“We do not need a computer model to tell us that:
- we must not destroy the system upon which our sustenance depends.
- poverty is wrong and preventable.
- the exploitation of one person or nation by another degrades both the exploited and the exploiter.
- it is better for individuals and nations to cooperate than to fight.
- the love we have for all humankind and for future generations should be the same as our love for those close to us.
If we do not embrace these principles and live by them, our system cannot survive. Our future is in our hands and will be no better or worse than we make it.
These messages have been around for centuries.
They reemerge periodically in different forms and now in the outputs of global models. Anything that persists for so long and comes from such diverse sources as gurus and input-output matrices must be coming very close to truth.
We all know the truth at some deep level within ourselves.
We have only to look honestly and deeply to find it.
And yet we don’t live as if we knew it.
Some of us actively deny messages like the one from the global models.
Others try very hard not to think about them.
Most of us
feel helpless, shrug our shoulders, wish things were otherwise,
assume that we can do nothing, and go on living.
Meanwhile, on this planet,
twenty-eight people starve to death each minute
one species of life disappears forever every day
and one million dollars are spent each minute on armaments.
The current condition of our globe is intolerable and we make it so.
It is changing because of what we decide.
It could be beautiful. If we would only
decide to get along together, be open to each other and to new ways of thinking,
remember what is really important to us, and what is less so,
and live our lives for that which is important.
As sophisticated, skeptical, scientific Westerners
We always react to statements like that by saying
It sounds too simple, and is in fact impossible.
How could we ever decide to get along together?
You don’t just decide things like that.
And how could we get everyone else to decide it?
(It couldn’t be possible that everyone else is just like us and is saying that same thing)
When everyone is so sophisticated
that they can’t believe it could be simple to be honest and to care
And everyone is so smart that they know they don’t count so they never try
You get the kind of world we’ve got.
Maybe it’s worth thinking another way
as if we cared and we made a difference,
Even if it’s just groping in the dark.”
–Excerpt from: Groping in the Dark, Donella Meadows, John Richardson, Gerhardt Bruckmann, (New York: Wiley), 1982, pp 289-291.
