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!