Unrecognized Consequences

The saying goes that it’s a small world, but by the look of things it’s not nearly small enough.

So many of the problems we face in today’s world are the result of unrecognized consequences. These would perhaps be far less of a problem in a world that was smaller and more connected; a world less like a forest of disconnected plants and more like a tree, where each branch can see the other and watch as leaves brown and decay as the whole tree withers and dies.

Despite how “connected” everything is today, despite an economy that stretches its slimy tendrils over nearly every country in the world, and despite how we’re increasingly becoming global citizens rather than local citizens, we’re still extremely cut off from anything that doesn’t immediately surround us in some pretty frightening ways.

We now live in a world where almost everything we do, every aspect of how we live, has consequences far beyond our own borders. The problem with this is that despite the stunning increases in connectivity that have been made in recent decades, we’re still completely isolated from the effects we’re having on the world around us.

In fact, in some ways our newfound technological wizardry may have isolated us even more. There’s so much information available that it’s simple to tune out what isn’t convenient or interesting. It’s simple to miss something vital in the sea of knowledge competing for our attention.

How is our society expected to truly move forward until we can truly recognize what’s going on around us? This is one of the biggest challenges today’s world faces - getting normal people to actually see, to actually recognize, to actually pay attention to what’s going on around them outside the borders of their normal existence.

In the small villages of yesteryear, it was easier to perceive when an imbalance had been created with nature. Perhaps over-hunting an animal might have made food more scarce or perhaps letting a local business pollute a lake would have made the waters less productive and beautiful for other citizens.

But there are almost no consequences in our modern lifestyles that are as easy to detect as those examples.

Materials we use drain resources from other countries. Businesses we support make living conditions in far away lands miserable and pollute places their customers will never see. The average citizen rarely visits a national park, much less some of the places the resources for their products are coming from to see what’s being done to them.

Even some business can’t be fully aware of what’s really going on. The changes we are producing in our world are on such a global scale that it’s impossible to fully grasp many of them without a lot of study and research.

I’m not advocating that we should make mandatory trips into the forest a part of our school curriculum or that we all go “back to nature” and live in mud huts with only meditation and bongo music to keep us entertained. Both might be good (although I’ll admit I’m more a fan of the former than the latter), but they’re beside the point.

We need to figure out a way to show people what’s really going on. To hold something in their collective faces and say, “This is what you’re doing to your world. Do you see what all the fuss is about now?”

This isn’t going to be easy. Our educational system is lacking and our citizens are far too apathetic and preoccupied with the other elements of their busy life to want to learn about the hardships of some foreign culture in a far off country with a name they can’t pronounce or of the big blocks of ice, those “glacier” things,” melting on top of mountains somewhere for some mysterious reason.

But it must be done. I’m not going to pretend to know how. What I do know is that I believe even the apathetic, preoccupied people of modern society would want to do something, anything they could, if they could just see for themselves what was really going on and get a sense of the true scale of the problems we’re facing.

I may not think all that highly of the human race sometimes, but I do believe that the thing holding back our society from progressive change is not some collective hatred of nature and a desire to pollute our world for our own selfish interest. I believe that we simply need to see with our own eyes the consequences of our actions, be told there’s still hope, and be told that there might even be something we can do about it.

I consider myself lucky to have learned more about some of these things in my college classes. I hope, somehow, others can realize the truth someday as well and begin to feel that desire for change brewing within themselves. Maybe then our world will stand a chance.