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suddenly -said Leonardo Da Vinci- there are no poor
and rich, no young and old, no white and black on board... only a bunch of
passengers toiling, working together to survive, to avoid a shipwreck.
This is the advice we should convey today through all
media so that the “peoples” become aware of the situation humanity is facing
for the first time in history. In recent years a series of global threats have
been recognized as potentially irreversible processes that need to be
confronted and dealt with on time before it is too late.
The climate change has become an undeniable truth. The
Arctic Ocean has nearly disappeared and the Antarctic is starting to crack. We
have not succeeded in our effort to reduce the emissions of “greenhouse”
gases... and the habitability of Earth is experiencing a consistent
deterioration. The implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
-wisely established by the United Nations Assembly in October 2015 “to
transform our world”- has not been carried out because it is not efficiently
supported by big countries... and citizens are under the pressure of the
gigantic media power that makes them confused and turns them into impassive
spectators instead of responsible actors.
Neoliberalism -stubbornly lead by the United States
Republican Party- has weakened the nation-State and has replaced the democratic
multilateralism of United Nations by the governance of a few plutocratic
oligarchic groups (G6, G7, G8, G20) responsible for the current drift that has
placed GDP and international trade in the forefront... together with President
Trump’s discretionary power which no one dares to confront.
The most disturbing consequence is the way
supremacism, racism, fanaticism, dogmatism are sprouting everywhere... without
anyone seeming to recall what happened in 1933 and 1939... The vast majority of
citizens are stunned and obsessed supporters of football teams, and are only
worried with their immediate past and their present life; their demands -which
are mainly based on the mistakes made by those who have ruled on one side and another-
would be reasonable in less pressing situations, but they do not realize that
today young and future generations are the only ones who deserve our attention
if we want to keep the world afloat and bequeath these generations a dignified
life.
Despite the fact that there is reason to dream with
and fight for new ways of governance, that we are about to conquer at last what
always seemed an impossible quest, the only true thing is that the time has
come to join our hands and voices, instead of breaking up; the time has come
for an efficient multilateralism with a planetary scale authority; the time for
genuine democracy... Because otherwise devastation will be the irremediable
consequence.
The time has come for mass media to convey accurate
information about the Earth’s sustainability and to alert the world, and to keep
away from ill-meaning commercial and political news that urge them to do the
opposite.
The time has come for major financial
corporations to become aware that it is their historical responsibility, in
no-return situations, to promote and encourage awareness instead of favouring
confusion and overacting.
For peoples -”We, the peoples”, as we were so wisely
referred to at the beginning of the Charter of the United Nations- to take
control, now that we are aware of what is going on and we can freely express
ourselves, now that we have become men and women, of our common destiny.
The vessel is sinking because we have not paid
attention to any of the recommendations made during the last decades. As in
Leonardo’s tale, it is now essential and urgent for all of us to react,
because we are all concerned, and otherwise we will not succeed in our intent of
keeping safe in all its fullness the mystery of human existence. “Everything is
still possible… but who will do it if not all of us?” said Miquel Martí i Pol.
I am quoting once again, because reading them was a
crucial experience for me, the lines of José Ángel Valente’s poem “On the
present time”:
“I am writing from a wrecked vessel,
I am writing about the latitude of pain,
about everything we have destroyed
above all within ourselves...
I am writing in the midst of the night,
in the midst of the roar of the hungry and the dead.
with the perspective of a hand that becomes a gloomy
fist
...with the eyes of infinitely dead children,
...with the pain of a tree with wounded roots...
But I also write in the midst of life,
with its powerful cry
...with the voice of the suffering crowd...
I am writing, my brother, about a time to come”.
Let’s find inspiration in Leonardo Da Vinci, Miquel
Martí i Pol and José Ángel Valente, and let’s abandon all hostile attitudes
against an adequate and peaceful navigation. In the new age what will prevail
will not be the power of force but rather the power of reason, not weapons but
words, not herd instinct but the capacity of each human being to create, to
think and to take his own decisions.
If we manage to keep the ship afloat, with all
passengers, humanity will have the opportunity to usher in a new era.
