Tag Archives: harmony

Kid Rock: Youth and the Struggle for a More Harmonious Planet, Dr. Robert Zuber

15 Aug
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One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.  C.S. Lewis

For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.  Alvin Toffler

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.  H.L. Mencken

I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. Meg Rosoff

“Sure, everything is ending,” Jules said, “but not yet.” Jennifer Egan

That’s the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.  Philip Pullman

When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.  George Burns

This was a week when many members of the UN family took a bit of rest from the grind of multilateral diplomacy, a time to restore at least a bit of the energy to the “batteries” which seem perpetually in need of a charge.

The world, however, doesn’t privilege holidays.  Indeed, our community was peppered this week by news both urgent and discouraging:   a massive earthquake in “snake-bitten” Haiti, the discovery of new Ebola cases in Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire, the rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban and their enablers, an enhanced potential for civil war in Myanmar, even an increase in piracy and other crimes against maritime trade and the very health of the oceans themselves as acknowledged during a High-Level Security Council debate on Monday hosted by India’s Prime Minister Modi. 

Added to that, surely the most discouraging news of all; the release this week of the “Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  The report is difficult to wade through (despite its inclusion of an interactive Atlas) and the main conclusions of the report are even more difficult to process: that even if we are able to somehow meet our climate targets, the patterns we now experience are sure to endure: storms of increasing violence and frequency, fires raging on multiple continents depleting even more of the forests we need to absorb excess carbon, water scarcity becoming increasingly the norm in a number of global regions, biodiversity threatened at multiple points on the chain of life endangering both agriculture and human health.  

There is more of course, more to be concerned about even than these. The SG’s response to the IPCC report, a “Code Red” for the planet, was widely disseminated throughout the global media.  The response of the young people around our office as well as those who gathered online this week to acknowledge UN “International Youth Day” was equally firm in the insistence that more can and must be done to “reverse the trend” (as our office colleagues would say), that the speed of our lives, the speed of global changes, must be matched more than has been done to date by the speed of our own responses, our own adaptations, our own resolve and, where appropriate, our own leadership – all of which beckons the skills and energies of young people at its core.

If this indeed is “code red” for the planet, it is surely “code red” for the future of young people, a future already compromised by high levels of economic uncertainty and even higher levels of social inequality and armed violence.   There is much to love about the world, beauty within people and in the wider planet which our short-term and self-referential decisionmaking has not yet managed to eradicate.  But the vantage points of too many elders suggest trouble; the lack of wisdom and discernment that such folks too-often bring to policy, the “advice” we are happy to dispense (often unrequested) without a similar acknowledgement of the crises made more dangerous on our watches, the fires we have not extinguished and which will continue to consume after we have passed on from this life, the frustrations that will keep spinning out of control as more and more people see through the half-hearted, overly-politicized efforts of many of the powerful and affluent to attend to the needs and aspirations of the desperate.

The times may seem a tad distressing, but the social and technological options which govern life in our times remain in healthy motion. We face problems which are unprecedented, but we also have access to avenues of response which are unprecedented as well, technologies which can remove plastics from our oceans and carbon from our atmosphere, communication tools that can help broaden the stake and integrate hopeful responses from youth and others geographically isolated from the global centers of policy.  While people like me press the buttons on our smart phones and just hope for the best, while others attempt to sentimentalize a past that was never as good as we claim it was, many young people are staking out a fresh, hopeful reality which, remarkably, does not reject the ideas, anxieties and suggestions of their elders as much as they might.  As a rule, they know better how to adapt the problem-solving and communications-rich technologies at their disposal to make issue linkages and identify new stakeholders.  They are often more comfortable in multi-cultural settings than their elders were and they are assuredly more comfortable in front of cameras than people like me who can barely stand to have their own picture taken.

 Many young people are also, and thankfully, fairly well attuned to the need to mirror changes in technology with changes in persons. Many seem to understand at some level that neglect of character in pursuit of social change is likely to lead to the same ends as the generations which proceeded them, a world with too many weapons, too little water, and health and other quality-of-life indices which strain existing resources and provide yet another rationale for armed violence. It was reassuring that the interns of Reverse the Trend (RTT) who met with the Kiribati Ambassador to the UN this past Friday on our “patio” seemed inspired by the kindness and hopefulness of his words, but also energized by his resolute stance that young people from every continent and every culture must come prepared to participate meaningfully in the affairs that characterize these times, prepared not only with their skills and ideas, but with their compassion, discernment and creativity. 

Such RTT and other youth may not be quite ready to once again take up fairytales, but they well understand and convey the importance of cultural expression to peacemaking; they recognize that poetry, dance and painting are not auxiliary aspects of an intentional life but are rather fuel for that life. 

During a typical week, we hear from (and respond to) a good number of young people from various cultures and on diverse life paths.  Some of these youth are discouraged; some are angry; some are thoughtful and determined; some are anxious that the current uncertainties will ultimately consume their potential contributions, that the wildly unequal access to resources which defined current generations will characterize yet another one.  And yet, despite their anxieties, we are heartened by how some young people have chosen a path not always taken, a path that calls them to invest in persons even younger than themselves, persons even more uncertain about their identities and threats from a world in turmoil.  Together they plant trees, they clean riverbeds, they grow healthier crops, they resolve conflict, they support victims and they presume to call on current leadership, including those rightly skeptical of the wisdom of age, to use their positions to better enable that transition to youthful energies which most UN diplomats now advocate.

We too, support this transition in every aspect. And just maybe, we’ve influenced some transition recipients more than we think.  One of our more active twitter followers is a young man (known only as “Sam”) from Côte d’Ivoire who recently wrote: “The values of a servant leader are the same as the values of a mentor: integrity, humility, respect and truth.”  Servant leadership, a concept and practice core to our own mandate. On those rock-solid values espoused by Sam, on those promises he strives to honor, we can surely build a movement for health and harmony that can truly sustain itself, that can blend inspiration and technology in new and life-enhancing ways, that can serve and be served beyond the boundaries of status and hierarchy, and that does not wait for official permission to share and to act.

And maybe, just maybe, Sam and his young colleagues can sneak in a bit of time for fairytales, or at least for the wise stories and accumulated imagination that remind us all why human life and human community remain so precious.

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COP Out: Rebalancing a Fractured Harmony, Dr. Robert Zuber

23 May
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The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.  Joseph Campbell

Food and the human spirit have become estranged.  Masanobu Fukuoka

You must answer the call and pick your way. And there is no reverse.  J.R. Ward

We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.  Alan Watts

In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.  Vincent Van Gogh

If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living.  Henri Poincaré

It is one of the ironies of our time that, while concentrating on the defense of our country against enemies from without, we should be so heedless of those who would destroy it from within. Rachel Carson

As most of you know, a week of violence in the Middle East ended with yet another cease fire, an agreement that stopped (for now) the aerial assaults from Israeli bombers and Hamas missiles but which had little immediate impact on the bitter fruits of occupation, the settlements and demolitions, the ethnic cleansing which proceeded apace in areas of Jerusalem on which, apparently at least, the cease fire agreement was presumed to have no palliative impact.

And then there is the wreckage across Gaza, a postage-sized land already suffering from human deprivation and environmental degradation which now lies once again in ruins, a testament to the diverse and damaging consequences of armed conflict that a cease fire exposes but hardly cures. In Palestine as in so much of the rest of the world, there is a misleading quiet now, one bearing little prospect of harmony with our adversaries or with the planet we share.

I know that this lack of harmony, this willingness to cast aside cynicism and “humbug” and live more “musically,” is not unique to this moment. Certainly since the beginning of the industrial age, and likely much longer, we have demonstrated an almost genetic predisposition to unharmonious relations with our world and with each other, exploiting resources for personal gain, defending even when defense wasn’t necessary, justifying aggression in the name of religion or nation, taking more than we need and sharing less than we should.

But this time feels different. The warning sirens blare more loudly now, especially on climate change and species extinction. The bombs we use to punish adversaries are are both more explosive and more technologically clever now. The policy promises we make to each other are increasingly subject to caveats and political expediency. The institutions we have established to protect us from ourselves are proving incapable in many aspects of adjusting to evolving threats, including from extremist groups, climate risks and community-killing drought.

Our world seems often like a band that is not only out of tune but where the musicians seem committed more to compete for attention than to share in the “glory and magnificence” that our music can generate, that our world can generate as well if only we would commit to being its reliable and sensitive agents. Indeed, there is a concern in many quarters that the shrill notes emanating from our competitive and self-serving actions are drowning out the sirens that continue to blare their unsettling omens, blasting messages of urgent appeal to those who are still able to listen and heed the warnings, messages indicating that our time is limited to bring more harmony to our fractured world, to finally and sustainably make our own heartbeats “match the beat of the universe.”

Needless to say, this is no easy task. Many who used the opportunity of pandemic lockdown to establish a better work-life balance or shift their personal priorities know a bit of how difficult it can be to reset ourselves, to practice and then maintain vigilance regarding those things about each of us that threaten “destruction from within.” And once we move from our domiciles to the wider society, harmony becomes a far greater challenge. Indeed much of our personal “resetting” has as one of its objectives increasing our ability to manage the demands and stresses of a human world often spinning out of control, often failing to fulfill even the most fundamental of its values and commitments.

And yet the desire and demand for this greater, global harmony has not entirely disappeared, does not entirely verge on the edge of the extinction that now threatens so many of our fellow-species. Even in the hyper-political environment of the United Nations, a place where we routinely confuse resolution with commitment, consensus with harmony, there are growing community concern about the consequences of human “estrangement,” from our food to be sure, but also from the complexities of the natural world and even, perhaps especially, from each other.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the president of the Economic and Social Council, Pakistan’s Ambassador Akram, seem determined to convince the UN community of the “war on nature” that we insist on conducting, a “war” we are ultimately waging on ourselves, a “war” that too-easily spills over into active armed conflict and enables future pandemics, a “war” we are simply incapable of winning. And yet, amidst the week’s policy oxygen consumed by the violence in the Middle East, UN events also took place that reminded us of the ticking clock signifying our current, potentially-irreversible course as various human practices damage biodiversity across the spectrum, not only the large species we tend to identify with but a large food chain of both enormous complexity and increasing susceptibility to the onslaughts of our current, unsustainable levels of production and consumption.

One of those was the annual event sponsored by the Mission of Slovenia to honor “World Bee Day,” a session that could easily seem trivial alongside a week of coups and famines, missile launches and crimes against humanity. But as my friends who keep bees and raise plants that attract their numbers recognize, bees and other pollinators are both endangered and crucial to life on earth. Indeed as this event noted, perhaps 80% of what nourishment humans consume requires essential input from bees. Moreover, the concept note crafted by Slovenia links endangered bees to a range of other biodiversity and ecosystem threats, noting that “current negative trends are projected to undermine progress towards a high number of the assessed targets of the Sustainable Development Goals related to poverty, hunger, health, sustainable consumption and production, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.” As we continue to pave over wetlands, degrade farmland, plant non-native species and denude forests, the damage we inflict on the smallest of our life forms exacerbates conditions which directly threaten the largest and most clever among us.

The other event of note on this theme was a preparatory meeting, hosted by the Mission of China, to encourage enthusiasm for the “COP15” meeting on biodiversity protection to be held next October in Kunming. China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs along with senior UN officials lent an air of gravitas to this session which was thankfully less about advertising and branding and more about our urgent biodiversity decline and the immediate need, as expressed at this session by the president of the General Assembly, to both enhance local ownership of biodiversity protection and factor in the importance and value (writ large) of nature into all our policymaking.  Too often, he noted, a tree is only ascribed value in this world once it has been felled.

And many trees continue to be felled in all global regions. In a discouraging report released this week by Forest Trends, it appears that trees have incredibly been brought down faster in the years since companies and governments promised to stop cutting them down. And another report recently released by a consortium of European researchers put the spotlight on one of the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss, namely our willfully and habitually “unsound” management of chemicals and waste, once again despite formal promises to the contrary.

It is reports such as these than temper the enthusiasm of myself and others for these large COP events, which tend to create environmental footprints far deeper than their policy impacts and promise far more than they ultimately deliver. Yes, we need immediate, tangible progress on biodiversity as we do on climate change and ocean health. But are the upcoming COP events any more likely than previous ones to shift policy dynamics in discernable ways? Are they at all likely, to paraphrase the GA president, to enable more robust action at local level, to help local activists, in the recent words of one, build bridges wide enough for everyone to cross over our current abyss and reach another side characterized more by harmony than chaos? Are they likely to sustain the buzzing of bees and other insects that still manage to overcome our collective assaults and fill our markets with produce? Are they sufficient to reset our notions of value such that we understand more than we apparently do now that a beautiful, harmonious and balanced world is ultimately essential to current and future lives worth living?

With full regard for activists struggling to maintain their voices and their sanity in this “kill the messenger” time, we in our sector must do more, will do more, to insist that these COP events serve interests beyond the branding of host states, that their ecological expense is calculated in more than mere dollars and cents, that their deliberations are as urgent as the problems which have merely multiplied on our watch, that their outcomes don’t simply add to the long list of promises misplaced or incompletely kept. We need more than political declarations from our leadership, more than grand sessions leading to perfunctory outcomes. If indeed, as Ambassador Akram noted on Friday, this war on nature is actually a war on ourselves, then we have no excuses for postponing a truce, ending our deep estrangement from nature, and reversing the biodiversity loss we are running out of time to address.

This band of ours needs to be brought back in tune without delay. Our farewell tour as a species may be closer than we think.

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