Humanity at a threshold

Should I list all the challenges humanity is going through at the moment once more? Are they not vibrating in out hearts and minds most of the time? Are we not conscious about the fact that we are dealing with a species trying to survive? It’s our species and we know it deep down in our hearts.

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There are around 1.9 million types of animals on the planet. 1.88 million of them are spineless. In 2015 there have been 77340 animals and plants on the Red List of the IUCN – the International Union for Conservation of Nature. We are right in the middle of the sixth major mass extinction. Earth has witnessed five, when more than 75% of species disappeared.

Climate change kept its promise in 2018. Global temperatures for the first five months of the year have been the highest on record for a La Niña year, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the World Meteorological Organisation. May 2018 was the fourth warmest May on record, the 42nd consecutive May and the 401st consecutive month above the 20th century average.

Looking into world politics we can watch the rise of single leaders. Many of them want to see their countries strong again. Maybe it’s the wish of many of their citizens as well “to finally become someone again”. The democratic systems are challenged. So far most of them passed the test. Only in a few countries you might want to question the notion of “democracy”. Looking at the actions of their political leaders it might be more truthful to speak of dicatorships.

Money and consumption are the gods of the modern world. Being asked to close the advertisment blocker while visiting a website tells me a lot about how this octopus of consumption tries to reach my attention. In many sectors of society it’s obvious that decisions are being made because of business interest. Secondly there is a great need to meet the shareholder demands as well.

Since years we are exploiting nature. There is an endless greed for earth’s resources and people seem to be powerless to act against this behaviour. There is a gigantic, economic machinery operating to fight for the best monopoles. The main goal is gaining profit and to produce goods as cheap as possible. Life and creation do not have any rights in this calculation.

I see the image of the RMS Titanic in front of my eyes. The famous British passenger liner sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of 15 April 1912, after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The captain did not reduce the speed of the ship even when there were many ice warnings from other ships being reported. Together with the steam turbine the overall output was 51.000 hp. Why do we still keep the engines of our modern society consciously or unconsciously on maximum speed? Don’t we know the risk of our actions for future generations? Are we playing with nature? Do we really think that we can’t sink? Do we believe that we’ve already won the fight against the adversities of nature?

In the movie “The Matrix” Agent Smith builds on this thought concluding that humanity behaves like a virus. It spreads over the planet without respecting its environment:

I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area.

Smith from the movie “The Matrix”

There is much to discuss. Soon there will be actions needed. Maybe it’s not so much about decisions being made by our politicians or some sort of organisations that matter in the end. It might be time to consider every single citizen on earth as a potential decision maker. It’s about the way she acts in her community that matters.[/showhide]

In 2008 everybody was talking about the first global financial crisis. In 2019 every human being on planet earth should have used this 10 years time frame to make up one’s mind about the world situation. I would doubt that mass media can be a helpful companion in this process. The main difference from a life in the last century might be the fact that today information is available almost everywhere in the world simply by accessing the world wide web. With the latest applications downloaded and installed on one’s smartphone it’s possible to talk to people on every continent of the world with almost no costs. Being informed became more and more an active process. It’s the responsibility of every internet user to validate the information given to a certain point in time. We’ve been growing out of a childhood like behaviour by simply not taking all the reports of main stream media in without questioning their relevance and their underlying deeper message.

There are still many questions left to ponder. Does the world need more people raising a warning finger? Why is there no groundbreaking change happening? Is change already here and we simply can’t see it so far? Where do we go as a species?

QUOVADIS?MENSCH

I’d like to strongly encourage a positive view of the future. I do see hope for life on planet earth. The filmmakers of the documentary Mankind – The Story of All of us found a way to tell the story of humanity by highlighting the most famous game changers in history. It’s a hero’s journey of a whole species. There have been always challenges and times without any light at the end of the tunnel. But there have been times of great achievement as well. Humanity has experienced a lot on its journey through time. Did we learn? Are we conscious about our potential in the same way as we are conscious about our shadow sides?

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Humanity consists of every single world citizen. The effects of the impact of our actions don’t stop at country borders. We are growing together as one global family. Our country is the earth. Every single human being is asked to watch the developments on planet earth carefully. It’s time to take a stand for the biosphere. It’s time to find one’s place in the great turning as Johanna Macy put it.

The global financial crisis was the beginning of my personal journey into the unknown of a possible future. There is so much to discover in this century. We only need to open our eyes and watch what’s right in front of us. Our perspective changes when we stop nurturing our false self. That’s one of the biggest challenges I am facing. It was life itself that has brought me closer to this point of recognition. I want to answer life in confronting myself with the personal experiences of the last 10 years. And I’d like to share my insights, visions and wishes for a future yet to come.