You may think about it as long and deep as you want, to solve our civilizations most important problems you will not find a solution that can be put in place by just a group of people, even a government and certainly not by an individual. Nevertheless, the problems are caused by individuals. We could say that just individualism is the problem. Independence of people from each other grows with economical growth of the society they live in, because independence is based on each ones financial possibilities. What also grows with it is the mental wall each one builds around his financial achievements, because of fear of loosing it.
The higher the raise of an individual on economic levels, the more common are egoism and greed. Our society does strongly support such behaviour, because economical achievements are seen as an indicator of success, it is common to adore rich and powerful people. Therefore even many poor people do support a system that allows and encourages unlimited financial gain, because they expect themselfes once to need that possibility. This is basically where right wing conservative politic comes from. It ensures each individuals right for egoism and greed within society.
It seems not to be something bad to reach for such economic success. A system that motivates its people to work hard and specially to even do this on their own free will, thats a great achievement. A country must grow, its production capabilities and its financial gain must grow. Modern civilizations achievement is that it has replaced a country’s urge for physical (landmass) growth (by war) with the urge for economical growth.
Now, it is still an urge for growth. Where does it come from? The urge to grow is a basic part of our nature, an instinct that is meant to protect our species against extinction. But we are far away from that kind of danger, so therefore:
Growth, the fundamental basic of our civilisitions way of life, is an obsolete concept. In fact, today it is this very growth that is endangering our existence.
If we as individuals would feel humankind as one society on this planet, we would be aware that growth is not necessary any more, we could then change our societies into a stabile/sustaining orientation instead of a growing one. But we (as individuals) are beeing blockhead by the fear of loosing our material achievements. And the more material and money we have, the bigger is this fear. Now, specially our political leaders are stuck with this fear. The fact that rich and powerful people are mostly in charge of our politics, results in political systems which only can change if there is no other option; these people will hold on their achievements until the very last. This is why the recent economical disaster, as heavy as it was, in the end was not enough to really change something. For this to happen, it has to collapse entirely. But people do not blame those politicians, because anyone who has whatever economic achievement he holds on to, does understand their behaviour and would act the same in his position.
In a larger scale there is an other blockhead, because nations stand in competition of each other. The grow of individual nations is still a goal societies go for. And as long as we think nation oriented, the competition will feed our urge for grow.
Learning from the “third world”
Studying the society in so called “third world” countries shows us that people who have not achieved such economical status act much more socially competent. People need each other, are more open to others needs and often feel their live to be more contented then do people with high economical status who are used to consumption as part of their search for a pervading life – and this has been proven to be not only a cause of ecological but also personal psychological desaster. People who have learned to be happy with the little they have often live more satisfied and sustained. Therefore, economical gain as a motivator/activator is not the key to a pervading life. Throughout all forms of societies, creativity and curiosity have been proven to be far more effective as a motivator/activator. Two examples that show how destructive reaching economical goals has become: 1.) It has become widely common that inventions and creations are commercially exploited by others, while the inventor or creator mostly just gets his usual wage. Capitalism has even created patents and copyright out of fear of loosing something with the result that the natural process of developing and extending upon existing inventions or creations has seriously been impeded. 2.) Capitalism also allows companies to overtake their competition and burry products in favour of their own products, all too often even when the product of the competition was superior. In all this cases, while creativity and curiosity lead to important contributions for humankind, economic mechanisms have only exploited it, not contributed anything. Without any doupt, people need something that drives them, or laziness, another part of humans nature, takes over. But while creativity and curiousity motivates the best characteristics in people, economics mostly doesn’t.
Economical higher status and independence together with its greed and egoism have one advantage though: Societies with large percentage of high income individuals have shown to be producing far less offsprings. Because in the end, we mainly endanger our species existence by the incredible amount of people who have to share this planets limited resources. While the growth of humankind in quantity is strongly contraindicated – at least as long as we are not able to life outside our planet – there is still room for growth for example in scientific achievements, knowledge, arts and compassion. We just have to go for it.
This days the Swiss people gonna vote about an initiative for prohibition of arms exportation. Rarely there are things to vote about, who are so easy to decide, as any civilized human clearly understands that any arms lead to killing and killing is a no-go.
President Obama holds a motivational speak at US schools, he wants kids to understand how important learning is, not only for the individual, but for the future of the nation.
