Question 11: What is the most important question in world today – to you?
For Conversation Week 2007 this was the winning question. We add it here to give you a chance to survey the people at your Conversation Week table as we have surveyed the world to suggest and select the ten questions above. What questions do you and your community need to be asking right now? What’s not being talked about that, were it explored, would free us up to have the world we want?
Please begin your post with your city and country.
How do insure that all who need a place to call home have it?
A long time ago someone asked “Get off my sun”. Those who are supposed to protect peace turn out to be the biggest source of terror, those in charge of justice turn out to be blind to the misery they inflict. Those who specialized into informing us about what happened turn out to be the most confusing. What can we do to make them cast less shadow on the world?
How do we peacefully diminish current species momentum?
Failure to do so guarantees extinction, because the momentum is based on habits we learned when we fought Earth, and each other, for raw survival. Specifically, habits of exploitation. It used to be that might did make right, and bigger was better; but having won the fight for survival on planet Earth, we must deal with the simple fact that infinite growth in a finite space don’t work.
This is the Dilemma of Dominance - the need to balance deeply ingrained habits which now lead to our extinction.
The need for a peaceful adjustment reflects the power we have achieved. The nuclear threat is obvious, and could very quickly render huge portions, if not the entire planet, unfit for human survival. Less obvious but no less critical is the momentum itself. There will be a Species Survival Threshold, some point when the gradual degradation of the environment reaches a momentum of its own from which recovery is no longer possible. By the time it becomes obvious, it will be too late.
(Do we need to reach a better understanding of global warming?)
As for the “How do we….”, this is largely a matter of education, otherwise non-universal efforts will increase tension/conflict - exactly what we don’t need. And it is crucial to realize that distrust is widespread, so the source of the education is important. This issue relates directly to BOA 4’s question in the comment preceding this one, and the start of the answer(which will be expanded on when I have time) can be found in this Week’s Question 7.