrontational, and the church is likely not giving up its dogma of Creation. For this reason Christian Fundamentalists prohibit the teaching of Darwinian evolution.

10. Evolution is a thing of the past as we have known the fate of the dinosaurs, the end of the giant ferns that once covered the earth. It means that the organisms that we see today have ultimately reached the highest degree of perfection, with man as the ideal example. 

ANSWERS: All items are true, except No. 10.  Explain why No. 10 is false. 

Where have all the native fruits gone?

 

Where have all the native fruits gone?

Dr Abe V Rotor

 

                                 Tiesa (Lucuma nervosa), siniguelas (Spondias purpurea)

Where have all the native guava gone,

the bats and birds and the young one?

Where have all the sweet nangka gone,

its fruits buried under the ground?

Where have all the old piña gone,

on the upland, sweetened by the sun?

Where have all the red papaya gone,

solo by name, the only tree of a kind?

Where have all the pomegranate gone,

friendly though like the deadly one.

Where have all the pako mango gone,

to cook the finest sinigang?

Where have all the big pomelo gone,

its rind made into jelly and jam?

Where have all the red macopa gone,

the laughing children in its arm?

Where have all the native santol gone,

set aside for a large-seeded one?

Where have all the tall mabolo gone,

sapote and caimito that ripe into tan?

Gone to the genie everyone,

technology’s child becoming man. ~

 

 

 Black Sapote (Diospyrus digyna), Atis (Anona squamosa); 

native guava (Psidium guajava), macopa (Eugenia jambalana) 

Bannawag (Light of Dawn) - Flagship of Ilocano Language and Culture

Bannawag (Light of Dawn)

- Flagship of Ilocano Language and Culture

Dr Abe V Rotor

Columnist (Okeyka Apong)

Bannawag Magazine

   

 

Read Bannawag for 12 Reasons - and More

Read Bannawag, it is the Ilocano magazine with the largest circulation, in the    Philippines and in Ilocano communities abroad - from Hawaii, Middle East on to Europe. 

Read Bannawag, and learn a language learned at birth, by affinity and association, a beautiful language - both exotic and ethnic, rich, musical, expressive, a language Ilocanos carry with pride to the corners of the earth. 

Read Bannawag, it is the flagship and conservator of Ilocano culture, the GI (Genuine Ilocano) imprimatur, trademark of beautiful traits and values - the Ilocano tool of  survival and dominance, at home and away from home.  

   

Read Bannawag, it is a trail blazer of the migratory and transient characteristic of the Ilocano, of his homely nature, and his homing instinct, returning to his native region in the true sense of a balikbayan.

Read Bannawag, it has the uniqueness of the super-superlative, like beauty begetting beauty ad infinitum, so to speak. (napintas, napinpintas, kapintasan - and kapipintasan) - the last word means "most, most beautiful", a rare language phenomenon.  

Read Bannawag, its tonality is akin to the natural environment - tone of tenderness or firmness, tone that pierces distance or keeps closeness sacred, echoing tone over fields and rolling hills, prayerful, romantic, dirgefull.

Read Bannawag, and learn by intonation the speaker's origin, the naturalness of his  accent, clear syllabication, distinct "R" and nasal contraption (likened to German) -  variations indigenous to a place or extent of influence by other languages.  

    

Read Bannawag and enjoy the myths and legends from Lam-ang the epic hero, to Angalo the legendary giant, the biblical Lakay-lakay whirlpool, and many folk tales Ilocano counterpart of the Arabian Nights and the Grimm brothers stories.

Read Bannawag, and live in the era of the Zarzuela (homegrown drama)  and Moro-moro (stage play, musical comedy of Christians fighting the Moors in medieval times) , enjoy the unique musical qualities of Bannatiran (kingfisher), O, Naranniag a Bulan (Moonlight serenade), Pamulinawen (a love song) and Ayat ti Maysa nga Ubbing (Love of a Lass and an Old Man), among many compositions, original and adapted.  

Read Bannawag, in an armchair travelogue of history and arts, of scenic beauty, rich biodiversity, home of living tradition, a piece of Eden created by the edges of the Cordillera range and the South China Sea meeting on a narrow strip of land like a hollow - kuloong, from which the word Iloco is derived .  

Read Bannawag, and meet the great Ilocanos who led the country to greatness from Ramon Magsaysay to Ferdinand Marcos; poetess Leona Florentino, heroes Antonio and Juan Luna, and Fr Jose Burgos whose ancestral home in Vigan is now a  museum; met many other great Ilocanos, old and contemporary. 

 

Read Bannawag, and it will take you back to the homeland of the simple sturdy and frugal, industrious and persistent, where brain and brawn are welded in a sturdy body, determined mind, and throbbing heart of joy and fulfillment. ~     

Has man, as a species, reached his sunset? in 3 parts

 Has man, as a species, reached his sunset? 

Dr Abe V Rotor

 Living with Nature - School on Blog [avrotor.blogspot.com]

Part 1 - A search for enlightenment on the future of man 

The riddle of the Sphinx goes this way. “What animal walks on four feet at sunrise, two at noon, and three at sunset?”

Biblical Four Horsemen of Apocalypse

I first heard this riddle when I was a child, and when I failed to answer it my father casually explained the life cycle of man to me. It was one of the many mind teasers taken leisurely and with humor. But in a lecture which I attended at the University of Santo Tomas Graduate School, Science as Critique of Society, where the future of man was discussed, the riddle flashed back to mind serious repercussions.

Has man, as a species, reached his sunset? Or is history merely repeating itself?

The world now and then remembers a sweet-bitter memory of its past. After “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” mankind plunged into the Dark Ages, which lasted longer than the two previous civilizations combined. Are we taking the same road to destruction, a road strewn with roses, but facing abyss at the end?

This may be a tough question to handle. It is discomforting to consider, but necessary to absorb in the context of a wake up call. How can a world of computers, open universities, mega cities, supersonic transport and satellite communications find affinity with world of the ancients to draw such a conclusion? “No, not in our modern world,” we say.

We Live in a Modern World.

Modern is a Janus word. It is seldom perceived this way because we take “modern” for granted since it is all around us in different forms: modern medicine, modern transport, modern education, modern technology, and modern weapons. You name it and the malls and the Internet may have it. What is modern is something we put to use, often hastily, replacing a present implement or practice.

For example, modern agriculture is pictured as using a combine, a huge air-conditioned tractor that can simultaneously perform several jobs. Modern industries are automated using robotics. Modern society is said to be successful when it brings people of different races, backgrounds and walks of life together. Modern education is one that makes learning computer-dependent. Electronics has invaded our lives, such as e-commerce, e-learning.

How wired is our globe? Today, 95 percent of PC power is idle; the grid aims at tapping it all. As the Net evolves, all machines and people will become nodes on one network, and any one computer will be able to tap the power of all. But by using the grid, crooks could commandeer cars, even home appliances. It is scary. (Time, Life in the Grid)

Let us take a look at the other side of midnight, so to speak. It is modern agriculture that created pesticide residues and spurred resistance in pests. It is also responsible for making man-made desert we call in ecology desertification.

It is modern industry that has thinned the ozone layer and created non-biodegradable wastes. One the one hand, population increases have crossed the line beyond the threshold reserved for wildlife sanctuary. On the other hand, affluent living has thickened the atmosphere with waste gases and particulates causing the phenomenon called Greenhouse Effect. As cities grow the quaintness of living disappears. Much of the essence of the Lyceum has been lost in modern education. The common sense that often goes with the intelligence of naturalism is now being poorly cultivated.

Instinctive versus Acquired Intelligence
There was a conversation between a bushman and a visiting scientist in the middle of the Kalahari Desert.

“Why are you so illiterate?” asked the bushman of his guest in his unique language.

It was a question a civilized person, a beautiful woman and a doctorate holder at that, would have asked instead.

But the bushman knew when a hyena had just passed; if the wind is dangerously picking up human scent and delivering it to waiting predators; and where to find water in a no-man’s land.

Today, instinctive intelligence has been juxtaposed with, if not replaced by, acquired intelligence, that one hardly knows the difference between the two. In times of peace and plenty, instinctive intelligence tends to become dormant, lulled by the many amenities of living. We are like a typical person from New York, who may be street-smart but maybe illiterate in matters of nature, and may be pathetically helpless when  disaster strikes. We do not even know if we are existing in a “desert”, at a loss in realizing danger, because we are so used to the good life. This is the condition into which modernism has transformed us.

Where Does Modern Life Lead Us?
In Shelly’s celebrated fiction novel, Frankenstein, wasn’t the monster Dr. Frankenstein created, a product of modern science of that time? It is not different today. Wittingly, or otherwise, we are creating a modern Frankenstein monster in our quest for power and wealth - a monster which first appears as an obliging genie, but at the end refuses to go back into the bottle of its origin.

Orthodox version of the Apocalypse

Let us look into the monster modern man has created.

1. By splitting the atom man has unleashed the most explosive force the world has ever known. This tremendous power can plunge the world into Armageddon. Today’s nuclear stockpile threatens the globe with obliteration of humankind three times over. This means a thermo-nuclear war can instantly kill a population of 18 billion people, notwithstanding the gross destruction of other organisms, and obliteration of the environment as we know it.

The proliferation of nuclear weapons – atomic, hydrogen and cobalt bombs - reached its peak during the Cold War. With the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR, in 1987, the accountability of nuclear stockpiles became a big question among its former satellites. It is not impossible to smuggle a nuclear warhead which is only about the size of an attaché case, or produce radioactive material for making a nuclear bomb in the guise of nuclear power generation. We know that nuclear weapons technology is no longer the monopoly of the West and highly industrialized countries. The latest additions to the list of countries capable of making nuclear weapons are North Korea and Iraq.

War - the scourge of the human species. Mural, HoChiMinh City (Photo by AVR ca 2007)

2. Unrestricted massive expansion of frontiers of production and settlements has resulted in loss of natural habitats, in fact, whole ecosystems as evidenced by the death of rivers, lakes and coral reefs, and destruction of forests and wildlife. It is a fact that if man can tame the earth, so can he destroy it.
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The demise of a single species can produce a cascade of extinctions and threaten an entire ecosystem. (AV Rotor, Living with Nature in Our Times, 2008)
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3. Growing affluence continues to accelerate man’s conquest of nature through industrialization. Practically every country in the world is on a race towards industrialization in order to meet capitalistic standards of high economic growth and development. But Gross National Product (GNP) merely sums up a country’s output. Very little focus is given to Human Development Index (HDI), the guarantee of equitable distribution of benefits that elevates quality of life in a country. In certain societies such us ours, socio-economic inequity can be aptly summarized as having 10 percent of the population controlling 90 percent of the nation’s resources, and that 50 to 60 percent of the population are trapped in a cycle of poverty.

Industrialization has widened the division between the affluent and the poor, stunting migration patterns that have caused massive urban growth, while siphoning off the resources of the countryside. This, in turn, has created a world order dominated by multinational companies and self-proclaimed global leaders now questioned by the free world, and challenged by civil initiatives and terrorism.

4. The recent scientific breakthrough, the breaking of the code of heredity - DNA (Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid), the Rosetta Stone of genetics, has opened up an entirely new concept of the origin and development of life.

But more amazing and frightening is the new power of man to tinker with life itself – playing God’s role in the creation of new life forms, extending human life to nearly twice its present longevity, and in eliminating diseases even before their symptoms are manifested. Cloning suddenly became a fearful word as applied to humans, following the success with “Dolly, the sheep,” the first cloned animal. Even this early we are warned of food products manufactured from Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), dubbed as Frankenfood.

One by one, countries are coming out against crops with engineered genes – and there may be more to the skepticism over GM crops. Genetic modification can be a strategy to bring agriculture under the dominance of foreign corporations. On the grassroots level farmers doubt if GM crops can be grown side-by-side with non-GMO plants and not being affected negatively since open pollination knows no boundaries.

Public outburst against Genetically Modified Organisms. 

Is the coronavirus a product of genetic engineering?

The biggest scare that can be spawned by genetic engineering is Genetically Modified Man (GMM) - a being different from the original man described in Genesis, who is God-fearing, loving, sociable, intelligent, and with a high sense of values.
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A transformation of our technology and values could make it possible to build a society that will stand the test of time. (Time, A Culture of Permanence)
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5. It was unprecedented that the world has traveled far and wide on two feet – communications and transportation – with the West discovering the East, and subsequently resulting in intermarriages of the races, in trade and commerce, education and culture, politics and government, religion and philosophy. With the advances of science and technology the world has shrunk further into the size of a village now wired with fiber optics. But such union cannot be merely characterized as gross merging of characteristics. Here the rule of compatibility may bring diverging directional paths, especially when we force the union of dynamic processes, such as the liberalism of the West and traditionalism of the East. Through time and with continuing “intermarriage”, perhaps a global society will form and accelerate towards homogeneity. We rejoice in meeting friends from across the globe, at getting international news live, and in finding commonalities of interests, and in being part of a genetic pool.

Remember the universal soldier? The Renaissance man? This new kind of man --- will he be superior over say, than man in the times of the Greeks and Romans? Will this superman represent the fittest of the survivors in accordance with the standards of evolution? Or the righteousness of man in pursuit of the precepts of the Church? 

The Dangerous Game of Numbers
The basic biological principle concerning the survival and dominance of an organism is having a large population, surrounded by a wide range of genetic diversity.

We know that each organism has a life cycle of its own patterned by its species, but the intriguing part is that each species has a unique population cycle.

To attest to this natural law, observe the swarms of locusts and gnats, the spontaneous appearance of mushrooms to make many a fairy tale, the aggregation of corals following a once-in-a-year orgy, large herds of reindeer, salmon runs, schools of tuna.

Additionally, diseases run into epidemic levels, decimating large numbers of people in the bubonic plague which killed one-third of the population of Europe. Sometime between 1918 and 1920, the total number of deaths due to the Spanish influenza was estimated at 40 million with the US and India, hardest hit. Based on the world’s population at that time, one out of six people on earth was killed by this pandemic disease. Today, we are confronted with similar threats, AIDS (Acute Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome), and the recent SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). The world stands alert in preventing the repetition of another epidemic.

Many of us may still remember Pied Piper of Hamlyn, a German folk story. If one would only realize its theme, which is mass suicide, the story would make a horror box office, rather than one for bedside reading.

Pied Piper of Hamlin leads children to a secret mountain cave never to be seen again.

Once upon a time a strange young man called on the mayor of Hamlyn who was worried about how to get rid of the rats infesting his town. “I will eliminate the rats,” assured the Pied Piper. To which the mayor, on seeing his jester’s costume and a small musical instrument in his hand, laughed, “I’ll give you all the money you want if you can do just that.”

So the Pied Piper played a strange music with his pipe and walked through the town, and rats followed him. Rats from the attic, canals, the kitchens, rats from everywhere, were drawn by his music. Playing until he reached the edge of the sea, the piper caused the rats to plunge into their death, thus ridding the town of these pests.

But the mayor did not keep his promise of paying the piper his money.

So the Pied Piper played again, this time with a stranger music that caused children to follow him. Children came from their homes, schools, and the streets, were drawn by the music of the piper that led them to the mountains. They entered the misty forest, and thence into a yawning cave that closed after them. The children were never heard again. Only a lame boy was spared. He saw it all happen and told this story.

Does the Pied Piper story have any scientific explanation?

Scientists in Scandinavia observed a similar mass suicide among lemmings. Every once in a while, the population of this rodent increases substantially and becomes a pest to farm folks and homeowners. In large numbers, they move from place to place, ravaging agriculture and articles of commerce. After this rampage, they plunge themselves in hordes into the sea in the same manner as the rats of Hamlyn.

Here is another celebrated case. Locust (Locusta migratoria manilensis), a major insect pest, follows a more complicated population growth pattern. There are four stages in its life cycle. In the solitaria phase the insect behaves individually like the grasshopper in an Aesop fable. As food becomes scarce in the summer, the individual locusts group together to form congregans. These then coalesce to form larger groups, proceeding to the swarming stage, migratoria. Except for those that revert to the solitary phase, the dissocians, the swarm continues to expand. Because of sheer numbers, an overnight attack by the pest can virtually demolish entire crops like rice, corn, legumes and vegetables. The swarm darkens the sky in midday, hisses in deafening sound, rides on wind current to reach far and wide, destroying many things on its path.

Our planet is getting overcrowded.

This population growth pattern that ends in mass extinction is also happening in the microscopic world. This can be observed in yeast during alcohol fermentation. The yeast cells rapidly increase in number, so with the enzyme – zymase - which they secrete. Zymase converts sugar into alcohol, so that alcohol builds up while the amount of fermentable sugar proportionately decreases. Ironically it is the accumulated alcohol and starvation that ultimately kill the yeast cells, a phenomenon known as autotoxicity.

                                                                

Do we carry in our genes the Pied Piper or Lemming syndrome? Has human society any similarity with the migratory habit of locust? Are we internally building toxic materials, like the yeast, which will lead us to our doom?

These are questions that will trouble and challenge our most profound thinkers. But there is one thing that we should remember. It is not man’s superior mind that is the saving grace of the world, because the more he discovers things, the more he asserts himself in the biosphere.

It may be man’s intelligence that is bringing his doom closer. It reminds us of the Fall when man disobeyed God and ate the fruit of the Tree of Wisdom. Whatever is our interpretation of Paradise Lost, the fact remains that mankind’s vulnerability lies in the improper use of his rationality. One such blatant act is the destruction of his environment as man craves to fulfill his unending quest for food, lumber and minerals.

There is a theological and ecological dimension to this thesis. When we destroy nature, we invariably disrespect the Creator.

Today’s Hercules and the Modern Hydra
Here is a stage play to portray man and the monster he created in battle. The modern Hercules pursues the Hydra of many ugly heads. It will be more dramatic than the romanticized Greek mythology. And the task will be enormous. Will our new Hercules succeed?

These are tools that we would offer to our hero to use.

• Elimination of all weapons of mass destruction
• Preservation of ecosystems
• Renewal of values and strengthening institutions
• Population planning and control
• Social control for equitable distribution of resources
• Restrained agriculture and industrial development
• Science and technology with conscience
• Enlightened education and media
• Effective governance and order
• Investment in the new generation and the future

Let us imagine that the play will last for days, years, generations or eons of time. We must be patient and persistent, like the Sphinx on the watch, but let us not fall victim to it.

We know that nothing is permanent in this world. Everything has a life cycle – even the stars – and this is what makes things transient. Take for example our sun. It is no longer the young blue-flamed torch in the sky for it has aged. It is now reddish and approaching a nova, the last stage of a star about to explode, and die - in the next 5 billion years.

There was once a scientist who expressed the highest level of optimism for humankind. He envisioned that as the sun becomes senile and prepares for its demise, man shall then have colonized the other planets, thus ensuring the continuity of his species.

Our species has its birth, growth, maturity and stability, before it too, shall perish and give way to another dominant being. What will it be? Nobody knows. This natural law of succession is evident from the fossil record that tells of the earth’s natural history. Of the five billion years of the earth’s existence, scientists found evidences of early life forms as early as three billion years ago, progressing very slowly to break away from simple, unicellular life forms.

Then, a billion years ago, life burst into a myriad of multi-cellular forms. Very recently did man arrive. If the world’s history is a year calendar, man arrived in the evening of December 30th. That is how young our species is as compared with, say the Coelacanth thought to have perished 60 millions years ago, or the dragonfly and cockroach which have been existing on earth since before the age of the dinosaurs.

Man in the last one million years became a dominant species, but not for the reason that he possesses the instincts of other dominant organisms before him, but by the use of a special singular tool - intelligence - which no other organism at present or in the past ever possessed.

The question today is not how we dominate the earth but for how long will we dominate it. It is not appropriate to compare man with the dinosaurs, or the early mollusk, or amphibians or fishes. These organisms cannot shape their environment and their destiny as man can. Man has conquered every corner of the earth, and soon the space above and around it, and in the depths of the oceans. He has studied how nature works and has been able to duplicate it in a growing number of ways. He has created new elements and compounds, including amino acids which are building blocks of life itself.

There is reason to believe that our species, if unchecked, may soon face extinction. But it is not unlikely that this demise will come from a giant meteor crushing earth, similar to what is believed to have caused the disappearance of dinosaurs. However, some scientists like Dr. Schumacher, the proponent of “Impact Technology”, believe that this extraterrestrial accident is not remote from happening again.

But if the death of our species would come, it is likely our own doing. Our intelligence may be unable to overcome the dictates of our survival instincts, leading to our own mass suicide. Will our society, perfect as Utopia, simply drift like the migratory locust searching just for food, mate, and other biological needs?

Will our species remain entrapped in a geometric population growth pattern, unable to use its intelligence to break free? It is possible that the population explosion, unending materialism, and breakaway science and technology will combine to create autotoxicity similar to that which killed the yeast cells?

We are engaged in a drama where we are not only the audience, but also its characters, playing the role of a new kind of hero, one who can save our environment and our species. The hero’s victory means the survival of mankind. It is a long struggle and will triumph.

Going back to the answer of the riddle of the Sphinx, man is that animal. As a child in the morning he crawls on all fours; as an adult at noon he walks erect on two legs; and as an elderly person, reaching the evening of his life, he walks with a cane for his third leg.

If we play the hero’s role well, we can yet delay the arrival of our sunset as a species. 

The Sphinx at Giza, Cairo, Egypt. 
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Part 2 -  Quo vadis, Homo?

Where are we humans going?

Dr Abe V Rotor

Auguste Rodin's The Thinker

Quo vadis, Homo sapiens? Where is man gong?

A young man who was in love asked the computer, “What is love?”

Whereupon, came a prompt answer – in a number of definitions, technical and literary.

“How does it feel to be in love?” the young man continued. This time the computer did not respond. He entered his query once more, but still there was no response. After several attempts, the computer finally gave up, and printed: I cannot feel.

Spending more time with the computer deprives millions, mostly children, of participating in health promoting games and resistance-building exposure in nature. Our children are no longer children of nature; they are captives of education and media, of malls and cafes.

They like to think that the mind is like the computer, that the more information it acquires the better it is to the person.

This is not so. Not when it pertains to health, not with the ability to arrive at correct decisions, not when and where survival is needed. And not when it comes to matters of love.

And here are our children spending most of their waking hours with an “intelligent” thing in the shape of a box, a thing that has no feeling at all!

Even when the computer can tell us of all kinds of ailments in the world, it cannot comfort us. It cannot cure us. It will only worsen our allergies, our asthma.

It cannot reciprocate our friendship, our love, our compassion. Because a robot is a robot is a robot.

Diseases and many forms of human misery are masked by the Good Life. These are surreptitiously spreading around the world causing many complications, untold sufferings, and death. They turn into pandemic as they merge with other diseases – HIV-AIDS, obesity, diabetes, accidents, are becoming common cases.

The success of human beings and all living things today depends on fitness acquired through Evolution and Adaptation. Evolution refers to the “Survival of the Fittest,” through eons of time; while Adaptation is the ability of organisms to adjust to dynamic changes of the environment.

The Four Attributes of Man

• Homo sapiens “Man the Wise”

• Homo faber "Man the Maker” or “Working Man"

• Homo ludens “Playing Man” or "Sportsman"

• Homo spiritus “Praying Man” or "Reverent"

(Deus faber “God the Creator”) Should Man also play the role of God?

Part 3 - Homo sapiens, the Patient

(From The Men Who Play God by Dr Arturo B Rotor)

“Of all God’s creatures, there is no species more guilt-ridden, confused and self-destructive than man. Fear, remorse and frustration underlie his basic behavior probably as a result of his forbears having been driven out of the Garden of Eden…”

A corner of Eden, in acrylic by Abe V Rotor

“Man kills not for food, he eats when he is not hungry, he mates in and out of season. His suicidal tendencies are unique. While the lemmings drown themselves as a result of reduced food supplies, man will willingly cultivate cancer of his lungs by smoking poisonous plants, convert his liver into a hobnailed atrophic mass of dead tissues with alcohol, or remove himself from the control of his mind with narcotics…

“An important feature of his personality is that the more developed the creature and the more successful, the more likely is he to suffer of neurosis.” The genes bearing these characteristics have not been identified, but seems to be transmitted paternally and maternally.

“While among all other species, infection heads mortality and morbidity lists, among Homo sapiens, neurosis is the underlying cause of ninety percent of all illnesses.”

"As a matter of fact, in the big cities and centers of population, the archetype of the successful executive in the hypertensive, the ulcer-patient, the tranquilizer-dependent. We believe that for an in-depth study of tension or anxiety, in all its typical and atypical manifestations, man is a better subject to study than any other organism.”

Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) Dr Abe V Rotor and Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday [www.pbs.gov.ph]

Reference: The Living with Nature Handbook by AV Rotor, UST Press 2003