Wired868 Wired868 for smart sport news and opinion
A conversation about imagining our future planet raised a jumble of issues for me. I could grasp the substantive points being made by the 30-year-old, but many of them had not occurred to me before.
It seemed that it might be a world where basic survival would define all activities. Like a dystopian sci-fi movie becoming a documentary.
We cannot be oblivious to the grim prospects of that world in the near distance, but we can find ourselves side-tracked by the demands of the immediate.
Humans are generally day-to-day creatures. Our concerns are primarily about the present moment. Even when we try to extrapolate our thoughts to encompass the consequences of our actions, we barely manage to get past a mindful mutter to do better tomorrow.
That is how it goes.
We see the impacts of changing climate patterns; the extremes that have become almost the norm, but because we manage to uncomfortably get by, we don’t see that it will escalate to unsustainable levels.
True, countless lives have been lost as a direct result of devastating episodes of Earth’s upheavals—floods, droughts, earthquakes, freezing and searing temperatures—you know what I am talking about. But it is still difficult to get down to the details of what life could mean.
It is impossible even for the most enlightened and involved to apprehend what will become the reality. Factors such as an uninhabitable planet without severe modifications: what would we be able to breathe, to eat, to drink?
Sources of energy; the presence of sentient beings through AI; where we could live; all of these are details that had remained hazy because it all seems so far ahead, until that conversation about the future planet (and whether there was hope).
Looking at a local news report, I was struck by the sight of an elderly man sitting in an audience, bolt upright, but clearly asleep. I was sympathetic. How many times have we struggled to stay awake during interminable events?
I know we are notorious for meetings that go on way past the point of efficiency. We ramble, repeating ourselves, and at the end everyone signs off just to escape.
The sight of the man made me think of how many times I had witnessed it myself. And it struck me that if you were to look, even casually, at the average age of our leaders, they cannot be said to be sprightly in mind and in body. They come from an era that has gone by, and they are embedded within the culture of that time.
Even if they were to have a sense of the cadence of tomorrow, do you believe they have any idea of how to meet it? It is hard for me to try to figure out the numerous variables, and I keep wondering how then can there be anything like a plan, a direction from people of the past?
Look at the state of the world, riven by absurd acts of inhumanity—what is the age cohort of the perpetrators? These are people who continue to make decisions that affect countless lives, but they won’t be around to see the impact of their actions; and they know it.
Do they care?
Am I digressing? Perhaps.
It seems to me that we are given to petty preoccupations. Look at our plot of land on the planet. We have political leaders drowning us with drivel.
A man calls a media conference to announce that while he is constitutionally responsible for what goes on in his ministry, he did not know what was going on. And, that if he had known, he would not have allowed it.
It seems to me that that is a confession of an absolute dereliction of duty, because if it were something he had the power to stop, and he did not stop it because he did not know—then what does he know, and how many other things does he not know that he could have stopped? Who knows?
On another side, a man asks that internal elections be called when they are due in his party, and immediately it causes discussions about challenges to leadership (and assertions that the boss is the big boss and not to be questioned).
It might be the culture for everyone to toe the party line in public, but what happens to the idea of discourse? I can only imagine that the concerns were aired internally before being brought into the public domain. It could not have come out of the blue.
Is this what we are being asked to focus our minds on? Is this the level of national concern? Look at the people who are offering to lead us into a future of hope. Do you honestly believe they have a clue how to get us anywhere?
On yet another note, I admire the drive to consult on ideas for constitutional reform. I believe it is important for us to update our notions of who we are and what we believe in.
To me the Constitution should reflect us and what we want for ourselves. I suspect many people are unaware of what is contained in the current Constitution and it might be helpful to highlight segments in public spaces. It might be more ignorance than indifference that limits participation.
The future must belong to someone for it to matter.
Little things add up—sometimes, they can sneak up insidiously so that we don’t see them coming until something happens. It’s Read more
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with two truly inspiring members of the Cocoa Research Centre Read more
It’s a little bit uncanny that I had wanted to return to discussing trauma, particularly the impact of bullying, before Read more
Roughly 16 years ago, I interviewed Dr Dan Ramdath, a professor of Biochemistry at The UWI, about the efficacy of Read more
When Professor Emeritus Arnold Rampersad spoke to graduating students of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at The UWI in Read more
Last Wednesday, a letter to the editor appeared in the Express that was so poignant it made me abandon what Read more
Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
