Why We Need to Fix the World
Why the Challenge of the 21st Century is Building the First True Human Civilization
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One of the things I’m struck by as I look at the world these days is just how badly we need to fix it. The strange thing about saying that is that it’s a statement that will either strike you as contentious, or obvious — such are the times we live in.
The truth is that beyond our opinions, the facts matter. And the fact is that we live in an age of a choice of ruin. Climate change. Inequality. Fascism. Extremism. Mass extinction. Countries fracturing. Societies breaking down. None of these things are up for debate — and the question isn’t even whether you’re deeply and profoundly concerned by them — it’s why you aren’t.
Where these facts lead me is to a strange and surprising conclusion. Our challenge this century is building the first genuine human civilization. We are not civilized yet — though we imagine that we are. And I don’t think we’ll be truly civilized until every single human child on planet earth has an education, every river flows to the sea, every clouds rains pure and true, before there are billionaires and trillionaires. I’ll explain what I mean by all that — I know it’s a weird, jarring thing to say. But maybe, just maybe, there’s some truth to it — you can be the judge of that.
When I think about fixing the world, therefore, of course, I mean its great and glaring problems — which are quickly spiraling past the point of no return. Climate change, mass extinction, predatory capitalism imploding into fascism, runaway inequality — these aren’t things that magically fix themselves, homeostatic mechanisms. They are things which cause system collapses, phase changes, state transformations. They lead us to places from which there is no simple return — yet which we are trapped in for generations.
These problems, in my estimation, have to do with three things. Our systems, our ideologies, and our attitudes. It’s those three things, those deep causes, that I want to discuss in this little essay, and how they reflect our own shortcomings.
The great problems afflicting the world are all the result of broken systems — or maybe nonexistent ones. Let me explain what I mean with an example. If I say to you, “the global economy’s broken”, you might grudgingly agree. If you don’t, I could easily point to the rise of a global class of billionaires becoming trillionaires, while middle classes struggle, runaway inequality, predatory capital like hedge funds raking in billions from looting societies, endless bank bailouts while there are never any for average people, and so on. The global economy — one kind of system that’s badly broken.
But what’s even more troubling is the systems that are just missing, absent, nonexistent. They’re invisible, they’re not there at all, so we don’t see them — what is there to see? Yet their absence is wrecking the world. This is a difficult and strange concept, so let me explain what i mean with another example.
You agree that we have a “global economy” — but why don’t we have a global education system? A global healthcare system? A global don’t-melt-down-the-planet system? Now do you see what I mean a little bit?
Now, the “global economy” is a very real thing — it’s made of institutions, like the WTO, of trade agreements, of currencies, and most crucially, which is the thing most people still don’t understand, this monolith called “GDP”, which we agreed long ago is the way that we “count” what countries “produce”, or in other words, what we all “value.”
As flawed and broken as it is — the whole global economic system is crashing because GDP doesn’t count destroying the planet, democracy, the future, or even shooting up a school as a cost, but actually a benefit, and those perverse economics are leading to real shortages and deficits of things which matter, like trust, meaning, purpose, safety, or water and air — this is a system which exists, because after World War II, we made it formally exist.
But no such system exists for anything else at all whatsoever. What about educating the planet’s kids? What about not slashing and burning the planet’s forests? What about making sure every single human being has healthcare, a home, savings, an income? The simple fact is we haven’t built such systems. We haven’t made “agreements” and “treaties” to enable them. We haven’t built institutions to organize doing the work therein — like “corporations” and “banks” do for the economy. Do you see what I mean? Let me make my message a little clearer.
We’ve built global economic systems — flawed, broken, greedy, ignorant, sure — but at least they exist. We haven’t built a global educational, healthcare, childcare — any kind of social system. Global ecological systems. Not a single global human system. There is not one single global system, framework, path, to let each and every life to reach it’s fullest and truest and highest potential — whether the river flowing to the sea, the flower laughing as it kisses the sky, educating poor kids, or you and me living lives brimming over with purpose, meaning, fulfillment.
When it comes to global progress, we have made no progress at all in one key way — we have built only one kind of system — economic ones, but not any other kind whatsoever, from social to human to ecological. Is it any surprise, then, that a class of super-predators emerged to game this one system — by looting entire countries, while cleverly turning their declining middle classes against the weak, the poor, and the vulnerable? But why is that? Now that I point out how oddly lopsided this relationship is — why does it exist at all? Why haven’t we built any global systems?
At this point, you might object — “why do we need to? Why should I care about some poor kid in Angola? Some poor farmer in Laos?” Ah, my friend. Have you learned nothing from the 21st century yet? If you don’t care about that poor farmer, you are saying that the fate of the planet means little to you. If you don’t care about educating that poor kid in Angola, you are saying that future progress means little to you. Maybe he will cure your cancer. Maybe he will write a great novel. Either way, you are better off with him reaching his potential than merely being some kind of glorified 21st century slave in a mine somewhere, aren’t you? Or do you want power more than prosperity?
This century presents us with a beautiful, terrible test. We will all rise together — or we will fall apart, in the blink of an eye, like we’re doing now. Climate change, mass extinction, inequality, and so on — none of these problems can be solved in an individualistic way anymore. We must have global systems, agreements, frameworks, to solve them — or we will not solve them at all. This century’s tests are cooperation, gentleness, whether we truly believe in freedom and equality and justice for all. If we don’t — then our species has a limited and grim future, my friends — one where we rip each others’ throats out for a larger share of dwindling resources.
Let me clarify all that. If we don’t invest in each other — there won’t be any more resources left, soon enough. Whether they are natural, like forests and rivers and oceans and air. Whether they are living ones, like bees and insects and animals. Whether they are ourselves — our own creativity and purpose and energy. Whether they are our societies — our democracies, our cities, our towns. We are going to have shift from an exploitation mindset — the one that’s ruled our species for millennia — to a new one: an mindset of investment, of nourishment, of genuinely caring for one another now.
And that brings me to my second kind of change — one of attitudes. We have a decade left to begin fixing the world. We don’t have to finish the job in a decade — but unless we get started, there isn’t going to be much of a future outside war, ruin, decline, and degeneration. If you doubt me, take a hard look at America — a country which has refused to invest in itself for decades. That’s the endgame of such a world, too.
Why are we trapped in this attitude of selfishness? Of only caring for ourselves — whether its our families, tribes, or these things we’ve come to call “countries”? Let me invert the question. What is it that prevented the rise of global social systems?
The truth is that the absence of global social systems reflects an outdated mindset — a colonialist one, a capitalist one, one of slavery and supremacy. The idea was that we should only care for our own — and those “poor countries” should educate and feed and clothe their own kids. You know how the white American who oppose public healthcare and even education often do so for racist reasons — “why should I pay for their schools, those dirty subhumans”? It’s exactly the same logic — only at a global level. And yet we think it’s perfectly ethical. Perfectly logical. Perfectly survivable. Is it?
When you think about it, the absence of global social systems is just Social Darwinism all over again — the idea that every tribe stands by itself, for itself, and the devil takes the rest. Only the strong survive. The weak perish. We should never, ever invest in anything outside our own borders — unless it profits us in hard dollars. That’s the ugly legacy of supremacy, of slavery, of colonialism, and its still very much with us.
But this logic doesn’t work anymore. If we don’t invest in those forests and rivers and oceans and lakes — all of us, together, as a world, there probably won’t be many left. If we don’t come together to clean the skies — we’re all going to suffer catastrophic effects. If we don’t educate those poor kids — we are only creating tomorrow’s extremists and fascists and authoritarians, who will block the first two things from ever happening. Are you seeing how all these problems intersect yet? Let me simplify all that.
We need global systems now. Not just systems which operate at the level of “countries” anymore, which are largely fictional things to begin with. We need global systems to stop climate change, mass extinction, inequality, social collapse — all the great problems spreading across a troubled world. We need those global systems to nourish and protect and safeguard every life, so that it can reach its fullest potential — whether those lives are yours, mine, a river, a poor child, or a little insect.
All these things are connected. The insects and the rivers feed us. We stand together in this project called democracy. And we stand beside that poor child in this great and beautiful dream called civilization.
We call ourselves civilized people, my friends. But I am not sure we are yet. I think that the first real human civilization will take care of every life, all life, each life, in such a way that it reaches its fullest fruition. Our “civilization” cuts most lives down, most living things — so that just a tiny few can prosper. Is that a barbarous act? A foolish and ignorant one? An ugly and vulgar one? If you agree it is, my friends — then I think our test this century is becoming a civilized species, for the first time. Or building the first true human civilization, if you like.
