Let’s make good use of the world wide talents
In November 2010 New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman commented on a recent poll among Americans by Rasmussen Reports, showing that 47% of the respondents think that “the best days are in the past”.(*) Friedman noted that just before President Obama was inaugurated, 48 percent said our best days were still ahead and 35 percent said they had come and gone. “This is a disturbing trend”, he observed. I can only concur. It is most likely that this trend is not limited to American citizens only.
Tomorrow is humanity’s unborn child that most of us today would rather abort than nourish to its healthy arrival. We fear the future, collectively. We see all the challenges that we seem incapable to overcome. Our main reflex is to defend what we have and to give way to reactionary impulses whenever change threatens us. US President Obama’s campaign yell “Yes we can!” has been smothered not merely by the vocal forces of domestic Republican conservatism. He faces a much more profound and widespread spiritual paralysis. Across the globe, progress-as-once-we-knew-it has come to a grinding halt amidst an ever rising pile of unpaid bills and unresolved conflicts. We have amassed manifold agendas that (largely because of this) have become overburdened with demands to which we can not effectively respond: the need for clean and sustainable energy, the need to address major climate issues (I dare not speak of “climate change”), world population, international peace and security – just to give a shortlist. (*)
Along the way we drain the resources required to groom and inspire the next generation – our schools and universities – beyond repair. We allow the distribution of wealth and power to grow more and more distorted. At the same time we – willingly – submit ourselves to mass serfdom in the hands of ever larger corporate interests with ever diminishing accountability. We do it willingly, because we do not want to control the very source of their power, our own insatiable material greed. If I were a God fearing Christian, I would say that we can now see what God desperately wanted to help avoid when he warned Adam and Eve against eating from the tree of knowledge.
Utilizing every source of knowledge
But we can not wish to go back to paradise. There is no future there. Only knowledge will help us forward. More knowledge, applied in greater – collective - wisdom. If we wish to fight the ignorance that allegedly threatens us from outside, cloaked – as we see it – in vicious terrorism, then indeed wisdom our best weapon, not bullets. We should recognize that today’s terrorism is an expression of a widespread outrage, even among reasonable people, against the ongoing usurpation by ‘western civilization’ of almost every corner of the Earth, its resources, its culture, its mindset – and its sense of deprivation. If we look at the balance of happiness in our present world, western civilization has done as much to enhance it as to destroy it.
Indeed it is a sobering and irrevocable reality: ever since European ships set out to explore the globe, more paradises have perished than have ever been regained afterwards. In the process the regions – nations, people – of our world have grown too interdependent to simply let go- we have no choice but to redefine our sense of a sustainable future together and eradicate existing antagonisms by offering real perspective.
Making life sustainable for all
Most of all there is the need for a perspective, not merely “solutions” or “change”. To overcome present challenges we will need to look beyond them, in substantive terms. If anything, history has proven that policies merely aiming at problem solving are insufficient to mobilize the critical mass of the electorate to support them. Facing the challenges is a condition but not an inspiring, energizing motive under any circumstance. We should have confidence in our ability to utilize every inventiveness, indeed: every possibility which the tree of knowledge offers us, to help our world become a better place for many – not merely for the happy few.
Lastly, however much we have already burdened the lives of our descendants to unprecedented scale, the future still is free. If we withdraw from it, out of fear or out of sheer reluctance to reset our priorities, we will indeed have made it powerless. US President Obama, not any other world leader can effectively rise to that challenge unless the opportunities are offered, ready at hand, with competent people to make it work. I only need to recall the conditions under which President Kennedy was confident enough to announce his “Man on Moon”, a project that inspired many people for more than a decade. It had countless spin-offs in a wide range of industries.
We do not require a “Man on Mars” to match this far reaching ambition. We better focus on our own planet, even though at this point I would hesitate to pin point its nature and scope. Moreover, it seems to me that the process of getting to such project – a wide ranging global ambition in substantive terms – is at least of similar importance as its actual parameters.
Developing clean, unlimited energy
The world has the means – the technology and the talent, indeed: our collective wisdom – to make this a viable proposition We can connect every mind and every inspiration to it. If designing a inspirational future is what the world wide web has been made for, then we truly have proven that our information age makes sense for many generations to come.
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(*) See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28friedman.html?src=me&ref=homepage
