There is a problem in the world. One problem. We are killing ourselves.
We have an inter-connected world in which tiny, myopic, and dysfunctional communities are chafing from rubbing up against communities with opposing and equally dysfunctional bases.
Once the world was a big enough place that opposing ideologies simply widened the geographic distance between themselves and expanded, as the need developed, into places where humans had not yet settled. After that was impossible we then overran or exterminated low population densities of peoples who had the misfortune of being where the better armed or larger group(s) decided to expand.
We have now come to a place where we have to find a different, better, survivable method of dealing with the desire to conquer place and people.
No I am not putting forward a solution. I have ideas as to some of the things that a livable solution might want to incorporate, but I believe that humanity as a whole will have to come up with a solution. That whole will have to value all life, people who look or think differently from themselves, and all the women from those groups. This is the only way I can find to a place where we might be able to come up with a viable way to live together and figure out how to survive the next century or two when everything that has been a given for centuries or millennia will change or disappear.
I believe, and this is personal belief that I would expect any other person to have exactly the same belief, that we are at a very a cultural, earthly tipping point where extinction of humanity and many if not most of Earth’s species along with us is on one side of a narrowing path toward a tipping point where we as a species will fall into rapid movement toward this side or another side where this unsustainable, competitive, territorial, and violence-based cultural system is replaced by a system based on other distinctly different organizing principles such as cooperative distribution systems and speech-based conflict resolution.
All I know for sure is that we cannot continue to exist if the only thing all people do is develop new ways to kill each other and ultimately ourselves.
Solutions anyone?
I know we will need a better understanding of what is going on around us if we are to evolve culturally. For example, where do you think the biggest loss of life to terrorism occurred last week? If you said France, you need to change how and where you get your news. Your task if you don’t know is to find out where over 2000 people were killed last week. Let’s all expand our micro-focus beyond our own tiny neighborhoods.
My next post will provide the answer to the question I asked in the previous paragraph.
I pray daily that we can live in a world with tolerance and appreciation for others views and opinions.
I do too but I am convinced we have to act… The question is how.
It’s true, especially here in the US, that we don’t look beyond our own backyards. The questions you pose are so difficult. They take time and thought and work but most people don’t expand their thoughts outside their own microcosms.
I do not know how to fight indifference. Have we always been selfish? Is it possible to wake people up by using our voices, writing, influence?
I would love to hear suggestions for solutions because I’ve got nothing. I have always been a very positive person who believes everything will turn out okay, but I am starting to lose hope – along with many friends who are much like me. I worry what will happen if the optimistic people lose hope.
I believe in human resiliency, I wonder if the grandmothers of the world have always felt this way about the world we are leaving to our descendants.
Oh my… you are preaching to the choir here Nancy. I think the real challenge is not coming up with solutions — we can come up with those– it is coming up with sane solutions to restore the balance in a world that is so INsane and so UNbalanced. The thing that discourages me (and I don’t discourage easily) and the condition that must change is that it feels like irrational, violence-first-based ways of dealing with conflict are now etched into the systems that rule our world. When did that happen? You are right, I can’t sit back and let violence engulf us either.
I cannot believe it was always this bad. We need to figure out how to nudge trajectories and change energy. I’m not giving up. I’m just whining.
You make me proud that my daughter is studying anthropology Nancy. She just did her last semester at University of Amsterdam (Oregon State is her home campus) and had two six-unit courses…the Anthropology of Violence and Globalization of Religion (plus Dutch). In both, she was the only American, and called upon to represent the US point of view daily. Needless to say, she grew tremendously. I am hopeful for our next generation.
I wonder if they referenced Myrdene Anderson’s edited volume on Culture and Violence. (My major prof.) Their is hope, but there is more we can do to help them.
The problem has always been (and will continue to be) getting everyone on the same page with solutions. How does one convince a territorial tribe that doesn’t recognize borders and doesn’t value ‘life’ that there is a better way? I can’t wait for your next piece.
Large oaks from little acorns grow!
I agree. Which is why I start local and then move outward.
Yes. Local and out!