While a global financial downturn continues to progress, what appears to be a setback in one way will become a benefit in another. Climate change will be ameliorated due to a worldwide economic reform. In other words, necessity will drive us to “live simply that others may simply live”. (Author Unknown) The presence of pressing economic and environmental problems is a confluence of issues with no mistake in timing. So how can the recent stock market crash and impending economic decline actually help our efforts to reduce climate change?
A growing trend toward freelance work is preparing us for the upcoming, significant increase in automated and robotic workers. Robots will help us have more time to focus energy and efforts on mitigating climate change. Personal experience with poverty will increase compassion for those who possess less privileges, and eventually there will be more balance in the worldwide, not just national, distribution of wealth. One specific example of how financial impediments will contribute to environmental improvement is that an upcoming inflation of oil prices in May of 2016 will force conservation of oil and accelerate the use of alternative energy resources. Worldwide economic and employment disruption will also serve as a catalyst for transitioning us from our current individualistic, labour-intensive consciousness into a community effort for global reform.
Just how will this new world look? Group projects for civic improvement on a local scale will be repeated in cities throughout the world with a surprisingly high rate of cooperation. Not everyone will participate, but there will be more joint efforts than you would perhaps imagine, based on human history. It was possibly Plato who said that “necessity is the mother of invention”, and it will take a global crisis to bring about an era of unprecedented collaboration.
Of course, the motivation to work together for a common purpose doesn’t happen voluntarily on such a grand scale. It usually hasn’t in the history of humankind, other than in tribal societies, small communities, and in certain segments of governments for limited periods of time. No, it takes a visible threat to our survival for humans to be compelled to change. This is just part of our natural survival mechanism, an asset which has brought us this far both collectively and as individuals. Keep in mind that the unusual and therefore alarming occurrences that you will be seeing soon are nature’s way of preserving itself. As with the symptoms of a bodily illness that are inconvenient and uncomfortable but necessary to alert us to physical problems, so the unstable environmental and economic circumstances are an alarm for us to treat the body of the Earth. As with bodily symptoms that are urging us to investigate a bigger problem, the more we ignore the symptoms, the worse they become.
We are undeniably a part of nature, each of us a wonderful extension of the living world made manifest in moving form. In Einstein’s unified field theory, everything is connected. So if nature can only get us to change by frightening us into action, that is what will happen, because nature is a survivor just like us. And we are all in this together. We think of this planet as Mother Earth, and it truly is a family member in the greatest sense of the phrase. Yet even more than family, she is our most ancient one, like an ancestor who is still living and breathing among us. If you think of any of us, plant, human, or animal, as being connected to her with an umbilical cord, well…we don’t get any sustenance without her! And if she gets hurt it affects us just as much. Most of us wouldn’t neglect a beloved elder in our family, so why should this be any different? Particularly since she is the constant elder, the one who gave life to and sustained our ancestors, and who will do so for every future descendant.
So if the changes on Earth that you see in the coming years are shocking or difficult to accept, remember the enormity of what is trying to be saved: everything, including the history of all that went before us. When something big is at risk, it would take a big warning to save that which is in jeopardy. A significant crisis calls for a momentous solution. Sometimes a short-term sacrifice of our way of life has been called for in times of historical crisis, but those suggesting the changes had the foresight to project potentially long-term benefits. So when future alarms start to sound in the form of discomforts, whether it’s a depression, unemployment, or climate disruption, trust that these are symptoms designed to awaken us in the interest of long-term preservation. And the more we don’t listen to the alarms, the louder they’ll get. And the more we do listen and act, the richer in a future we’ll all be.
