¿SMART PARADISE?
It is strange to see how Humanity has managed to turn basic, logic principles that serve them into boomerangs that hurt them. At the most elementary level, from the beginning, communities everywhere, regardless of cultures, customs or believes, made a clear difference between the realm of the individual and that of the community. Individuals had the obligation to make efforts in order to provide for themselves and the right and freedom to live their lives their own way. In turn, the moment individuals gathered into communities, many common goods and services shared, attended the common needs of the individuals ( health of the group, education of children and youth, etc), and made more efficient the use of resources to grow the group strong. A healthy logic that served one and all. To make it work, each individual had to put in a percentage of his or her own resources into the community, certain that it would come back transformed in services which secured survival and growing for present and future individuals and groups. The stronger and healthier the group, the more its abilities to deal with other groups of their own kind or of another kind. It is a simple logic - an equation - a magic wand, in fact, that protects all inhabitants in the planet. Communities using the equation would also have the time, resources and power to develop in every direction, science, arts, technology, philosophy, and to live peaceful, prosperous lives. That was the original design. But then.....
Today, a tiny percentage of the inhabitants of a very productive planet, holds around 80% of the resources and use them, yes, to produce, to trade, to invest, to innovate, but also to hide the percentage they are to give to the community in what are ironically called "paradises". Slowly in time, it became the "to do" for every individual or company making profits. Cutting the community they live in from the benefit of the original equation became the "smart move" of the 1% that holds most of the resources. The problem with that is that it is anything but smart.
A major that steals its town budget may live in a luxurious house but he or she, and their children, will always live in a poor, undeveloped town. A geometrical projection of this simple idea, throws on Earth astonishing numbers of hunger, sickness, illiteracy, stagnation, suffering and death. Each individual who holds that fair sharing with society to him o herself will, indeed, enjoy much more than what their needs demand, but will also pass, as everyone does, leaving for their descendants a much more difficult, needy and dangerous place to live. Not smart, at all.
In that order of ideas, the present map of the World shows an interesting situation, that repeats in many other places on Earth, in two of the most powerful nations holding contradictory ideas about community. Leaving aside ideologies, focused in the equation, in one side of the world, China, the 1.5 billion inhabitants are being educated, sixty millions have been recently taken out of poverty, and their countryside world and surroundings fell into a plan that connects them through learning, trading and sharing. At the other side, America, recent reforms have taken away from the community resources for education, health and science among others. This example - there are many others - only to illustrate the fact that, in a near future, power will not be defined by the charisma of political figures but by the unstoppable, powerful drive of their learned or unlearned, healthy or sick, able or unable PEOPLES. The history of HUMANITY has always been stated and moved forwards by the force of People. Halfway in the map, also, there there is the European Union openly and softly turning their proven knowledge into wisdom, turning their needs towards the magic wand, the saving equation of sharing. Everywhere, paying taxes and securing a government that makes good use of them, is THE tool for prosperous societies. It is the only way that - not paradise islands but paradise Earth - will hold. Those everywhere that turn their back to the possibility of their own people´s growth are not only hurting their own place on Earth but, on the long run, their own lives.
And, the situation pulled to extremes with all the suffering it causes, will necessary derive in time and in a rigorous sense of fairness, into a single question: If those that have everything do not give their share, ¿why should people do?... And then, the magic wand would vanish along with paradise. Not smart. / Silvia Davila MM, EarthPipol, Nov 10, 2017.
