Sometimes I have to stop for a second and make sure I'm not some crazy person. I mean because they exist out there (one of them jumped in front of me while I was in the car and asked me if I'd been following him and other random nonsense). But I don't think I'm that. I have friends, I do normal things, I take part in my community as much as possible, I think I'm fairly standard. But than I have some weird ideas.... now I'm not sure if I'm alone in having them or if anyone else has them, but then I watch TED and am constantly thinking "Thats exactly what I was hoping someone would say!" So maybe I'm not crazy after all. Or maybe I'm not even special. Maybe everyone who can take an objective look at the facts, maybe they all see these blatant truths that I see. But maybe they've also grown accustomed to the way things are and worry that trying to change it will just make them seem like another.. well... Crazy person. I mean it sounds that way: the thought of being Anti-Capitalist was about as heretical as anything only 60 years ago. And maybe humanity is not as fast as technology. Maybe 60 years isn't long enough to recover, maybe all the wars and genocide of these last 60 years is still taking a toll on us as people. Maybe we don't even believe in ourselves yet. We've seen too many terrible things, we know whats possible. So we assume that a global peace is just a farce; some strange concept invented by hippies, and in order to believe in it you have to drop acid and smell like patchouli. But maybe it's not such a distant crazy idea. Africa is a whole continent of untapped potential, because it was slower to develop. But now we are so excited to see these African nations join the modern bandwagon. We used to see these people as lesser than us and take them as slaves and force them to do our dirty work.... but now we've changed. We've developed the internet. We've developed a global voice. No longer do we dehumanize a group of people simply because of race, gender, religion (not as a whole anyway). As a whole the world is humanitarian, it is excited to be of help to those in need. Look at the response to Haiti. So we've taken a new step, we're wholly better now than we were... It's time we realize that. It's time we see that we aren't so bad. That as a whole, for the most part, we can all be friends, Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Asians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Africans, French, etc, etc, etc.... Sure we can disagree on things, but lets not kill each other for it. Lets have a competition. Discover a new galaxy, land on planet, ( i dunno) play a soccer game, whatever! And whatever it is the rest of the nations will judge you. And then, if you win, your country will come upon great wealth or great pride (because if you saw the crowds and the after-parties for the world cup, you can bet pride is pretty damn powerful), or some other wonderful prize. So it would be worth it for you to compete, and in the end no one died and instead of instilling sadness and darkness in one group of people, you've exposed enlightenment in one.
Lets use a very simple example: The Middle East.
This is currently the worlds most taxing issue. Oil dilemmas, political agendas, death tolls, confusion! The gift that keeps on giving. And the war has been going on for a long time. I don't want to posit how I feel about the situation, I don't want to pick sides. But I think it would be a pretty simple solution for the rest of the world said "Okay listen, Jews and Arabs. Whoever builds the best lunar-probe in 5 months, gets such and such piece of land. The rest of the world will make sure that the agreement is kept, because they are following the issue streaming-live on the internet. And the Jews will agree because they think it's impossible that the arabs could beat the jews in this type of game and the Arabs will agree for the exact same reason. This will start a technological revolution in both places in a short period of time, they will both have to pool the planets resources for ways to build this machine that can explore unchartered planets and deeper reaches of space. Of course the losing team wont be happy, but thats just the way it goes, at least they will understand why they are being displaced. We, the world, will make sure they get a comfortable home somewhere and that these people will not be ostracized from the rest of the world.
So you see solutions to problems can be simpler than we've ever known. Why have casualties when we control the rules of the game?
No comments:
Post a Comment