The Western world is experiencing an existential crisis in today’s global world. Many people interpret and analyze the crisis through the catastrophic events that unfolded in recent years: wars, climate changes, genocide, the decline in birth rates, inflation, poverty, the acceleration of mental health problems of the youth. and the economical tensions between superpowers which could bring a possible nuclear war.
But it seems to me that analyzing the symptoms of the crisis is not enough to truly understand what is currently happening. I believe we must quickly recognize that this existential crisis is largely driven by the dissolution of old ways of thinking and doing things as our world becomes a global “space”.
The recent changes
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the world became global. For the first time in human history, human beings regardless of their culture, religion, origin, language, or bank account exist as part of one species living on planet Earth.
But quickly, the feeling of belonging to the same species became obscured has progressively everything began to be subordinated to money and competition. Nations, countries and regions were competing with one another as international solidarity declined quickly.
“Competition the sole driving behind all individual and social progress”
In the 90’, it was said that without competition social and economical progress would not be possible. Then everyone starts to compete with one another. During essential learning for the development of their personalities, most children were placed in competition with one another. A vast majority of people begin to believe in this new social and personal mandra, “competition is the sole driving force behind all individual and social progress”. Gradually, older generations, educated in a time where family and community values were stronger, joined this movement and began to compete against each other.
It took more or less two decades for human solidarity to be fatally shaken across the occidental world. Very fast, solidarity among cultures and people even between members in the same family and friends erode as the social fabric unravels. Real friendships progressively disappear and take on the character of competitors. Then interpersonal communication blocked as trust among people vanished. Within a couple both partners struggle for control, seeking benefits from the outset of their relationships and neglecting solidarity, love, and family.
Competition destroyed a large part of the social fabric of our societies
Yet, we most understand that science didn’t progress through competition. Great scientists were not involved in any competition. They were fighting with themselves. Imagine a guy like Einstein in competition with his peers or Leonardo Da Vinci, painting La Jaconde, wanting to do better than others and fighting against his peers. All artists know this well; their battle is in the mind, in the imagination. Imagine Marie Curie wanting to do better than other physicists. This idea of being in competition didn’t bring progress it bring madness and destructive chaos!
When I talk about destructive chaos, I refer to the social, political, religious and economical structures that are projecting mental forms and images from another era tainted with values of competition and confrontation. These mental forms formalize responses in people’s minds and in their action that are out of phase in relation to the needs of the present moment. These mental forms generate violence, discrimination and suffering among people and culture.
Today most people understand that the value of competition disrupts not only our relationship with others but the direction of social, economical and political events. They understand that as the global character becomes more concentrated in the hands of a few powerful men, events located 10,000 km from themselves can disrupt their job, the economy, the health and the accessibility to basic necessities (food, energy, etc). It seems like, as days pass by, in a world driven by competition both the global situation and our particular situation become more filled with problems and conflict.
A consciousness of active nonviolence
It seem to me, the most urgent task is to awaken a consciousness of active nonviolence and solidarity, enabling us to reject not only physical violence but also all forms of economic, racial, psychological, religious, and sexual violence.
In fact, we must begin by studying our own bodies, our perceptions, our beliefs, our feelings and our relationships with our friends, co-workers and family members in order to understand the situation we are living. By studying our own life we will understand the major problem with the overall appreciation of our own meaning and existence.
We aren’t powerless we can have an influence on the events. In fact, we have a choice, either we go on and pursuit a destructive tendancy driven by competition and will live more confrontation with our neighbors, our family and co-worker or we give another direction to our life by breaking our own beliefs in the mandra: competition is the sole driving force behind all individual and social progress.
It doesn’t mean we have to reject the competition values. But instead we understand that solidarity and trust among each other is the driving force for social and personal progress. In fact, we understand that trust and solidarity will reduce the violence and the suffering in our lives and around the world.
