I don’t even know where to start. There are so many enormous problems facing the world today, and so many people too scared to even acknowledge them, let alone attempt to correct them.
One of the major issues I choose to look at is the interplay between societies and their members, and balancing the needs of each. Governments and states all over the world have taken a decidedly pro-industry anti-humanist attitudes, which makes sense, emerging directly from capitalist economies. Hence we have people living mostly as automata for industry; I see it every day on the bus. People shipped to their jobs like cattle, working their lives away at tasks which are essentially meaningless from a human perspective, because industrial (or technological these days) progress demands it. Some people spend their whole lives working for a massive corporation (measure it in years of a life or hours of a week– the problem is the same. People not living for the things that matter to people.)
I grew up in Kentucky. Like many, I was raised without a strong religious background, put through school, beleaguered by Christians for my lack of Christianity, and eventually grew to call myself an Atheist. Atheism made sense. It wasn’t full of contradictions and ambiguous moral commandments. It explained the world as I saw it, and the way science sees it.
The problem, however, is that Atheism is completely disconnected from ‘spirituality’. I’d heard the word many times, but I couldn’t feel it. I don’t think many of my Abrahamic peers grew up feeling it either, despite their parents’ and Popes’ demands. It wasn’t until quite recently that I truly started to understand what ‘spirituality’ means (it’s all about people connecting with other people, connecting with themselves). My hypothesis is that this lack of spiritual connection is the root cause of most problems in America these days. I’m not directly claiming Buddhism is the answer, but certainly it is evidence that spirituality can be taught and developed; a lesson sorely needed around here.
Religion is a touchy subject, though. It’s propogandized into many from such an extremely young age that it entrenches itself almost as a neurosis. Most don’t take kindly to being told that their religion is incorrect or unhealthy. Religions, like many social constructs, are designed to sustain themselves (at least the ones that are still around are designed this way). But if these myriad social systems called religions are unwilling to quietly diminish themselves, what is the answer? Clearly force will never work (the Soviets foolishly tried it anyway). As far as I’ve thought, the answer is actually right in front of us: education.
Religious study should be taught in public schools, in a careful way. What’s a more relevant social study than religious study? I claim there is none, particularly since religions and cultures are almost always closely linked historically. But the most important advantage would be greater understanding, and, by natural observation, the realization of all the parallels between religions– the fact that they all teach fundamentally the same thing. And furthermore, all these teachings are things healthy people already know if they look in their own hearts honestly.
We live in a very special time of development for the human civilization. For the first time in history, we are nearing a truly united world. The significance of the Internet’s emergence cannot be understated. The possibility for a massively connected society is clear and present. Who knows how long the ‘transition period’ will be– the past twenty years have seen astounding progress, but it could be another twenty or another thousand years before we can look back and say for sure. Needless to say, I am optimistic and hopeful for the future.
Unfortunately, we are also facing more massive obstacles than ever before examined, as we approach the limits of the system we’ve worked within for so long: the Earth itself. Petroleum is running out. All the exponential industrial and techonological progress of the past few centuries has been predicated on an endless supply of cheap oil. Most infrastructure is designed based on that assumption. It’s now well accepted that oil is quickly running out, and will soon (estimates range from 20 to 50 years) be completely unavailable as an energy source. M. King Hubbert foresaw this in 1956– it’s only taken the public 50 years to get the picture.
There are two possible scenarios for the near future. The first is that we, using what little oil energy we have left available to us after squandering so much, bootstrap an industry harnessing energy from the next higher level of the universe: the Sun. After all, the Earth is essentially a random byproduct of the Sun, miniscule in comparison, a tiny slice of the larger system’s energy. In my opinion, governments should be massively subsidizing this effort if they care at all about stability, national security, quality of life, or any of the other things that governments supposedly care about.
The second possible scenario is that we, despite our best efforts, do not have enough energy reserves leftover from oil to power the conversion of the energy industry. We may manage to get a few power plants constructed using alternative energy, and we may slow the decline, but if that critical mass is not reached, if the solar energy industry is not able to harness enough power to sustain its own development, without oil’s aid, then our civilization will inevitably start to decline and revert to agrarianism. No more airplanes, no more cell phones, no more televisions, no more cheap fertilizers, no more cars, no more plastic. Of course, the things that really matter in life will still be available, just as they always have. The transition time might be a little painful, though.