My two cents on the world’s end

March 2020 -

Quarantine times.

Having been locked in our flat at the fifth floor for three weeks already, there’s now more than ever the need to be grounded.

And by that, I mean reminding myself the big picture of what’s going on in the world, and resisting the tendency to anxiety, finger-pointing and blaming.

The world has gone global.

We have such amazing stuff today like airplane travel, the internet and tropical fruits all year long (yeah, bananas!) but also greenhouse gas emissions, Big Tech firms getting everyone’s data online and frequent infectious diseases.

So, does this mean the world has come to an end?

No, of course it doesn’t. Yet, we got an urgent problem that needs to be solved. But before we can solve the problem, we first need to realize what the problem is.

The recent virus outbreak belongs to a class of problems that are fairly new to us as humans. A new set of global challenges that have emerged in the last century, requiring a new set of tools to be overcome.

So far in first world countries, we got quite good at solving problems within our nations. For example, if we needed more electricity, we would build a new power station, burn more fuel and get more power. If we needed more food, we would get more out of the earth and the sea.

That worked very well so far, and very far it got us, indeed. But things are changing.

Making space for agriculture through deforestation is chocking us of oxygen, important sea life (our food) is at risk of disappearing due to overfishing and the air is getting poisonous from burning so much fossil fuel.

The solutions to our old problems are creating new ones, but different ones. These belong to a new level. These cannot be solved by the same nation-wise solutions that created them, but require new solutions. Global solutions.

But how can we cooperate globally as a species, when we are still so divided, fragmented and often at war with each other?

Truthfully, I don’t know, but I discovered at least one ingredient that we must put in our cauldron to brew the magic world-saving Elixir.

And that is: Awareness.

This is such great news because this ingredient is not hidden but accessible to everyone. However, Awareness is very squishy and slips through the fingers all the time.

“But Awareness of what?” you might ask “And how is this woo-woo Awareness thing going to help me solving real world problems?”

Let me answer with a short story.

There was once a Tree with many leaves but most of them were not aware that they were part of the tree itself but, instead, they believed they were simply individual Leaf-people.

Many Leaf-people fought with each other for getting more Sunlight, or to get any at all. Many indeed, were simply Light-starving to death.

To better survive in the big race for Sunlight, some Leaf-leaders started gathering followers by saying that the real cause for the scarcity of Sunlight, was another group of Leaves that was stealing it from them.

This other group also elected their Leafder, who was demonizing the foreigner leaves by saying the same thing to its own followers, who were every day more afraid and more desperate for Light.

After several years of wars, most leaves had fallen and only a handful of selfish ones remained, taking all the light for themselves, more than they could use, and leaving the bare minimum for the remaining, powerless ones.

At the same time, the Tree was slowly dying because it did not have enough nutrients, as most of the extra Light that those clueless dictators and their greedy Leaf-friends were getting, was going wasted in luxuries and could not be converted into nutrients.

About this story, I’d like to point out that, at the beginning and from each group of leaves’ perspective, slaying the neighboring group was a fairly effective short term solution for getting more Sunlight, but after some time that very same solution were now endangering them all, as the whole Tree was dying because of that.

Now, what do you think is the best chance of salvation for the Leaf-people, at this point?

You’re right, they should first become aware of being part of the Tree.

Not just individual leaves but the Tree itself.

After all, how could they change their behavior before this realization?

Human beings are not leaves on a tree, we’re far more complex than that, but I believe there are similarities between the Leaf-people world and ours.

We too must become aware of the inextricable net that connects us all to each other, and that we can no longer have the luxury of seeing other people as totally separate from us.

A lot of good stuff has been done so far and we need to keep going in the right direction.

We need less walls, less blaming and less selfishness in favor of more relationships, cooperation and kindness to one another.

This way, we’ll have a far better chance of saving our world, which is the same to say as saving ourselves.