(Why) the 21st Century is When Humanity Matures — or Falls Apart

The Lessons a Troubled Age is Trying to Teach Us

umair haque

Here’s a tiny question: why is Jeff Bezos “worth” more than the…entire actual Amazon River?

If the world feels troubled to you these days, there’s a deeper meaning in the message that we’ve scarcely had time to consider — let alone let alone fully understand.The 21st century is going to be humanity’s most significant, epic decade of transformation yet — by a very long way. One that will make the industrial revolution, or the age of revolutions before it, look tiny and insignificant. The changes that we have to make this century are so big, so fundamental, and so radical — we barely imagine them at all.

Every adolescence is turbulent, dramatic, and intense. This century is going to be the time humanity grows up — or falls apart. That transformation can go one of two ways. Down — into the abyss of violence, ignorance, war, and ruin. Or up — into a new era, a new phase of progress, a new chapter in humanity’s story. We may emerge wiser. Matured and sophisticated as a species, into higher, truer, more powerful forms of freedom, justice, truth, meaning, and purpose.

So far, we’re not making the good transition — the upwards one, to a higher place. We are making the bad one. We are plunging backwards and downwards by the month. That is because we still don’t understand the message of the 21st century whatsoever really, so let me spell it out — in terms of three transitions, transformations, radical and necessary changes.

The first transition is what you might call one of political economy. We are going to have to stop being exploitative, abusive, harmful, toxic — to ourselves, each other, the planet, democracy, the future: in general, as an attitude, a way of being, an approach — a paradigm. We are going to have start being genuinely constructive. Positive, beneficial, giving-back, gentle, wise. The reason is very simple.

We are out of things to exploit now, except the very last dregs, and the most toxic and poisonous things of all. The oceans are full of plastic and the skies full of carbon. The only thing left to exploit is each other. That is what capitalism tells us to do — but the problem is that if we exploit each other, no progress is possible at all. Exploited peoples turn on their systems, become fascists, try to annihilate those below them, go delusionally insane, and end up viciously destroying their societies, to put it bluntly. You can see that story played out in America’s grotesque, bizarre downfall. So we cannot go on with the exploitative mindset that capitalism and supremacy and patriarchy have drilled into us for so long now — unless, that is, we wish to end up like America, ruled by a madman at the precise moment of collapse, while the finely robed leaders, like Rome’s Senate, gnash their teeth and wail.

The world is out of fresh, unused resources with which to feed us, nurture us, nourish us — and unless we get what that actually means, we are in for a nasty surprise. What it means is that we are going to have to learn to make much more from much less — I’ll come to that in a moment — or turn on each other, and start taking things from our neighbours. Those are the only two options, my friends: do more with less, or take from each other.

If we don’t change, if we go on pretending we can go on using the exploitative paradigm, we will end up like Americans have done, made to take things from each other, because there isn’t enough to go around, since we’re out of things to exploit. Hence, Americans have to “compete” for perpetually scarce healthcare, jobs, retirement, and so on, never understanding these are things they should have given one another — America’s the dystopia at the end of the road of using an exploitative paradigm in a world that’s out of things to exploit. All that happens is that you end up feeding your own kids, country, and future into the grinder. Which future do we want? Which future is compatible with democracy, freedom, and justice?

But we’re not going to be able to rely on the institutions of the exploitative paradigm to change it for us. We aren’t going to be able to rely on giant mega-corporations to build a better world, democracy, or future for us. Why would they care? We aren’t going to be able to rely on hedge funds, banks, companies, or anything else, in fact. We are going to have to reimagine and reinvent the ways that we do things collectively, in non-exploitative forms. We don’t have many such forms yet — maybe any. The ones we do have reward the most exploitative among us the most, don’t they? How else do we get President Trump and Harvey Weinstein and neo-Nazis fawningly profiled in the NYT? Perhaps you see what I mean.

That we don’t have non-explorative anything is why the globe’s indicators — from inequality to fascism to carbon — are all blinking red simultaneously. So we’re going to have to reinvent everything from “jobs” to “work” to “corporations” to “markets” to “banks” to “investment” to “management” to “democracy” — just to get started making the first transition.

The transition away from cultures, systems, and institutions of exploitation isn’t going to be easy. There are many among us who love and cherish exploitation — because we have been told it’s right and just and fair. Such people will lash out, probably in great eruptions of violence — to try to stop progress from happening. That is precisely what, for example, Anders Breivik did when he massacred dozens of children on Utoya. Fascism will continue to rise in societies that don’t understand the 21st century’s first challenge is rejecting exploitation, in all its forms (and America’s future looks particularly bleak in that regard, my friends.)

But how are we to reject exploitation, and begin the project of being constructive — which means something like nourishing, transforming, cultivating? With a mindset, an attitude, a paradigm, of true equality. True equality doesn’t mean the nonsense Americans are fed — “all people, created equal”, while billionaires cruise around in megayachts, while 40% of American kids live in some form of poverty.

Why is Jeff Bezos more “valuable” than the…actual Amazon river? Does that make any sense to you? It doesn’t to me.

True equality means that there shouldn’t be billionaires while a single child lives in poverty. While a single river runs dry. While a single cloud is full of soot. While a single ocean tide washes up filled with garbage. Do you see my point a little bit? It means that you and I must regard everyone as our equal — and everything, too. River, mountains, trees, clouds. These things aren’t there for us to abuse, my friends — any more than your kids or mine are there for plutocrats and tyrants to reign over, any more than Jeff Bezos is really “worth” more than the Amazon River, in the eyes of history, reason, sanity, or humanity.

True equality begins with the idea that every human being deserves basic things — education, healthcare, retirement, childcare, and so on. We’ve done a terrible job as a globe of organizing this. In the rich West, some societies have these things — while, generally, 90% of humanity doesn’t. Meanwhile, a handful of people own half the globe’s wealth. Do you see the problem with all this? The global economy is going to have to be redesigned so that poor kids in Laos and Burundi can have educations and healthcare before another dude named Travis or Steve becomes a billionaire for no good reason.

That’s not because I say so. But because, like I said, we are going to have to reject exploitation, abuse, and violence as the ordering principle of our lives, societies, systems, institutions. Yet that doesn’t mean what American liberals think it does — go do some yoga, write a nice Facebook post, and be mean to Donald Trump on Twitter. It means genuinely redesigning a global economy that puts the needs of the most vulnerable first, and far above and beyond those of billionaires, speculators, and tycoons.

This transformation means genuine and dramatic change — like a global healthcare system, or a global education system, a global system of savings and incomes, and so forth. Especially before you or I care one whit if some idiot billionaire announces he’s going to Mars. When I put it that way, do you see how immature we are a species — and how tiny and limited our vision has been so far?

That brings to my third transition. We are going to have to develop a species level morality for the first time in our history — and then go beyond it. So far, human morality consists of something like the following. I should care about my family, tribe, and nation, in roughly that order — and I’ll kill anyone they ask me to. Or anything. I’ll drain any river, blow up any mountain, char any forest to cinders.

But we can’t employ that system of morality in the 21st century anymore. It’s a childish and immature one — it isn’t the mindset of a mature species, but of one that barely knows how to reason and think at all yet. If we use the moral limits of the tribe in a time of scarcity and collapse — all that will happen is war, violence, and self-destruction, which is already upon us, whether in the form of American collapse, or Brexits.

This century, this age of collapse, urgently calls for us to expand our moral horizons to include all of us. That’s the only way we care about the planet, about inequality, about greed, about everything going wrong — by caring about everyone on it. Too often, being children of the 20th century, we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want to call ourselves good and moral people — but not really care about anyone outside the family, tribe, or nation. That mistake will not work anymore. In this century, if we cannot care for everyone — no one will be cared for. We will stand together, or we will perish apart.

Think about what it says about us a species that mostly, we don’t care for our young. That is, each of individually might care about our own kids — but do we care about some poor kid in Vietnam or Chile? Of course not. It’s every man for himself, in our small and limited 20th century minds — which are really just Stone Age minds, because in that respect, human morality hasn’t evolved one iota.

So if we are really going to survive and prosper in the 21st century, we are going to have radically reimagine our morality, too. I’m sure this sounds like science fiction to you, so let me put it a little more bluntly.

I’m sure you don’t want billionaires (you’re a sensible person, my friend.) But how do you not have them? You don’t have them by making sure every kid is fed, educated, and nourished first, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, physically. Every kid on planet earth.

But that’s just the beginning. You make sure every river runs clean and pure. You make sure the ocean sings sweet songs of longing, like it should instead of clattering with the sound of plastic and tin cans. You make sure every drop of rain that falls is as pure as it was a million years ago, when there were no humans at all. And so on.

You make sure there are no billionaires by having societies that do things that matter more, first, always, period. And those societies aren’t just limited to “me and mine”, aka these things we call “nations.” If we can’t look out for the human species in the 21st century — all of it — then the inevitable result will be a terrifying plunge into war and chaos that will the 20th century seem tame by comparison. Please go ahead and think about that last sentence carefully — because it seems to me that we don’t understand this principle at all as a world yet.

Three transitions, transformations. Radical changes. Economic, political, and moral. This century feels turbulent — but the truth is that we haven’t yet begun to change. We are just feeling the little warning tremors of the true earthquakes to come. Humanity is going to have to change more in this century than every before — or fall faster, further, than ever before. The reward will be sweet, though — at least for those who can make it. A higher place of consciousness. Happier, wiser, gentler worlds to live in.

Not every country will make it — I wouldn’t bet on America or Britain. But some will. Canada, probably — much of Europe. Societies and people with the courage, curiousity, and perseverance to understand the message the 21st century is trying to desperately send us. If it feels like there aren’t many of those left — what are you waiting for?