Confidence Crises

I mentioned earlier the current crises, our civilization is confronted: economic, energy, climate. The crises are also global, geopolitical, over available resources (land, food, water, fuel, etc.).

What does it exactly mean at the national cultural or global level?

Overall it is a philosophical, moral question and a question of ethics and equity. Why is it a confidence crisis? The “confidence crisis” hypothesis is related to actually questioning our current system in place, the cultures, values and norms that are at the origin of this system. The “confidence crisis” reveals the question: “who can we or should we actually trust?”

The “who can” question is related to our capabilities, to resolve the current crises. Who has the economic, political, environmental, cultural, technological knowledge, skills and experience to bring our civilization out of the crises? Who are the persons who have the capacity to engage his/her time and resource in our common future?

Let’s return to the question of trust and confidence. Which individuals, group of individuals, nations can we trust? To give an easy answer to start with: nobody, and with regards to the climate crisis, even not ourselves, as human beings. Ok, this does not bring us any solution or way forward. But it is a start, from which we can try to develop and build a new system.

We should learn from our past experiences to develop a completely new system, rather than try to improve the existing one, with the same people, just “dressed” differently.

Confidence is a very personal matter and attitude. It is also a moral right, to trust someone, with regards to the handling of a specific problem or issue. And it is a matter of efficiency to choose, whom we trust and with whom we will build the new system.

What is the issue with the current cultural system? Each culture and society develops a system of values, religious believes, norms, etc. This system values at the moral and philosophical level what is right, and what is wrong. The system is evolutif and can adapt over time. The historical dimension of the system can be linked to what the system values as being traditional, conservative in the sense of what is from a historical point of view of value and “worth” to be conserved and maintained today and for the future. Biodiversity is an example. We further need to take into account that systems vary among different cultures and nations. A nation can be considered as geographically entities whose extension and borders change over time. While this is the case, cultural entities seem more stable over time, although some cultures were eradicated and some civilizations have collapsed and disappeared.

Historically and philosophically, our current system and society is characterized by the atomic bombs thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Hitler’s National Socialism regime (see also the philosophical works of Hannah Arendt, and the psychoanalytical works of Arno Gruen). It is important for us to understand what caused the current system and who we actually are, what motivates and drives us and in which way we influence the values and behavior of our others.

Our consumption driven and based system is in the biggest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930ies. The crises are the economy, resources including energy, climate, and geopolitical. Still this is a quite generic statement. We have to look at the globe, and also at the nation and community level to understand, who is affected by which crises. Again, we might differentiate between the triple global crises, national crises, the crises of an individual, which can also be a crisis of identity, a crisis of empathy, ethics, moral and culture, typically debated in the context of globalization. Besides the intrapersonal crises we can look at the interpersonal crises between man and woman, between generations. With regards to climate ethics and equity we have to look at both, intragenerational and intergenerational crises (see the works of philosopher Nadia Mazouz).

This mainly brings us to the question on what system will bring us out of the current crises? What are the values, which we should adhere to from a (climate) ethical, moral and philosophical point of view, which drive and motivate us to build the new societal system? How are we approaching to define our values? It is in my opinion straight forward. Each individual should go ahead, feel confident in defining and communicating (across all its personal and social networks – physical and virtual) its individual values, and try to stick to them and be honest, how the values work for him or herself.

Who will be capable to develop a new and “sustainable” system? All of us. Still we need to organize ourselves, to allow the system to be implemented. This brings us back to the question, who we actually should give our trust and confidence to define a finite number of new values, which well represent and group all our values. And who is going to help us and give us the necessary resources (education, funds) to constitute, to put into place and to institutionalize the new system.

Who will lead us out of the current crises? The USA? China? It needs both, acceptance that our planet is continuously warming and that with increasing CO2 emissions the situations can get dramatically worse.

How can we bring our civilization out of these crises? The entire globe is in this and we have to build common solutions at all levels, internationally, in each country, in our communities and businesses, and involving all individuals.

Can we rely on those, who actually created the system we are currently locked in? We should be careful in making judgments or accuse anyone, since after the Great Depression and World War II, people where looking into the future for peace, a new beginning and economic prosperity.

Nevertheless we should find, connect and engage all the people in the world, who want to transform the current system into a sustainable one. It is not worth to loose our energy and time on those, who continue to stick to wasteful and carbon-intensive lifestyles. I think most of us agree on that point. We are aware of these crises and the problems and challenges they generate. We also have to be aware that different nations, political parties and individuals have their agendas with regards to the current crises and that there are risks of green washing (pretending to be sustainable).

We all want to prevent another global conflict or world war. We have to find and trust the people, who can solve these crises, and set-up the path together to define a new system of values in a sustainable and peaceful way.

We should not give up, if sometimes we fail on our transformation path. It can last a lifetime and several generations, to make important cultural changes, and to make a new system to function, based on new and sustainable values.

It is a long breathtaking process. What is important is that we make the changes now, as fast as possible to stop global warming, so future generations will benefit. It is important that today’s generations hold to their new set of values, bringing our civilization on the path of sustainability, independently, whether our personal aspirations will be met or not. Our efforts today will be driven by high ethical motives, values and believes on behalf of our younger and future generations.

We should take advantage of what we already know, what we have learned. But we should not only spend our time seeking what we already know. We should mainly look forward most of the time, accept to live with uncertainty and not fear what we do not know yet. As the precautionary principle, we have to make best use of our knowledge and “non-knowledge” (not ignorance) even if all phenomena are not yet fully studied or understood.

As persons we should take good care of ourselves, maintaining a physically and mentally healthy lifestyle to remain strong, to be creative, positive and solution-oriented all the time. It is also excellent to have a philosophical approach to our lives giving us balance in challenges times ahead. I am so grateful of the great gift my daughter Hannah has offered me lately: The Tibetan Book on Living and Dying, from Sogyal Rinpoche http://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying.pdf