Tag: crisis.

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The “Wind of Change” or a “Revolution of Hormones”?

The Beginning

Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, Occupy LA, Occupy New Jersey, occupy… Where did it come from, this notion that for so many became the wind of change? It lifted the hopes and desires of thousands of people and blew them toward Liberty Plaza that for three months became home to a new society – the Wall Street society. Whatever it was that triggered this movement, it was fast and powerful, and grew to be a unique, historic phenomenon that America had hardly seen before. It was as if some invisible force was tugging at people’s hearts, pulling them into the whirlpool of the events instilled by their aspirations for social justice, security, and ultimate freedom, the freedom to simply be. What was this force and is it still present?

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is a protest movement which began on September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park (located in New York City’s Wall Street financial district), it was initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters. The protests were against social and economic inequality, high unemployment, greed, corruption, and the undue influence of corporations—particularly from the financial services sector—on government. The protesters’ slogan We are the 99% refers to the growing income and wealth inequality in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population. The protests in New York City have sparked similar protests around the world. (Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, “Occupy Wall Street”)

The movement was inspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas. The protesters vowed not only to end the “monied corruption” of the country but to also stand for social justice all around the globe: “We will grow stronger in our solidarity and we will be heard, not just in New York, but in echoes across the world.” (NYCGA)
It took approximately two months for the protests to spread across the country, with new “campsites” popping up in state capitals and in smaller cities and towns, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. According to Internet resources, in a few short weeks, OWS engaged in more than 900 meet-ups in 900 cities across the country. It even went international with Occupy sites in Australia, London and other prominent cities.

The movement that began as a small band of protesters in Zuccotti Park, gained endorsements from major unions and progressive leaders as well as some influential politicians. The Wall Street movement prompted comments from President Barack Obama and drew political remarks from overseas. An Iranian leader said this surge of protests in the US was a reflection of a serious problem that he predicted would ultimately topple capitalism in America. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed the United States is in a full-blown crisis because its “corrupt foundation has been exposed to the American people.”

During its first three weeks, OWS was ignored by mainstream media, while independent television and radio stations kept flooding the place, running interviews with the Liberty Plaza dwellers: the organizers, protesters, onlookers, tourists, professors, students, police, the homeless and even the “grass” smokers who moved into the western side of the park. Occasional clashes, arrests and violence did occur, but for the most part, everybody was behaving reasonably well and people were watching each other with curiosity and mutual expectations.

The OWS organizers avoided structured leadership in order not to get “hijacked” by government agents and opportunists serving their own private agendas. While many Americans insisted that the protesters needed to make a list of demands, outline their principles  and establish a well defined power structure, the Onion Press, a spoof news network, insisted in their own, somewhat sarcastic perspective, to showcase Americans’ inability to cope with life:

“The protesters need to unify around a shared agenda with precise policy goals so I can begin paying no attention to them whatsoever,” said Tulsa, OK poll respondent Kaye Petrachonis, echoing the thoughts of millions across the country. If they don’t have a clear power structure organized around specific demands first, then I’ll never be able to completely tune them out due to a political conflict of interest or an inability to comprehend complex, detailed economic concepts. These people really need to get their act together.” Once Occupy Wall Street has a concrete set of objectives in place, the majority of Americans said they would go back to waiting for the sluggish economy to recover while blindly accepting things the way they are.”

Since OWS started, it has been viewed as a serious and un-nerving event by some and a joke by others, a kind of Halloween party or “hormonal revolution”. But most of the Zuccotti Park visitors seemed to be genuinely concerned if the movement was going to live or die, and their sympathy leaned towards the occupants. There was a pronounced fear of losing the human connection that Liberty Plaza was so heavily saturated with. Such was the gravity of it that hundreds and sometimes thousands of them returned there daily – to get that additional dose of camaraderie, with its rejuvenating energy that was coming from natural reciprocity, bountiful handshakes and smiles. Walking around casually chatting with strangers who suddenly felt like family, dropping in on a group conversation, dancing to the lively beat of Brazilian drums, eating food fresh from the field kitchen, working as a “human mic”– all of this became part of the Wall Street society’s daily routine, and people were drawn to it like moths to the flame, regardless of their impression of it.

What stood out is that despite its seemingly chaotic nature, the WS society was living, working, and breathing in unison.  At first, it looked like a “rebellion of hormones”, but the longer it lasted, the harder it became to dismiss the presence of an emerging new entity, which drew people in, closer and closer, until they’d begin to feel inseparable from this diverse, strange, and colorful organism, where everyone was a vital and crucial part.

 

Why now?

As Joseph Stiglitz said, “The economic crisis presents us with a unique opportunity to invest in change.”
If we analyze crises taking place in each country today, it is easy to see that at the root of them lies social, economical, and political injustice, caused by greed.  It is hardly news. These vices have been plaguing human history for thousands of years. So why is there such unrest now, why is it global, and why is everyone protesting simultaneously?

 The answers can be found in the structure and evolution of human nature, claims Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell in The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (Free Press, 2009). They say that as narcissists, we put ourselves in the center, and “grade” everyone else according to the benefit they may bring to us. This is how we connect to the world, through the spectacles of self-entitlement. However, this is precisely how we must not function if we are to succeed in an era of globalization, when the world is interconnected and interdependent. According to Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, in order to succeed, we must want to benefit those to whom we are connected to just as much as we wish to benefit ourselves.

So it follows that as one people, we must face the facts: the future of the human race requires the cooperation of all its members. Reality dictates that we declare our interdependence. In a nutshell, “The pursuit of happiness is not a solitary goal. We are connected, and so is our joy.” (James H. Fowler, Political and Social Scientist)


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The Global Revolution of Love

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

Martin Luther King Jr

We have been through crises at other times in history, although they were not as tragic or radical to justify calling them a “birth.” We regard them as developmental phases in the history of humankind. However, our current state differs from all the previous ones. Thus far, we have striven to achieve new goals. Changes happened as a result of new breakthroughs: the discovery of new lands, inventions of innovative weapons, and implementation of new technologies such as the Internet that unveiled a totally new level of connection between us.

Nevertheless, those innovations were not global upheavals that addressed all levels of human life in all its spheres. They did not extend to all of mankind, to all countries and continents, to every family and every person, so that today they are universal. Now, we are approaching this new birth and cannot state with confidence whether it is happening already or not, although we do see that we are coming closer to it. The crisis we are going through is similar to the one that precedes delivery. It presses us more and more with each passing day, both individually and collectively.

We see that people cannot live in peace within their families any longer, get divorced, avoid getting married, do not get along with each other, have hard time raising children and don’t know how to avoid unemployment and poverty. In all aspects of our existence, we suffer from absence of understanding and lack of organization. We can call this situation a total revolution, a universal re-birth of humankind rather than an appearance in one separate state or community because this is happening on a global, integral scale and concerns everybody. This situation has never emerged before. The worst is that we don’t sense the future.

Before, upcoming social and economic structures seemed more advanced than the previous ones. For example, when slavery ended, it was followed by a more highly developed society. Although we have to admit that drastic changes triggered new revolutions, religious and civil wars, at the same time, people still anticipated a brighter future to come. Some societies agreed with what they faced in the future, and some did not. Some countries went through transformations, but others did not. Presently, we all are going through a global process that has never occurred before.

Moreover, at this time, we all are witnessing comprehensive climate and ecological changes. Previously, dramatic climatic changes always caused vast changes in humankind. Global cooling once led northern nations, like those in southern Siberia and Asia to migrate to Europe. In the past, all revolutions occurred due to climate changes, new technologies, or countries that could no longer tolerate their heads of state.

At this time, all changes are happening simultaneously: environmental, ecological, and with the inner nature of man who is not able to be at peace with anything, people no longer can reconcile with the world. Even the systems which we are totally dependent on are dysfunctional: the food industry, job market, families, education, and security, essentially everything that man needs in order to sustain life from generation to generation. We have arrived at a general state of affairs in all spheres of our life where nothing works properly. And most importantly, we do not see in what form or how to proceed.

Is it possible to view our new stage and move towards it with understanding and awareness? Can we act as foresighted people? Are we able to look ahead and make sure that the path we have chosen is correct? Can we calculate our future beforehand? If the answer is yes, then we can facilitate our advancement and avoid wandering in blindness; otherwise, we will be making mistakes and triggering new troubles.

If we continue acting blindly making global mistakes, things eventually will turn out terribly. We simply cannot continue sightless attempts and continue making errors any longer. And this is why we need global, integrative education!

 

The Need For A Contemporary Understanding Of The World

Such education is necessary due to the fact that the crisis in the relations between crisis and society is growing, and the social demand for education, which is far beyond the narrow professionalism, is increasing as well.

A modern person must see the world in its entirety. Only the understanding of ​​a general logic of the development of the world in which we live will help overcome the disastrous consequences of the relentlessly approaching crisis and perhaps even avoid it!

Such a course should precede the studying of social sciences and philosophy, for which it is a necessary introduction. It is particularly necessary to the future experts in the humanities and social sciences, for whom the natural sciences and ecology are on the periphery of their interests.

Future engineers and physicists also need it because the natural sciences and engineering departments lack the general knowledge about the processes of development of the contemporary world and the processes of cognition, although these professionals will have to solve many problems of modern ecology, politics, and ethics. But the foundation for such new education should be love, love as a selfless act.

 

 

 

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Superbroke, Superfrugal, Superpower?

What Thomas L. Friedman predicted a year ago in his article, we are living today. He was then expressing his view on America’s transition from being the world’s superpower to becoming a “frugal superpower” whose frugality would impact the world even more. He claimed that since the Great Recession of 2008, “the nature of being a leader, political and corporate, has been changing in America,” and now its leaders have been taking things away rather than giving to people. Freedman said America’s leaders, while depriving their voters, were not going to save money on foreign policy and wars. Yet, sooner or later, they would have to. He cited the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had been warning that the cuts are coming, which would affect the globe.

The journalist referred to the book (America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era), written by Michael Mandelbaum, the John Hopkins University foreign policy expert, to emphasize that by 2050, all forms of government supplied pensions and health care would account for an 18% of everything the United States produces. He wrote: “This… will fundamentally transform the public life in the United States and therefore the country’s foreign policy” and added that our defining watchword “more” was being replaced with “less”.

Friedman continued to build his analysis on the information provided by Mandelbaum, who states that when the world’s only superpower is burdened with heavy debt, it will reflect on everyone. He also remarked that for the past century, the US foreign policy provided global public with many benefits – from open trade and containment to counterterrorism, and that US power had been the key to maintaining global stability. Although Mandelbaum is confident that it will not disappear, he thinks that role will certainly shrink and concludes that “no country stands ready to replace the United States.”

Looking at the possibilities of who might, he labels Europe as rich but wimpy and China as “rich nationally but still dirt poor on a per capita basis”, which will not allow them to remain focused inwardly and regionally. As to Russia, he claims “drunk on oil, it can cause trouble but not project power.” Thus, Mandelbaum predicts for the world to become a more disorderly and dangerous place.

To mitigate this trend, he suggests:

1. To get ourselves back on a sustainable path to economic growth and reindustrialization, with whatever sacrifices, hard work and political consensus that requires, which implies considering common interests.

2. To set priorities: even though the US desires to succeed in Afghanistan, it is not vital; therefore, the war must cease.

3. Finally, we need to cut our balance sheet and the best way to do that in one move is with a much higher gasoline tax.

Friedman summarizes that America is about to learn a very hard lesson: You can borrow your way to prosperity over the short run but not to geopolitical power over the long run.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05friedman.html



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Integrative Education for the Integrated World

According to a year-old report, there are more than two hundred million unemployed in the world. Over the coming year, this number will grow astronomically, as global production wanes and natural resources continue to dwindle. This development constitutes an enormous problem for the unemployed themselves, as well as for society and governments, which are utterly powerless to stop it.

As the ranks of the unemployed grow worldwide, the need for a comprehensive educational course, explaining the new integrated world and its governing laws, will be indispensable in preventing the kind of bloodshed and unrest that we’re already beginning to see materialize.

So what is this “new world” that the global crisis is ushering us into? Well, if we take a step back and analyze the word “crisis,” it actually doesn’t have a negative connotation. Rather, it signifies a new stage that is similar to birth.

We know from experience that transitioning from one state to another is hard, as it entails coming out of your comfort zone. Whether it’s changing jobs or modifying any other aspect of life, we tend to resist change and prefer to stay within a familiar operating system.

With that in mind, there are two sides to this global crisis. On the one hand, we are experiencing genuinely awful and dramatic afflictions: horrendous floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcano eruptions, riots and wars, revolutionary coups, bloodshed in the streets, and increasingly dimming prospects of a bright future. On the other hand, we may view our current predicament as the normal pains of a process we don’t yet acknowledge, one in which we transition from one state to another.

These pains can be likened to a baby going through the process of birth. Picture a child peacefully growing inside the mother’s womb—a safe and protected place. Delivery, however, is triggered by a rather “unpleasant” process: the mother feels immense tension and experiences contractions, while the child also feels tremendous pressure but doesn’t have any idea what’s going on. Thus, our present state is similar to birth pains.

We have been through similar states at other times in history, although they weren’t as tragic or radical to justify calling them a “birth.” We regard them as developmental or transitional phases in human history.

And yet our current state is different. In the past we’ve always striven to reveal or attain new heights. We foresaw potential revolutionary conditions of a social or technical nature, and change was effected as a result of new breakthroughs, whether via discovery of new lands, inventions of innovative weapons, or implementation of new technologies such as the Internet, which have unveiled a completely new level of connection between us.

The difference is that those innovations never have been global in nature. They have never influenced all aspects of human life, nor have they impacted humankind on a larger scale, including every country and continent, every family and individual. Nowadays, the new revolutionary (evolutionary!) spin involves all of the above.

Disoriented and bewildered, we’re growing increasingly aware of the fact that something is happening, but we’re not quite yet certain what that “something” is. The crisis we’re experiencing is similar to the state that precedes delivery. It presses us more and more with each passing day, both individually and collectively.

Just as we cannot seem to solve the tumbling economy, we are utterly powerless to reverse the decades-old trend of families falling apart or the astronomical rise in depression, suicide and substance abuse. If anything, the one common denominator here is that in all areas of our lives we suffer from a complete absence of understanding as to the root cause of these problems.

Moreover, for the first time in human history, this is happening on a global, integrated scale. There’s literally “nowhere to run” to escape these issues, even if one had the means. And the worst thing is that we don’t know what the future holds.

In revolutions past, the social and economic structures we aspired to were more progressive than the ones they replaced. The abolition of slavery, for instance, paved the way toward a more civilized society. Even though drastic changes triggered new uprisings, religious and civil wars, people nonetheless anticipated a brighter future at the end of it all.

Presently, however, we all are undergoing a global process the likes of which we’ve never seen. This process encompasses not only the society and the individual, but actually extends to climate and ecology. (Looking back at the evolution of our species, global warming and cooling periods have always necessitated vast adaptations in humankind, such as huge communities being forced to migrate from Siberia and Asia to Europe.)

Whereas in the past revolutions happened for concrete reasons (climate change, new technology, despotic regime, etc.), today all the changes are happening simultaneously and on every level. Simply speaking, people no longer can reconcile with the world we live in.

Even the systems we have come to depend on for our very survival are on the fritz, including the food industry, the job market, the family unit, the educational and security systems, and so on.

We have arrived at a general state in all areas of our lives where nothing seems to work as it should. And with the tools currently at our disposal, we cannot predict with any degree of certainty what our future phase on this evolutionary path might look like.

Is it possible to study the laws of this new integrated world and thereby learn to meet its demands? Can we look ahead and be sure that the path we’ve chosen is correct? Can we calculate our future beforehand?

If the answer is yes, we can facilitate our progress and avoid needless wandering in darkness. If not, we will continue making the same old blunders, only now the stakes are much, much greater.

In light of the above, we must aim to develop an educational course for the whole world. The goal is as vital as it is straightforward: to open people’s eyes to the new reality we find ourselves in, to glimpse a future that’s not only possible but unavoidable (indeed, for the baby there’s only one way out), and to teach the world how to transition from the existing state to the future in the quickest and most painless way possible.