The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
Mindset changes possible – statistics prove
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Mindset changes possible – statistics provePadilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “The UN 2030 Agenda and the SDGs,” Ch. 5.5, p. 258] SPark From my point of view, this analogy with the tragic Greek Medea myth equates to a fatalistic philosophical vision that denies human freedom since - according to Ward - our species is condemned to suffer an ineluctable destiny. I do not share Ward’s determinist vision, although I admit that the debate opened by his hypothesis is valid, especially regarding the crisis of the 2020/21 pandemic, because the predatory behaviour of human beings towards the planet and Mother Nature could lead to our extinction if we don’t react promptly and adequately to threats like climate change and pandemics provoked by malign viruses - the coronavirus is just one more of a long chain of lethal microbes. This again indicates that humankind must embrace a mindshift by disowning neoliberalism, the main culprit of the disarray and disasters created by an ideological economic doctrine that does not care about health and life (human security) or the environment and planetary boundaries (global security). I outlined in the previous chapter how, according to social scientist Jared Diamond, some civilizations (the Mayas in Yucatan and Guatemala) and settlements (the Norwegians in Greenland, the Polynesians in Easter Island) collapsed totally after failing to adapt to environmental strains after climate change triggered by cultural and collective comportment, while other civilizations and cultures (the Japanese of the Tokugawa dynasty, the natives of the highlands of Papua New Guinea, the natives of the tiny island of Tikopia in the South Pacific Ocean) succeeded in avoiding disastrous climate change by respecting nature (forests and the typical tropical vegetation) and taking appropriate decisions in time, thanks to the forethought and wisdom of their respective ruling elites. This essentially means that I believe in the capacity of humankind to overcome the challenges of destiny using intelligence, knowledge and freedom. Thus, if Gaia can conquer Medea our species is not doomed and hopeless. But I cannot make any predictions; it all depends on our behaviour from now on. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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