Balancing Act, 6

I received an interesting response from an American friend about the blogpost I wrote yesterday. My friend is not optimistic about the state of the world, and certainly not for the state of her country, with the Great Deplorable at the helm and with other deplorables running such countries as Russia, Hungary, Israel, China and other places. No, it doesn't look good for liberal democracy, and we are clearly in a new era, playing a different game with different rules. Globalism has sprung open quite the Pandora's Box. What do we do? Clearly there is no Pollyanna escape available. This is not going to get better, and likely not for a long time. I think that we have to look at what happened during the thirties, when demagogues and dictators rose to power in Germany (Hitler), Italy (Mussolini), Japan (Hirohito), Russia (Stalin), Spain (Franco). Only a handful of countries were actually democratic states. Africa was mostly colonized, Latin America was run by military dictatorships or demagogues. Outside of the US, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand (countries that were scarcely heard of), and a few countries in Western Europe (Britain included), there was no democracy. The conditions for global conflagration were particularly ripe, and the old European order that had been particularly knocked on its ass in the First World War, was headed for an even bigger tumble in the forties as the world descended into the biggest and most destructive and deadly conflagration ever. A lot has changed since the last shots were fired in Europe and those lethal atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Nuclear weapons made any future international conflict a potential nightmare of global destruction. Climate change from global warming is mortgaging the future of our species and of the planet. Globalism has proved to be a boon for the upper rich and, despite the rise of the middle class in countries such as India, China, Brazil and Mexico, the resulting sense of consumer entitlement that takes the form of more people buying and driving cars and eating red meat every day has further raised the ante: more fossil fuels are being used and more arable and forested land is being destroyed for raising livestock. Not to mention the methane coming from cow farts. The elephant in the room today is this: the threat of another world war. And the likelihood that this could be the war that ends it, before rising sea levels, killer hurricanes and typhoons and mega heat waves and wildfires have a chance to do it instead. Also, many feel paralyzed by a sense of inevitability that, war or no war, the dangerous clowns now in power and the uneducated mouth-breathers who are their support base, will have caused so much irreversible damage to institutions, legislations and infrastructures that have made life a little more tolerable, especially for the vulnerable, that there will be no turning back. It will take generations to rebuild. Fair enough. But here's another idea. First, look at the kind of world that rose from the ashes of the Second World War. A new order, yes. Perfect, no. Flawed in many ways, yes. Primarily serving the interests of the wealthy, unfortunately. But we still came out okay, despite the slaughterhouses that Europe and Japan and China and Korea had been turned into. Is war of that magnitude, again inevitable? No one knows. But I am going to dare to say that no, it isn't. Is climate change inevitable? Unfortunately. Will it be catastrophic? Could be. Is this the end? Who only knows? But, to my American friend, and to the rest of you, Gentle Reader, I have these words: Dare to hope. Dare to dream. Dare to have a vision. We have some dark, hard and very difficult times ahead of us, but no one knows what the outcome is going to be. And this is the way it's always been. For those of you not already consumed by despair or self-interest, it's time to get to work. Nothing has ever been changed by people with the ability to hope, dream and have a vision, who simply decided to sit on their ass and enjoy the show. We have work, hard work ahead of us, and it is going to be a work of many generations to heal, undo the damage and move forward again, and there are always going to be obstacles and there are always going to be setbacks. There has never been a time on this earth when we have most needed people who will still dare to move forward in the struggle and it is for each of us to face down these threats and dangers as new opportunities. This is a time when we are also going to really need one another. Get moving!