Our Planet's Future: Cooperation versus Competition
If we start from scratch with just a bare planet plus our planet’s present knowledge and wealth of experience – both good and bad – and citizens of our future planet, how shall we design our planet’s future?
Here are some thoughts for consideration:
A Our present planet seems over-populated in that its present 6 billion inhabitants – present citizens – are, according to UNESCO, over-consuming our planet’s sustainable, renewable natural resources by some 30%. It is currently predicted that our present planet’s 6.7 billion will increase to 8 billion people by 2025.
B Our present planet has experienced two World Wars, one lasting from 1914 to 1918, the second from 1939 to 1945. After both, international organisations were formed - The League of Nations after WWI and the United Nations after WWII – to avoid future world wars and international conflicts leading to massive death, destruction and human suffering of all sorts. The League of Nations did not prevent World War II. And, although World War III has not yet occurred, the United Nations’ existence has not reduced killings between nations which have already led to more deaths than occurred during WWII itself. In the meantime, man’s most ‘effective’ and deadly means of killing one another – nuclear weapons – continues to exist and more and more nations possess them and more and more nations who don’t have them yet, want to get them.
C The implication of B is that our planet’s citizens of 147 nations have not learned how to stop killing one another and, should a third World War occur, it could be unbelievably harmful to the human race, if not deadly in its ability to make our planet unliveable.
D Another major present threat to our planet as a home for human beings is global warming. This is a process whereby present human activity which is considered desirable, namely development and the manufacture and use of goods – either for consumption or movement about our planet, has begun to overheat our planet in the process. And so our present planet faces a fundamental dilemma, namely of how to maintain our desired lifestyle and indeed to allow it to spread to more and more of our planet’s citizens (in so-called developing nations), and at the same time halt and actually reduce the global warming process by 20% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 in order to avoid the devastation of our planetary civilisation. The devastating effects of global warming appear to take various forms. One is raising the levels of our planet’s oceans, leading to the flooding of vast areas, including cities on the edges of oceans. Another is loss of food production through storms and weather changes, etc. A third is the creation of ‘holes’ in our planet’s protective stratosphere canopy, which protects us from the cancerous effects of our sun.
E A further challenge our present planet faces is the frequent disparity of various time factors involved in our present planet’s reality. For example, the governing bodies – nations – which currently attempt to deal with our planet and its citizens’ needs have relatively ‘short term’ administrative procedures and influencing factors. This is manifested by the relative short term ‘in office’ of the political leaders – generally ranging from about 2 to 4 years and rarely more than, say, 8 to 10 years. At the same time the problems being dealt with are ongoing and much more long term. A US president, for example, who is presently considered one of the most powerful world leaders, is only elected into office for 4 years, at which point he can be voted out of power if his electorate are not satisfied with his 4 years. And even then, if he is re-elected for 4 more years, after that he is not permitted to be in office again. The successor can reverse many of his actions. At the same time he is talking about and confronting issues that extend 10 to 40 years and longer.
Another ‘timing’ source of complexity is the different stage or level of development of various nations. Today we see the so-called developing nations refusing to restrict their development because they believe they are entitled to the same so-called opportunities and quality of life that the ‘developed countries’ already have (and don’t want to give up).
Another major complicating factor is one relating to education and knowledge. These correlate to health and longevity and standard of living and social justice. This takes various forms and involves various factors. Sometimes open knowledge may be constricted or hindered by superstition or religious constraints, also lack adequate schooling. Another factor may be discriminating between males and females whereby females receive less education, self-protection and self-sufficiency. These disparities are also manifested by the efforts of many individuals to ‘escape’ from various undesired life conditions by moving from one nation to another. Indeed sometimes this ‘movement’ is not preferred but forced upon individuals such that our planet now has some 42 million so-called refugees, humans driven out of their homelands and surviving in refugee camps, etc.
Another ingredient in the socio-economic disparity and suffering and injustices is caused by secrecy, deception, unfulfilled ‘promises’, etc. These procedures take various forms, including the secret hiding of money in order to avoid paying proper taxes or to conceal illegal activities – drug dealing, crimes of violence, political bribing (so-called lobbying) and/or the concealing of business losses and deceptions.
Having presented the above considerations to contemplate while trying to move forward on a possible design for our future planet, it seems to me that the key negative factor running through our present planet’s weaknesses and inherent negative conditions is the competitive ingredient inherent in the individual scenarios and this compounding of the problems. Perhaps the key challenge facing mankind and our future planet is that man and his/her animalistic roots are strangely competitive in nature. This in turn raises the challenging question of whether or not man can be sufficiently taught to stop being so competitive and to become more cooperative instead.
The competitive use of knowledge has led to the ‘haves and have-nots’ which has been reinforced and manifested in our competitive free enterprise commercial world and in our nation to nation conflicts and wars, both military and commercial, which may well lead to either military atomic weapons, unending disastrous wars, or environmental competitiveness via the practice of (competitive) free enterprise, leading to environmental disasters – global warming, over exploitation of our planet’s finite natural resources, including food and water, as well as fuels and minerals, etc.
The key to our future planet’s success is to start by taking a planetary approach rather than a subdivided approach which sets the stage for competitive behaviour. If we think in terms of what’s good for our planet rather than what’s good for nation X or nations A B and C, then we will have no wars and we can eliminate losers created as part of the competitive scenario, whether it’s nation A or company B or Richman vs Poorman or the top graduate of university X or Y, or student Smith or James in a classroom Z. Any system that leads to some components or participants becoming ‘failures’ is an unacceptable, counter-productive procedure detrimental to the well-being of our citizens and our planet’s well-being.
Where to start? First, by taking a ‘whole planet’ vision approach wherein no one is left out or treated as losers or inferior. Some may be intellectually and/or physically more gifted but they should not use this potential to exploit their status or power but rather to help all citizens, especially those possibly less fortunate.
Second, our educational systems should be redesigned to help each individual learner achieve his/her potential and goals including wisdom and awareness of our planet and its necessary procedures (i.e., cooperation not competitiveness) and not to compete (except in games and (amateur?) sports events.
Where existing problems need to be overcome, new innovative systems of cooperative behaviour may be important. A system to reduce over-population and in turn the over-consumption of natural resources and over-competitiveness arising from shortages, may be significant.
If our planet’s population is small enough and our planet’s assets can be shared humanely, then every citizen of our future planet can all reasonably have ample possessions and opportunities - a good house, good food, the opportunity to travel and experience our planet’s beauty and to live long and healthy lives without fear, jealousy, hatred, exploitation or deception.
Hopefully a good way for a citizen of our planet to start on this new path is to become a citizen of Our Future Planet and to use it as a point of initiation to start creating and living a future planetary life. Start to think in terms of one planet rather than many nations. Then think of ways to cooperate with OFP’s fellow citizens, to think of a cooperative approach to our planet’s future. If you have children or an influence on young people try to help them see the importance of a cooperative rather than a competitive approach to life on our finite planet.
Then as an individual with logic and 21st Century wisdom, respect our planet’s amazing and wonderful potential and indeed beauty and strive for a reason to be on earth rather than some unknown, unproven, after life – until its existence is proven.
And, finally, smile and be kind and caring to your fellow citizens. Then you and they can both be wonderful.
