As American presidents are fond of reminding us, the Chinese word for “crisis” is composed of two characters: One representing danger, and the other opportunity. We have been very adept recently at creating danger, but less so at seizing opportunity. Yet that is what we must do. Every sign points to our need to fundamentally change the thinking behind our economies, our societies and the way we carry out our politics. The world economic crisis, confused and confusing elections in Europe and the United States, and the upheaval of the Arab Spring are so many indications that the old ways of doing things is no longer good enough to meet the needs of our people, our societies and the planet we live on.
I believe that converging crises today are all linked to our unhealthy connection with the material side of things. Early on, humans learned the principle of barter, the value that could be ascribed to certain metals or commodities. At one time it was salt (hence the word ‘salary’), and later it settled on gold. Resources that are relatively rare, durable and — ideally — easily transportable became the instruments of trade. It was based on a concept of trust and led in a fairly linear fashion to the economic development and ever-accelerating growth of the past century. Unfortunately, along the way that obstinate connection turned unhealthy and something was lost.
At the service of our new goddesses of gold and growth, we ended up basing our entire way of life on borrowing and on resources that we did not actually possess. For a time this worked and yielded improved standards of living, but increasingly the relentless pursuit of growth, through borrowing, has become divorced from the reality of our people, our planet and the resources at our disposal. Where once armies of workers mined real resources today the Internet has crowned the nerd as the creator of riches. We worship people like Bill Gates and those who created riches from behind a desk, like Warren Buffett or Donald Trump. But, where once this gave us hope, it now drives our fears.
The gold standard became the dollar standard, and, like the banks that failed through their own irresponsibility during the financial crisis, today we are seeing whole countries make the same mistakes. America’s public debt — that is one single country’s debt — will soon stand at $16 trillion, while the world economy itself is worth just over $ 60 trillion annually. And every other "rich" country is running similarly high debts. So what does this borrowing rely on when our planet’s resources are already beginning to fail in providing for us all? The material trust of expansion simply does not exist anymore.
In recent years we have seen commodity prices spike, we have experienced food crises in poor populous countries where such unrest could easily lead to greater havoc that would be very difficult to contain. Lakes and aquifers have been bled dry, desertification is affecting more and more parts of the world, fish stocks have declined by up to 80 percent, and even the commodities we rely on to make the electronics that run our lives today will soon experience shortages. As Paul Harrison said in the Guardian: “The higher our income, the more resources we control and the more havoc we wreak.” We are bankrupting ourselves and our planet, and the effects are starting to show.
In the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder: “A continually ‘growing economy’ is no longer healthy but a cancer.” In such circumstances, how can we still expect a hungry family to trust that a sack of gold is more valuable than a sack of rice? We have entered an ideological vacuum and an era in which the absence of inspiring leaders able to show us a new concept of hope to build a different future has sadly prevented us from taking any meaningful action. All major world problems and crises are resolved by innovative leadership, but today nobody is able to tell us how to slow down, how to redefine growth, and how we can provide a dignified life of hope to seven billion humans and counting.
Anton Chekhov said in Uncle Vanya that “man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer.” As accurate as this might sound, we must accord man also his periods and efforts of creation. The Industrial Revolution did lead to a time in which standards of living were vastly improved. In the period after World War II and its millions of dead, America did help to rebuild the world, and Europe built new unity and cooperation. Sadly though, all of this is falling apart today at the first sign of economic and political crisis.
We must learn from these broken and breaking hopes. We need visionary and great leaders today who can unite people like Gandhi. Europe is deluding itself if it believes that it will better resolve its problems by breaking apart and dismantling its union. Hope must remain an option. Yet we remain at a loss even to define the world that we seek. Our bleak trajectory is in need of a cultural awakening and hope for a different future. We cannot ignore the fact that our way of life must drastically change. We must learn to live more locally, consuming local goods and foods, traveling less, working from where we live, wasting less, buying less and consuming less, we must become self inventing in ways to cause less harm to nature. There is no way around it.
It is no longer about theories. The wrecks created by failed policies are all around us. Extremes are gaining ground, just look at Western elections today, yet the extreme right or extreme left in society are not offering any answers or true alternatives either. We are missing a vision, missing a new hope, and we are largely missing the point of what this juncture and failed trajectory we are on is all about. We must start basing our lives on real things, on real local goods, and on renewed respect for our planet and each other. Thirty years from now, someone by chance will read this article and say “why did we not listen then”?
Hassan Bin Youssef Yassin is a political analyst based in Jeddah. He can be contacted at [email protected]
