Countries must seriously rethink their future in light of the obvious exigencies that are increasingly confronting collective humanity. Most of these difficulties arose as a result of shortsighted human activities. To this end, anything and everything must be questioned. The current political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, etc., must be interrogated in toto, without bias! Blindly adhering to old ways will only make the inevitable transitions unnecessarily painful. We learn from history that complex societies are prone to complete collapse, particularly when critical inputs that sustain the system become scarce. When cumulative outcomes end up being dysfunctional and disruptive, they also tend to trigger collapse, albeit gradually. This is the scenario we are especially witnessing within the reigning hegemon!
One should start the project of deconstruction by thoroughly examining the core essentials of current collective existence. A human being, just like the other life forms, need to breath, eat, drink and have some kind of shelter to protect itself from the elements. But the ecosystem in which life itself evolved (or was created) has been undergoing drastic changes affecting the above essentials, mostly due to human activities. Granted, the only permanent thing in our known universe is change. But the change we are talking about here is the visibly irresponsible ones, largely caused by the upright monkey, particularly in the last two centuries. We can clearly see the effects of burning fossil fuel to our atmosphere, as well as the oceans. Erosion of the planet’s topsoil due to industrial agriculture is going to have drastic consequences. Runoff from petro-agriculture has already created dead zones in the oceans (Gulf of Mexico, etc.) Trying to squeeze all the juices/nutrients out of the soil, without allowing sufficient time for natural cyclical processes to do the replenishment, seem to have run its course. In the short period of just over half a century, the consequences of such agricultural methods/technology have rendered many a land barren. Over 50% of water wells in the northern arid zones of India (Rajasthan, etc.) have completely dried up, thanks to the heavy input oriented agriculture that goes by the deceptive name of ‘green revolution’. It is the usual culprits that are behind this dead end project (Big Ag, Big Chem, Big Pharma, Big Finance, etc.)
Admittedly, it is those few individuals with critical disposition, functional aptitude and rare foresight that usually contemplate systemic changes. Unfortunately, a good portion of humanity is not endowed with such attributes, for various reasons. This is where a widespread enlightenment project comes in. As it stands, the objective of modern education (in the majority of countries) is to produce ‘unthinking drones’ willing to serve the existing greed system without reservations. Within the existing establishment institutions, questioning even the most obvious problematic of the modern world system is not welcomed. The prevailing system, which is based on plenty of fallacious principles and propelled by the blind convictions of entrenched interests, won’t be east to dismantle. As a result, the project of liberation/enlightenment is going to be a cumbersome and formidable undertaking! Why can’t we question the validity of an economic system that is based on producing waste? For example, urban habitation is nothing more than a waste-producing factory! How can any reasonable person accept the moronic ideology of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’? How can the mere manipulation of financial systems produce the real essentials of existence? It is because of such built-in irrational assumptions of the system that collective humanity must wage a protracted struggle for comprehensive changes! See the article next column.
Our political governance, global or otherwise, is also based on faulty convictions just like the ones mentioned above. Stockpiling arsenals of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) is touted to bring security, according to the peddlers of war, namely, the military-industrial complex of the deep state. To wish the existing system would facilitate a more sustainable, democratic and egalitarian world order is tantamount to upholding fatalism. One of the critical novelist of the 20th century ‘imagined how everything about the human world, from our sexual mores to our religion to our automobiles to our government to our plans for cultural survival, might be flawed, even fatally so.’ This famous science fiction writer, always grounded on real science, (he was an aeronautical engineer) concluded: “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.” Robert A. Heinlein. Good Day!