Traveling is amazing. Should we be open and ready to stretch our comfort zone, it teaches so much about ourselves, our believes, our values, our limits, our desires, who we are.
I would strongly recommend a book which I found inspiring and full of learning opportunities, The reluctant fundamentalist.
The main character is Pakistani and graduates from Princeton; he starts working for a good financial firm in Manhattan. Progressively the way he perceives the world and builds himself goes through a renewed feeling of national pride. He realizes that he has become the economic “soldier” of the American economic power, which he considers to some extent, as destructive and unfair. Having lived a similar situation in NYC, I could easily identify myself to this book and make the same conclusions. But I didn’t.
For many people who haven’t been lucky enough to be born in a rich country, and who are the first victims of global injustices and misery, the US embodies this injustice. The most economically successful country is also the first to cash on this injustice. The most developed economy is the first exporter of weapons, the first polluter, the first debtor, a major source of today’s world economic imbalances and the developed country with the largest social divide.
This being said, the US has great assets, some of the best years of my life were in the U.S., I met some of the most extraordinary individuals there – American and from many different countries, I learned a lot there. New York, Boston, North California are amazing. The Venture Capital and the Private Equity industry’s success is exemplary; many of the best economic and technologic success of the past 20 years have come from there; many of the best universities are American. U.S. business culture is vibrant, entrepreneurial, opportunistic, flexible and pragmatic; some of the most important attributes to success in business.
Over the years I have built a belief in global citizenship. Beyond national borders, I believe in international, mixed, open-minded, smart “elites” – even though I dislike the word, who lead the world’s biggest institutions and generates many of the best ideas. Too often these elites have proved to be far from exemplary. Too often have they promoted their own interests, violence and military intervention – often for “the greater good for all of us”. When they haven’t, they have had contrary opinions on priorities and ways to act, again for the greater good. The only problem is no one seems to agree on what is this greater good. National pride is the seeds politicians give to the masses to create a sense of solidarity and unity within their borders.
Unfortunately, we might have found a global issue which threatens the world’s future, it’s the environmental destruction of our world, we have started and we cannot stop. I will come back on this issue later on. It is scary to realize that we might not act against it before we can “see” the irreparable disasters which are expected and will probably materialize before we expect them.
Prioritization is a key dilemma which is far from easy to solve. I posted a question on a forum lately: what are the most urgent issues and threats to tackle in today’s world? Finding a consensus is far from easy. Pollution, conflicts, education, the living conditions of the bottom 1 billion – probably 2 as of end of 2009, terrorism, global economic recession, the deforestation of tropical rainforest, corruption. All these problems and threats are all very complex and all urgent. They are even harder to prioritize. We have no guarantee to succeed, and it is quite a challenge to take up over these difficulties; but for the first time, if we don’t, the world is heading to a dangerous hostile future. Where other generations have tried hard and failed, we must succeed beyond our differences. We must start to make sacrifices, agree with each other, and above all, be responsible.
So first, stop killing each other. Can we even do that? Is such a thing as global peace possible? The subject of nationalism and national pride makes me creative; it has brought, and still brings awful conflicts to our world. We, human-beings, brothers and sisters, cousins, kill each other for the sake national pride, cultural or religious differences, the quest for power of small “elites”. It makes me sick. Historically nationalism and lack of understanding across cultures have lead to the most dreadful wars and massacres. We should have learned our lessons. What happened instead was a renewal of national pride and regional conflicts, let alone religious extremism.
Two world wars didn’t seem to be enough, their atrocities and horrible consequences will be forgotten. If I had to guess, I would say that world war 3 will be or start online. We are all too dependent on Internet, it is our first tool to connect to each other, to work and live more efficiently, to see and experience things we wouldn’t otherwise. It has become a major strength, but this has also become our first weakness. Look at most military powers (the US, Europe, China, etc.), the weakest – or less protected, and the most easily accessible infrastructure is the World Wide Web. This is where I would start.
We are all lost in the imposing complexity of our world and we do not know where to start. Most of us, are struggling to survive, to fix our problems, to protect our families and friends. We are lost in the midst of the insignificance of our lives and only a few moments of happiness and pleasure would be enough to satisfy us, myself first.
This is why I will try to answer the question I mentioned above in my next post. What are the most urgent issues and threats to tackle in today’s world? And how to do that? This is quite a big challenge, but I consider it to be a starting discussion towards a possible solution.
No comments:
Post a Comment