[Reader-list] The World - NOT as we tell it

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The World - NOT as we tell it

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Does anyone remember Climate Change?

The soon to disappear Polar Ice Cap?

How about the War on Terrorism?

Or the Rise of Asia and a rebalancing of World Powers?

All so last year (or month, or week). One of our fallacies is
believing that we have a complete picture of the world, that is within
our control, and that we need to set right. It is not from the nature
of capitalism, or in the scheming nature of the establishment or the
dominant powers that crises are created, fretted over for a while,
apparently dealt with, only exacerbating other smaller conditions,
often taken advantage of to perpetrate agendas that otherwise might
not have been possible to be accepted, and then swiftly forgotten at
the appearance of a new crisis. It is ingrained in a world view shared
by most of us.

What seems to be changing however, is our fascination with, and almost
breathless hunting down of what may be called a crisis. Something that
challenges the core of our very existence and threatens 'life as we
would like it to be' (And strangely seems to give us some sense of
purpose). Life is never going to be what we want it to be. There is a
world unfathomable, and much larger than our comprehension out there
that is too complex to be fully held within political agendas,
economic charts, or forms of organisation created by the human mind.
Our failure is in believing we have mastered it all, and that we can
now train the world along in the direction WE choose. Often the first
faltering is at just the word WE.

The real crises will creep on us when we are not looking. The attack
on America was a real crisis that no one saw coming, or going. But the
created crisis of the War on Terrorism and the Clash of Civilizations
took up more legroom. The current economic crisis is not the end of
the economy, or capitalism, or the World Order as we know it. It is
surely going to be around for a while, but my guess is it will soon
move into that part of our consciousness where the Polar Bears on
their melting ice cap now reside.

These all ARE real issues, and need real solutions and effort. But we
need to be more sparing with our definition of crises. A real crisis
would be not knowing where ones next meal is to come from, and how
your children may be fed or sheltered. And as the gaily smiling faces
around our most deprived regions tell us, they are handling that
crisis quite well. Surely we could atleast try as much.

http://indiaonedge.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/the-world-not-as-we-tell-it/