The world is heating up in these past months, like never before, but it is not because of climate change only. Yes certainly we have now reached level of irreversibility that we were hoping they would never occur, but we have been silly about this for a prolonged period of time.
We know that our actions and our industrial activities do not go in par with the ability of the planet to preserve its natural cycle and balance and we got ourselves into an inevitable fall towards "forcing". Forcing is that point in nature where the chemistry of the planet will change beyond our assumptions, or at least our limited induction of how nature works.
But the climate is not the only side of the story, which generates malaise. There are several events worldwide who are breaking the meager equilibrium we have tried to recover since the last financial crisis. It is a dangerous confluence of a new dysfunctional and aggressive geo-politics and a newly imposed geo-economics. Those two together are capable of shaping new borders, carve out new horizons and push us once more, on the brink of a profoundly unsettling sense of loss.
But what is really happening and why?
Our crony capitalistic model has led to the exacerbation of several behaviors that have triggered the predator's behavior of mankind over itself. Humans are the only species that prey on themselves and this cannot be good.
We call it war, religion, geography, independence, secession, gas and oil, Russia or whatever it may be. But we continue to avoid the introspective voice to call it for what it is: Extinction.
Our economic systems are fatigued and globally scattered. We have increased the mortality of several small companies (the engine of the real economy), we have also increased the profitability of several large corporations while decreasing or at least stagnating the ability of working folks to bring decency to their life, strangled by an increasing obscure sense of fatalism, scarce quality of employment and a futureless future. We discuss, debate and act out of fear of a global economy meltdown, but we seem ineffective in steering the course of a massive global recession, or at least a significant deflation in the ability to create added value jobs.
Our politics is lacking ethics at the core of its decisions and political myopia is becoming a largely spread epidemics, beyond national borders. It is rare to find a country that is not experiencing the crisis of democracy and governance. A general sense of disfranchisement reigns over "electorate versus elected" and several constituencies are the reflection of a world of fragmentation. Political coalitions, unable to clearly assign victory to a party over another, are symptomatic of a chronic hiccup and irresolute political compositions.
Our social tension is stronger now than at the time in which stratification was legally enforced. A recent work done by the Slavery Footprint estimates that we currently avail of 27 million slaves in the world, subsidizing with their work, the ability of the fat cat societies to keep up the spending spree that allows delusional economic models to portray a sense of continuity.
The model externalizes responsibility to the benefit of pricing strategies that allow a quick transition of goods and services in what we commend as "free markets hypothesis". Well I got news for you. It is not free at all, or at least, our perk to pay $9.99 for a T-shirt, is invoiced to modern slaves, who pay with their deprivation of access to a life made of decency.
Our beliefs system and our ability to believe in a greater Dogma of life is being diluted on a daily level, by a strong crisis of values, which suggest that our differences are more important to us than our willingness to converge them into unity. Humans are becoming Godless beings, driven by their own sense for the world, rather than a more sacred respect for something greater than just us. And individuality permeates our Self and our destiny.
These are bleak times for many people and we are struck by the paralysis of inaction. We cannot move things forward as we stopped to believe in the image of a future that will be brighter for our children. We have short-changed our humanity for an empty promise, drifting us away from what really counts.
So what is left for us to do?
We can just pray. And this is not meant in a religious sense, but in a theological one. We can step back and observe the infamy of our modern history. Hopefully we'll awake from the malaise and reboot by looking to a greater purpose, by hoping that humanity can be retrieved and regained. Because at present, it is lost in a maze of confusion.
Recovering from such an ill-conceived model is possible. All it takes is the time to believe that by re-designing some of our core rules, we will be able re-design the outcome of our inputs... After all, if unable to look after our own survival, we are indirectly declaring our challenge to love.
Let us question our purposes and engage in the construction of our future society.
Let us stop for a second. Just a second... and hopefully this bad dream will be just a diluted memory and nothing more...
...so we can continue to read fairy tales to our children, as they fall asleep to a world of wonders.
N.B. Illustration by Sergey Tyukanov