Consider the state of the world today.
A prosperous and productive world order is being threatened by dictators, fanatics, and regimes. Our planet is experiencing plastic pollution, unpredictable climate change, and an unstable magnetic field. Untold species of plants and animals are dying off due to human activity. Billions of people are suffering from hunger, lack of potable water, extreme temperatures, and catastrophic natural occurrences.
Where cooperation among peoples is required more than ever before, we find ourselves overwhelmed by competition and conquest, brazen and unprovoked acts of violence and intimidation, and so far, an inability to stop our descent into chaos, madness, and self-destruction.
What the world needs now is a new age of enlightenment.
No one speaks about how much better things could be if we began to work together to address the very real threats to our world that will sooner or later have a very negative effect on us all.
What do we have instead?
Politicians who act like celebrities, and celebrities who pretend to be politicians.
Billionaires who opine on issues they know nothing about as if wealth and ego are substitutes for expertise.
Internet influencers who make self-absorption into a profitable yet toxic art form.
Commentators and video personalities who offer instantaneous and inane analysis on issues of the day without benefit of thoughtfulness or perspective.
Educators who embrace and promote ideologically based social and political theories that are purposefully disruptive and intellectually hollow.
International corporations that exploit the poor and the desperate to obtain cheap labor and natural resources in ways that increase human suffering and ecological destruction.
Collectively, so much of what we see, what we hear, and what we do is without conscience, without concern for ramifications, without any lasting substance or meaning.
This is not to say that every moment of every day must be spent in some sort of mindfulness-filled existence. But it is to say that we need to be much more aware of the greater and long-lasting potential that cooperation offers all of us instead of the limited and transitory results that confrontation brings to a few.
Right now, we are living at a time when a dark power exists in three countries in the world. We all know what countries these are – Russia, China, and Iran. North Korea exists in its own self-imposed world of delusion and paranoia, impenetrable even by the dark power.
No one can argue that the actions these countries have been taking over the past decade have altruistic motivations intended to improve the human condition. Rather, their actions are motivated by the oldest and most basic of human impulses – greed, jealousy, the desire for power, the insatiable need to dominate others, a preference to destroy instead of to create.
Whatever you choose to call it – evil, Satan, chaos – it is a seductive and alluring power full of both promises and intimidation that many are afraid to acknowledge, let alone confront. And yet, our collective history shows time and time again that this dark power cannot be appeased.
It can only be confronted and driven back into the dark corners of our collective soul, where it will seethe with dark thoughts and bide its time until we forget that it even existed, and then it will rise again. Such is human nature.
It is frightening to face such evil, and it is unclear how to stop it. It is easier to allow ourselves to be distracted by political differences, personal ambitions, and material comforts. It is easier to rationalize inaction because to take action would be too hard and require that we make sacrifices and take risks. It is easier to deny that threats exist to the extent that they do so that we can continue on with our lives as they are.
But there will come a day of reckoning when something happens that will bring this evil, Satanic, chaotic dark power before us in a way that cannot be ignored or denied or explained away. The longer we avoid this confrontation the worse the outcome will be for all of us.
This is why we must speak loudly and often about the collective problems that we face worldwide. This is why we must speak about how our collective ingenuity has allowed us to solve problems in the past and to make things better.
We have experienced great advances in technology and medicine and agriculture that have improved the lives of billions of people. We have seen how the flow of capital investment into poor countries has improved their standard of living. We have all benefited from worldwide commerce and free trade among nations.
To the extent that cooperation continues, we can all look forward to a better existence.
Unfortunately, conflict and the threat of conflict limits our ability to cooperate. So much wealth worldwide is being spent to support aggression or to defend against it. If this wealth were available to address the collective problems of the world, much more progress would then be possible.
This is the point that must be stated repeatedly by the world’s leaders – we must cooperate together regardless of whatever differences – real and perceived – that we have. We must speak loudly and often of what is possible, of what is being done, and then of what has been achieved. We must make sure that all can see and experience the benefits that come from having a more cooperative world.
This enlightened understanding of what it means to be a civilized people must begin with the world’s leaders.
In the meantime, the world’s leaders must not ignore their collective responsibility to condemn the evil that is being done by those who would dominate through fear and intimidation in the name of religion or to regain the glory of empires past.
For those countries not immediately involved, there will always be the temptation to play both sides of this conflict and practice opportunistic neutrality. There will always be those countries who choose to wait until the end to declare their allegiance to the victors.
Such is the corruptive effect that the presence of evil has on the world. It clouds the minds of the weak and fearful, telling them that their inaction and indecision is reflective of their wisdom, that evil is a profitable and virtuous choice, that it is better to accept the dark forces than to resist them.
There is an insanity in those leaders who would contemplate, let alone cause, the indiscriminate destruction of a country and the resulting deaths of tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children. There is an insanity in those countries who would condone such destruction and death, and then willingly justify such horror as retribution for past injustices or as a necessary measure to redress lost empires.
These countries and their leaders must be confronted, their intentions exposed, and their success in achieving their objectives denied, lest they continue spreading their darkness by subrogating more and more of the world’s people.
Enlightenment requires that we see the world as it is, and deal with it as we must.