Category: Education

Because global education is critical for U.S. national security, for U.S. growth and for improving the quality of life of countless children worldwide, foreign aid for these programs must be preserved.

 

One may ask, “How do we help to bring this new integrated world about, where everybody willingly accepts and joyfully follows the law of interdependence and mutual responsibility?”

It has to start with a motivation to study ourselves: what it means to be a complete human being, what the correct environment is, and how we can influence one another favorably – in a manner that is good for everyone.

To accomplish that, each of us must become a self-observing scientist, an analyst who studies him or herself as a unique contributor to the common happiness, and the society as a whole – as the most natural, nurturing element necessary for raising a wholesome human being. This requires that we first learn how to get along and co-exist with others and know how to prevent mindless, impulsive conflicts, fraught with total destruction.

The entire history of human development was propelled by the notion that some new social, political, or economic system would serve us better than the previous one. If that’s true, why are we still not living in the happy future, after we’ve tried all known paradigms? The answer is – they all failed. Hence, these days humanity finds itself at odds with what used to be the ultimate goal – pleasure. It simply became too hard to reach. Today, we are more apathetic than anxious, disillusioned than hopeful, drained of ambition and ideals.

Clearly, our next evolutionary state must be fundamentally different from the current one, which brings us hardly any satisfaction, but is replete with disappointment, frustration, and fatigue. We are no longer thrilled with this world. It has become so corrupt and saturated by our egos that by obeying them, we are placing ourselves and each other in great danger.

We are becoming increasingly aware that there is nothing in this world to build on. Marriage, friendship, work, government – these anchors of human life are shaken and have nearly collapsed, which prompts us to seek how to reform, rebuild them so as to make these essential social rudiments match the structure of the harmonious world we all desire. Therefore, as we evaluate our lives and count disappointments, let’s try to view it as a transition into the new life and opportunity to change.

This is a special time indeed, as we zoom down the road to a brand new world. The signs are getting clearer as we approach a future where we feel interconnected, equal, like one great family whose members are mutually responsible and therefore prosperous and happy.

It serves us to study the rules of the road – this new world’s laws – so we can transition from childhood to maturity smoothly and painlessly. Until now, we were evolving by Nature’s push, being programmed with new desires and forced to actualize them.

This is no longer the case. As we stare down the blind alley – the egoistic self – we must assess our next step with a new, altruist attitude: What is our next destination and how will we get there? Unlike our previous, instinctive behaviors in times of transition, today’s shift requires our conscious participation. Instead of being blind passengers rowing down the river of life, we must assume the driver’s seat in this evolutionary process.

For the first time in history, Nature is demanding that all of us, without exception achieve complete comprehension of who we are, the world we live in, and why we are in it to begin with. Our primary duty is to understand and know the essence of life, if we wish to be truly human.

For decades, leading scientists have been trying to explain to us Nature’s law of interdependence, which also includes us, humans. And because of that law, we cannot keep avoiding one another. On the contrary, our interdependence is constantly growing – moment to moment, day to day.

Historians and economists warn against nations adopting policies of protectionism and isolation in an effort to secure them from the harms of the global crisis by disconnecting themselves from one another.

These warnings are valid because they are based on thorough knowledge of history, which shows that such attempts oppose the trajectory of human development that dictates for us to seek each other’s company. So it has been since humanity’s dawn. Yet, our desire for isolation and independence, the culmination of our egoistic growth, has led us to the global crisis we are experiencing today.

This begs a question: Is it really to our benefit? After all, perhaps Nature is steering us toward a new and better life, while we, humankind, keep stomping our feet in a stubborn tantrum – we want what we want and we want it now, regardless of what it is going to cost. In other words, to know and ignore the truth about our collective predicament is similar to knowing and ignoring the laws of physics: being aware of gravity and still jumping off a roof leads to a predictable consequence – we’ll get hurt!

All our technological and scientific achievements, along with the theoretical and experiential knowledge we have accumulated over the course of history, had but one simple objective: to learn the laws of Nature so we could become its master and use it to our benefit.

To use the previous example with the law of gravity—not only have we learned to avoid its harmful aspect (falling down and getting hurt) but we also applied it to various areas of life: construction, transportation, and so on. Similarly, Nature’s laws can be applied to repair our relationships, the broken human connection between people, societies, and nations.

The deeper our knowledge of the laws of Nature, particularly laws pertaining to environment, society, individual and social psychology, the more correctly we can carry them out and quickly and efficiently fix the broken bonds tying us together. The only other option is to initiate a “divorce”, with all that it entails – a world war ending in millions of casualties.

Essentially, the crisis is overtaking the family we call humanity. But if we heal the connection between us, we will resolve all existing manifestations of the crisis. It is our duty to awaken everyone to the fact that we must consider everybody’s welfare, all seven billion of us, and in return, find a life of peace, security, and happiness. The bottom line is that we must take responsibility for one another just as in a family and healthy ecosystem.