How do we start solving problems in our world?

See that small dot there? Go ahead, zoom in and zoom out. That’s Earth. Photograph of the Earth taken by the Voyager 1 from a distance of 6 billion kilometres.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1996

Human beings: good and bad at the same time?

The achievements of the human species are beyond just awesome! The fact that you are able to read this sentence now from a light emitting screen, using invisible information signals coming to you from a place that is far away from you, is amazing to say the least. The device you are using is a product of some of the most ingenious ideas and technologies of humans that have developed beautifully for thousands of years. Seven billion of us exist today, and with our collective intelligence and effort, we have transformed the world the way we want it. Such authority over nature remains unprecedented, and it maybe a wonderful asset.

Imagine you become God (an eternal posting) and you have the power to do anything to anything or anyone in the universe. What would you do? Would you have a plan? The plan can be executed in one second, then what?

Human beings represent power and freedom — an ability to do almost anything. But that seems to sometimes degrade into licentiousness and disguised slavery (phenomena that help answering the above question). We feel licensed to act on the sly desires that crop up every second in our mind. It also seems that we have a natural affinity to get entangled with some thoughts, ideas, objects and persons without which our sense of meaning and purpose is lost.

This means that we often have a limited view of the world around us. The number of times we think globally or universally is limited. Our lives are orchestrated by the people around us. Problems are created (often unintentionally) to keep our energy and intelligence engaged with something. Conformity and reliance on others are the features of all societies in the world.

In 30 years, our population will swell to 10 billion. 10 billion lives seeking a satisfied and rich life will need lots of resources that the planet can’t support. How do we solve that deadly problem? Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

In our quest for satisfaction with our life and in our intentions to make others feel so too, we may have over-stressed the importance of our species — at the expense of our planet.

Our world is definitely taking a hit. We all have heard of such news by now. There are many ‘problems without passports’ in our world. We can no longer say that we need to care about only our surroundings or our country. Nor can we think that we need not care for a problem that does not immediately affect us.

The world plastic production is expected to double in next 20 years at current growth rates. 90% of all recyclable plastics are dumped or incinerated. There is virtually no place on earth’s surface completely devoid of plastic pollution — its been found in Mariana Trench and the Himalayan mountains.

In poor countries, hunger and malnutrition affect children more than anyone. People live hand-to-mouth. This is the iconic sad photograph of a vulture preying on a little girl in South Sudan, taken by Kevin Carter in 1993.

Lack of education, power hunger, resource crunch, insecurity, lack of trust — all are factors that influence the growth of terrorism

We are facing increasing stress on resources like water. Ground water resources are rapidly declining, owing to over-exploitation. This is a global phenomenon. Water pollution is a parallel challenge. Just under 2/3rd of the world population lives in areas of physical water scarcity already.

With great power, comes great responsibility — Uncle Ben to Spiderman

Education, freedom, technology and easy communication empower us all. We all possess great power in this modern world whether we realize or not. But with such power, comes a great responsibility. We have an obligation to influence the collective decisions of our species. Our famed intelligence as a species is not yet manifested. Individuals and groups have catapulted us higher and higher in the past, and they continue to do so. But a truly intelligent species will be a conscious product of all its individuals.

Paradox? We are too tiny to contribute much individually to the world, and yet without our individual efforts the world can’t be changed.

There is a true ‘tragedy of the commons’ — lack of responsibility. As a species of workers, we are trained to know more and more about less and less. Our economic system encourages expertise and specialization and our social systems celebrate the same thing. But it is clear that we cannot afford to be so anymore. The intelligence of us should not be used up only for a narrow field of world affairs.

Iam often told that individuals can’t make changes to the world. Iam told often that the world is too corrupted to do anything good. But don’t small drops make the mighty ocean?

Responsibility is misunderstood — if you are responsible for something, it doesn’t just mean that you have caused a problem or are guilty of it. It also means that you can bring about your response to solving the problem.

A word of ‘concern’ casually thrown around by us never helps. We maybe concerned with climate change, poverty, hunger, terrorism, development or anything else, but what does our concern mean if we do not take responsibility for it when we actually can?

So what should we do?

That little girl in that photo died after some time, and millions of other children in the world will die each year. We have a multitude of problems to solve for human beings and creatures around us. There are lots of people working on those individual problems of course, and they are amazing in energy and impact. But the number of people working on such global issues are dwarfed by the number of people who don’t.

An attitude of responsibility in all of us will truly translate into a world that has ‘sustainability’ built into it.

We may not do anything for the world, we may be too busy with our own problems, we may have caused some problems for the world or we may be miserable in bringing changes to us and others. All that doesn’t matter much. What matters is the real intention and urge to change and help.

It does not matter if we don’t know the solution to a problem. What matters is us looking for solutions actively. In this information age, everything is knowable with small efforts from our side.

Go ahead, take a walk and breathe-in the world around you. Your ideas to change the world will be priceless. And always spread the word. Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

We can do three broad things to bring about change and exercise responsibility —

1. Change our lifestyle to ensure we have minimum impacts on people and planet.
2. Actively encourage and support ideas and initiatives that help solve problems of the world (either in short term or long term).
3. Educate and inform more and more people about problems that we think are important.

Our power deserves a responsibility, for a win-win scenario. Our pale blue dot, clearly vulnerable to our dictates, needs all of our help in sustaining itself. It deserves to exist and sustain life for aeons to come, long after our bodies float gracefully as dust and air.