Our world has serious problems… problems that we can’t seem to do anything about.

Here is a partial list of some of the bigger ones:

  • The top 1% of the richest individuals control half of the world’s wealth, while the bottom 50% live in poverty, struggling to provide themselves with their basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, health care, safe drinking water, and sanitary living conditions.
  • All the big decisions as to how our world should be ordered are made by huge corporations whose only criteria for making any decision is how it will affect their own growth and profit.
  • Nine countries own enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on this planet 100 times over.
  • More than 160 million people were killed as a result of wars in the twentieth century. Today, people are still dying in more than twenty-five armed conflicts around the globe. In this century, somewhere around 1 million people have died in wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan alone.
  • The richest and most powerful nation on the planet considers health care to be a commodity that should only be provided to those who can afford to pay the exorbitant costs.
  • The cause of global warming and climate change, being a growing accumulation of human-generated greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere, has been identified for more than thirty years, and yet no meaningful progress has been made on the effort to stem it.
  • The human population has grown from 1 billion to more almost 8 billion in the past 200 years, and it continues to rise, despite the fact that we all know what a serious a problem this represents for all of us… and also to all of the other members of the Community of Life on this planet.
  • Deforestation due to natural resource exploitation, and farming and ranching operations, as well as human overpopulation in general, is causing the biggest species die-off since the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago.
  • Pollution of the air we breathe and of our rivers, streams, and oceans is at critical levels and continues to get worse with no end in sight. 

In the absence of the achieving of a cultural shift along the lines advocated herein, do you foresee a time when wars are not being fought in multiple locations around the globe? Do you foresee a time when all of the nuclear-capable countries have voluntarily relinquished their nuclear arsenals? Do you foresee a time when you don’t have to worry about crime or terrorism? Do you foresee a time when millions of people around the world are no longer starving and nobody is struggling to provide themselves and their families with their basic needs? Do you foresee a time when racism and misogyny are problems of the past?  Do you foresee a time when millions of our citizens are not zonked out on drugs and alcohol in a futile effort to escape the insanity of living in a world with so many insurmountable problems?

My answer is, “No… I cannot foresee such a time.”

However, in a world where basic needs have been provided for all people everywhere, where our precious forests are no longer being cut down, and where we are no longer polluting our air, land and water, I can definitely foresee such a time.

This is what I was so excited about when I first read Ishmael. There is a way out of this mess! The fix is at the foundational level of our culture! We can do it! All it requires is the creation of a critical mass of people who understand the need for change and who stand ready to remake our present insane, separation-based culture into our new, sane culture that is grounded upon the reality of connectedness.

We can do it!

We can resume our roles as Responsible Members of the Community of Life!

We can save the world!