Each of the 8 billion humans on this planet all have different hopes, desires, needs, and wants. We all have different views on how we want to live our lives. Everyone is vying for the planet’s resources to reach for our own individual goals.
Yes, this is a big world, and there are a lot of resources, but can we guarantee there will be enough resources for everyone? What will our great-grandchildren have?
I don’t know that answer, do you? Can we play Russian roulette with the future?
The real question is: How long do we want the human species, or more broadly speaking, life, to survive?
I think most people want to picture humanity being around for a long time into the future, hopefully thousands and thousands of years. But when viewed from that long-term outlook, well, the earth’s resources look pretty finite.
From a Certain Point of View
This is everyone…
Each one of these circles represents a person. The attached arrow represents their wants, needs, and desires. If you ask me, it looks like a pretty chaotic mess (or a bunch of male gender symbols trapped in a box). But, irregardless, this is us, in a nutshell – all of our glory and all of our unpleasantness, just trying to make our own way in this big world. There’s a lot going on in this crude representation of our world.
On an individual level, one of those circles is Josh. Josh needs a sandwich. His neighbor, Jenny, wants 10 million dollars, while his sister, Susie, wants to be the next big rock star, and Joey wants to act in the next Fast and the Furious movie, …. Multiply this by 8 billion people. We’re all doing our thing and we’re all living our lives going in one direction or another.
Some of us are running around just doing normal day to day things and fulfilling our basic needs, while some of us are just barely surviving. Then at the other end of the spectrum, there of those of us who are pursuing our dreams and actively living our best lives.
In turn, each of these wants, needs and desires have a cost. And the cost are the resources of this planet – whether it be for food, lumber, fossil fuels, minerals, elements, land, etc. Every one of us is pulling on all the various resources of the world to get what we want and need. There’s no rhyme or reason to what an individual desires, they just do whatever. That’s freewill. But this adds up to be A LOT of utilized resources and A LOT of wasted resources at that. It just really seems so… inefficient.
It’s asking a lot of the planet. Supporting all 8 billion, 10 billion, 12 billion humans, in perpetuity, seems like a monumental challenge. All the while, balancing our collective needs against what the planet can support.
We only have one home world; we need to make sure it’s looked after.
Speaking of which, what about the environment? Don’t we need functioning ecosystems and climate for the world to ‘operate’ properly? Ecosystems directly provide us food via the food chain. While the overall climate is responsible for our weather conditions, including heat waves and droughts. Shouldn’t a stable, self-renewing, sustainable environment be a ‘right’ for every living inhabitant on Earth?
Question is – is there some commonality between all of us? Are there ways we can more proficiently use the world’s abundance to sustainably provide for the masses, while protecting our planet? I believe there have to be more effective and better ways of doing things.
Commonalities
Okay, I get it, people are different, that’s why this is happening. But in a lot of ways we’re the same. For a start, we all need the basics in life. Back when we defined the problems, our friend, Maslow, showed us that in order to get to the pinnacle of life and achieve self-actualization, we at least need to have a solid foundation and have our basic needs met:
So, wouldn’t it make sense that those basic needs are met… for everyone? Wouldn’t it be nice for everyone to start their lives not having to worry about these two levels? Guaranteed food, water, shelter – warmth and rest, security, and safety for all. Currently, almost half of the humans of the world do not have their basic needs met. That’s over 3 billion people. That’s insane. I think all these basic necessities should be a given for every individual. A world where these basic rights were guaranteed to all would be a wonderful world to live in.
From 1900 to 2000, the world’s population tripled from 2 billion people to 6 billion people. Then, the world’s population increased by almost another 2 billion more people from 2000 to 2020. I can’t make any concrete statements on what the population is going to be in 2100, but we can probably assume it’ll be higher than it is today.
Not to mention people are living longer, so we’ll have to allocate more resources to sustain the elderly as well. And on top of that, if we agree that all the people who currently live in poverty conditions today shouldn’t live in those conditions, we will need even more of the earth’s resources to bring their standard of living up and support them as well. All individuals deserve at least an acceptable standard of living; no one deserves to go hungry or live in squalor.
It seems like every day we’re seeing more and more people around the world suffer. Some don’t have access to clean water and food, while others have to leave their homes because of natural disasters.
Imagine what humanity could get accomplished with just having these basic needs met. Productivity would go through the roof and we could use our collective brainpower to work on other, more meaningful things. Once these basic needs are met, we can take on more challenges and make improvements in other sectors including healthcare, education, and equality, to name a few.
So… What do we do about it?
Instead of everyone trying to make their own way in the world with no guidance, purely by trial and error, and haphazardly using resources to their own benefit, what if the people of the world were given a direction?
It might look something like this:
This is what the world would look like if we were given a collective goal to strive towards. The red arrow represents the combined effect of everyone working in concert to achieve a goal. Having a large, dedicated group with a collective momentum could compound exponentially to accomplish unbelievable things.
Even a relatively small group focused on a specific outcome could generate amazing results. Businesses and companies are prime examples of a dedicated group of people focused on achieving a specific goal in a specific niche. And this is just one company producing one product line.
Now what happens if a nation with a hyper-focused plan works to create a better standard of living for all its citizens. It wouldn’t take a stretch of the imagination to say that this nation would be a desirable place to live.
Taking it even further, what if the world’s nations can all come together to execute on constructive ideas for the greater good… That’s just the recipe we need for a better world and A GRAND FUTURE!
In 1961, John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to land a man on the moon with his iconic line:
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
– John F. Kennedy
With a relatively small amount of dedicated resources and manpower, the US built and developed a space program from nothing. Then, less than a decade later, the nation accomplished just that – and landed a man on the moon. What an incredible feat.
This collective momentum is the force that the human species will need to protect the planet and advance humanity forward into a future of limitless prosperity and abundance. One person can accomplish many things, but a large group of people working together is an energy that can change the world.
A Common Purpose
I’m not saying that everyone needs to be a cookie cutter version of everyone else. I’m just saying let’s have a direction to strive towards – a world goal. We could try and make our civilization become completely carbon neutral in 30 years. Or make sure every single person has access to clean drinking water for their entire life. These are goals that are definitely challenging, but important and worth striving for. These are goals that will stick in peoples’ minds when they think about the future.
Even if you aren’t directly helping the greater cause, you’ll know that it’s there and a lot of other people are working on making it a reality. It’s almost impossible to not get swept away in a movement this large, since it’ll become widely accepted. People will unite and take pride in “the direction the world is moving”. Pursuing a Bold Plan to give the world a constructive purpose would instill an optimistic outlook for all mankind.
Goals should be idealistic and ambitious. I think we can agree that getting even halfway towards an audacious goal is better than not getting anywhere at all.
We can accomplish so much by working together. Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if people in your community actually had your back and if no one had to search for clean water? Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could count on getting a warm meal every day and could come home to a roof over your head? These should be the bare bones requirements for every individual on this planet.
My grandparents’ “greatest generation” united in a common effort to fight fascism. The world needed to join together to fight evil. Only united they prevailed. Now we need our own generations’ noble cause. We need everyone to again come together in a united undertaking where all parts, no matter how small, are vital.
Let’s create a world where humans and all creatures can live in harmony. Let’s work together with a common purpose to make a better world for all. That is A Grand Future we should all want to see.
Recommended Reading
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