To be or not to be? That is the question!

A long time ago, 1988, Bill Moyers did an interview with Joseph Campbell.

Moyers: Don't you think modern Americans have rejected the ancient idea of nature as a divinity because it would have kept us from achieving dominance over nature?... Scientists are beginning to talk quite openly about the Gaia principle… Will new myths come from this image?

Campbell: Well, something might... And the only myth that is going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the planet, not the city, not these people, but the planet, and everybody on it. That's my main thought for what the future myth is going to be...

Moyers: So, you suggest that from this, begins the new myth of our time?

Campbell: Yes, this is the ground of what the myth is to be. It's already here: the eye of reason, not of my nationality; the eye of reason, not of my religious community; the eye of reason, not of my linguistic community. Do you see? And this would be the philosophy for the planet, not for this group, that group, or the other group. When you see the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. And those are the people that we are one with.

This is where some of us our headed for. The business side of it seems to be inevitable. Large corporations are dominating the world. Again, like mankind, with a lot of power they are not fit for yet! But the cultural and ideological side of it might take a lot longer and might never happen. Greed, lust for power and control, dogmatisms and human stupidity are very much against concepts such as “citizen of the world” or “the eye of reason, not of my nationality or religious community” because they are not in line with their interests. And they even might fight against it with all their might. Therefore, we cannot be sure if cultural and moral globalization is also inevitable, or whether or not it will happen in a positive way.

So, what do we have so far? We are not well developed, we have evolved too quickly, we are evolving even faster now, we are not fit to sit at the top of the food chain, there are way too many of us, we are destroying the planet, our collective wisdom sucks and we have too much power for our own good! (Boy this is depressing!) Now, while we have not even started to grasp things as they are, we are moving to the next step which is a huge one! We ought to prepare for something we don’t know; We don’t know how it’s gonna be and we don’t even know how it should be!

“One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations” (Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years)

So, what’s the next step? It feels ridiculous to think about the next step when we haven’t taken the previous one properly! We have kind of jumped ahead, skipped through a few steps and have landed where we are! In the TED Dialogue we watched in class, the guest, Yuval Noah Harari, talked about the lack of a good and effective governing model for a globalized world. Apparently, no one has yet come up with a practical governing model. But let’s say we do. Let’s pretend we have a plan, a good one, and we want to make it happen or at least contribute to its development somehow. Now the question is whether or not there is anything we can do? Well, I don’t know! That would very much depend on the goal.

I will tell you more about it soon.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

What is?

Last time I wrote about the fact that we are not mature enough for everything that’s happening to us.  It has not been long since we became the dominant animal on the planet. We grew both in numbers and also in power and control over our environment, so we changed (and still are changing) the environment, pretty much the whole world, to fit our needs, not paying attention to the long-term impact of our actions. Ecosystem’s check and balance could not (and still cannot) adapt and keep up with us, and with our new, unchecked powers, we are quickly destroying the very necessary means of our own survival. We try to do things the easy way even though we know very well how harmful this easy thing is in the long run.

Not only we cannot manage natural resources and our consumption of them, we cannot manage our herd and our role and behavior in it either! We are smarter than most, if not all, animals, and yet we are so primitive and stupid in some topics compared to other animals. Let’s take mating for example. We, by “we” I mean us and the other animals, mate because we are instinctively designed to want and need it. We developed this innate desire and instinct, to ensure the survival of our species, to continue reproducing. And we do it, innately to survive, and then at the same time create things and do things that can and will destroy us which kind of defeats the purpose. Male animals compete for their mates, and the females choose their mates by picking the winner as the stronger and better one. It matters to them who they mate with because it matters to them how their offspring turns out and they want to give their offspring a better chance of survival. We on the other hand, say we want a better life for our children but choose a partner that has the IQ of a watermelon, or the sense and ration of a Neanderthal or the parenting capability of a sponge! We create children and then beat them, abuse them, hurt them and mess them up. And then, since the domestic or small scale damages are not enough, we go and build weapons of mass destructions and we decide to kill millions of people at once.

If any other animal species, were to behave as self-destructive as we do, they would have been extinct a thousand times by now! The only reason we have not vanished yet, is because of all this unchecked, unbalanced power. It’s like having a strong body that prevents us from realizing the symptoms of the cancer that is growing inside our brain!

Hey I don’t mean to be negative. Not all of us are like this. But the ratio of it is way too high to ignore. I have a lot more to say about this, but gotta go now. Will write more later.

Globalization, good or bad?

I don’t think there is a single straight answer to this question. Whether or not it’s a good thing to happen, depends a lot on how and when it happens, and also on the governing model we apply for it and many other aspects of it. And even if the general and overall outcome is good, there will definitely be consequences, disadvantages, adjusting curve and a very high price to pay for it.

A while ago we watched a TED Dialogue in class when we were discussing globalization. The guest, Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the book “Sapiens” talked about the lack of a good and effective governing model for a globalized world and many aspects of the matter.

His ideas and the way he analyzed everything, got me thinking and curious, so I got the book from my neighbourhood library. I read something interesting in the first chapter, something I have been thinking about for a while (actually wanted to mention it in our discussion about technology and how it’s making our lives out of balance.) But he described and analyzed it way better than I would:

“This is a key to understanding our history and psychology. Genus Homo’s position in the food chain was until quite recently, solidly in the middle. For millions of years, humans hunted smaller creatures and gathered what they could, all the while being hunted by larger predators. It was only 400,000 years ago that several species of man began to hunt large game on a regular basis, and only in the last 100,000 years – with the rise of Homo Sapiens – that man jumped to the top of the food chain.

That spectacular leap from the middle to the top had enormous consequences. other animals at the top of the pyramid, such as lions and sharks, evolved into that position very gradually, over millions of years. This enabled the ecosystem to develop checks and balances that prevent lions and sharks from wreaking too much havoc. As lions become deadlier, so gazelles evolved to run faster, hyenas to cooperate better, and rhinoceroses to be more bad-tempered. In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.”

Every aspect of our dominance, is somehow too soon for us. We are way too immature for the power we have in our hands, and for the changes that are happening. It is the same with globalization. We have not really matured enough to understand the existing different models of government around the globe, let alone a suitable, balanced, proper model, even for the existing classification of nations. Do we really think we are ready for something as complex, as sophisticated and as demanding as a global government? Are we ready to make the necessary compromises? Do we have a proper understanding of what we want and what we should want and “what we want to want?” [Yuval Noah Harari] It would be like asking a 2-year-old, to share their beloved candy with another 2-year-old, with whom they never get along!

The world is changing too fast. We move to the next stage before fully digesting the last one. A lion knows very well how to manage its power not to break its cub’s neck while moving it with the same jaw it uses to break the neck of its pray. Especially since it very well knows how much the survival of its species depends on proper use of those jaws in both situations. We on the other hand, have neither mastered sufficient control over our powers nor the wisdom of how to use them and what for. We still have mad politicians who can easily demolish nations, wipe a whole population of an area from the face of the earth, with a simple push of a button, and we still have people who vote for such politicians! The fact that we cast votes in favor of such politicians in form of a majority, shows that we don’t have the wisdom to use the power and authority of making such a choice.

Is globalization good or bad? It can be both, depends on us. Is globalization inevitable? Probably. Are we ready for it? Definitely not! Can we be ready for it? Highly unlikely! Will we try to get ready for it? Hopefully! How can we get ready? I will talk about it more in the next few weeks.

Video: https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_nationalism_vs_globalism_the_new_political_divide?language=en