We could still aspire to the Sunlit Uplands, says Colin Tudge – but the world’s leaders are taking us and our fellow creatures in the opposite direction. The “People-led Renaissance” is necessary and urgent
Truly, humanity has reached a fork in the road; and, influential creatures that we are, whichever way we go we will take the rest of the world with us.
One road could lead us — still! — to the sunlit uplands: a life of reasonable sufficiency and more importantly of harmony, for the indefinite future, starting with the next million years. Harmony must be achieved both within humanity and between humanity and our fellow creatures. The chances of ever achieving this utopian state seem very small indeed and are diminishing by the day. But however small, it surely is worth a shot.
For the other path, which is the one we are on, leads to – well: oblivion. James Lovelock, whose Gaia hypothesis I suggest is one of the outstanding scientific and moral revelations of all time, told us that we, humanity, however great our folly and however powerful our technologies, simply don’t have the power to obliterate all life on Earth – not by orders of magnitude; and that, I suppose, is comfort of a sort. Life, after all, is what the universe does; what will come about whenever conditions are right. Gaia needs Goldilocks – a rare and serendipitous coming together of disparate physical forces. On Earth, miraculously, conditions conducive to life seem as close to perfection as can be imagined, and although we seem to be doing our best to disrupt those conditions we can never disrupt them enough to make life impossible. Gaia is made of sterner stuff, it seems. However widespread the extinction and however deep the rubble, something will creep through. Perhaps quite a lot, including some we might consider most unlikely.
We do, however have the wherewithal to destroy civilization to the point where it may never rise again – as seen every night on TV as great temples and cities and people’s homes are reduced to rubble, never (surely?) to be restored. Those who do survive the war in Gaza can never be the same again. And on the even grander scale we are already well embarked on the Earth’s sixth mass extinction, driven both by climate change and by the rapacity of humanity (which of course is also largely responsible for climate change). All is exacerbated by the continuing rise in human numbers. We are heading for a world population of 10 billion. Theoretically, it should just be possible to keep such numbers in good fettle at least for some while, and to keep a lot of what’s left of the natural world in good heart too. Yet this would be possible only if the world as a whole was truly focused on the world’s real problems, and addressed them with humility, beginning from first principles – asking what it is really good do to, and how, realistically, we may do what needs doing.
But, very obviously, the eyes of the world and particularly of the world’s leaders and the various eminences grises and the miscellaneous ranks of the super-rich on whom those ostensible leaders rely, are not focused on the world’s real problems — or not, at least, in any coherent way. Periodic international conferences that produce treaties which very few countries adhere to, and in which the most powerful search eagerly for loopholes, or simply ignore, just will not do. As things are, those with the most influence continue to put their faith in material growth – or “growth, growth, growth”, to quote both Truss and Starmer; and they continue, however the language is dressed up, to pursue the perennial, primitive dream of conquest and of Empire. Putin seeks not simply to restore the old USSR but to follow in the steps of Peter the Great. China seeks to dominate the southern seas, and all who dwell therein. Netanyahu wants, well, Israel; Israel without the Palestinians. Modi wants an Indian Empire free of Muslims (although India has 200 million Muslims and only Indonesia and Pakistan have more, each with 240 million-plus). “The West” no longer speaks of Empire but seeks nonetheless to dominate the world by virtue of what it perceives to be its self-evident moral, intellectual, and technical superiority, and its underlying economic and military strength.
To be sure, some countries in the world — and most individual people — seek only to be left alone to live their own lives and to “fit in”, but the world’s most powerful nations and individuals are bent on domination, which of course is why they became dominant. But the road to domination does not lead to the sunlit uplands. No-one can dominate in a pluralistic world without conflict, and conflict is what we need to avoid. Conflict is innately horrible as millions experience every day, and as the rest of us watch on TV. Conflict is also profligate, and immensely distracting and time-wasting, and with the world on the brink of ecological collapse we simply cannot afford such profligacy, or to waste more time. So we could, in theory, create a world that is good for humanity as a whole, and our fellow creatures, but that is not what’s happening, and the way things are, it cannot happen. The solutions are surely out there but the status quo, with the weight and momentum of history behind it, and the immense wealth of the world’s most influential people and institutions, is in the way. The various centres of power are at war with each other but they are bonded nonetheless by their shared ambition to be top dog.
So what’s to be done? I continue to bang the same drum – that the world needs nothing less than a Global Renaissance, a “Complete Re-Think”, with a great deal of re-structuring; and that this vital Renaissance must be led by us, people-at-large, Ordinary Joes and Jos, starting with grass-roots movements, precisely because the world’s most influential people are not on the case. Some I have spoken to object to the label “Ordinary Jo(e)”, but I am well content with it. An ordinary human being in an uncorrupted form is a good thing to be – truly a miracle of Creation, or of Evolution, whichever way you choose to explain our existence, and perfectly capable of the goodwill and intelligence that are needed to make the world work. If Putin, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, Modi, Trump, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and the lower divisions of Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jeremy Clarkson and all the rest, would only aspire to behave more like ordinary people, the world would be a far better and safer place.
Share this article:
Leave a Reply