Building a New Tomorrow

by Doreen Hosking

We must not stumble upon tomorrow. We must build it. – Pope Francis

Mankind is capable of wondrous things. We have only to look at some of the great medieval cathedrals or listen to a Beethoven Symphony to know that this is true.

Right now, however, humanity is in a terrible mess of its own making. Our future is looking truly precarious. I believe we need to take our present consumer society to bits, brick by brick. Then we must agree on what we really need to allow us to flourish on a healthy planet, throw in all the bits we don’t have and then build it all back together in a way that works for all Earth’s inhabitants and for Nature itself.

To do that we need a change of attitude, a different way of visualising ourselves as part of Nature, and an awareness of our responsibility to future generations. Fear of the future has crept into our bones, and it is very difficult to believe that we as individuals can make a difference. But this is our task, it is one we are here to accomplish, and we must learn to do it with love and compassion for all mankind, and with gratitude for what Nature offers us.

Joanna Macy , a Buddhist philosopher of ecology says, “we are at a pivotal moment in history with the possibility to unravel or to create a life-sustaining human society.”

I have children and grandchildren, so I am not interested in having society collapse. I want to create a future where we can live in communities where each person has a purpose. I want, as Ghandi said, to have enough for our needs but not enough for our greed. I would like equality and justice for all, a healthy diet, peace, education for all the world’s children, acceptance for who we are and to see that Nature is flourishing.

“How can we do that given the present situation and timing?” I hear you ask.

Firstly, we will do it because we must. We have done difficult things before, things we thought were impossible. We have abolished slavery, brought in votes for women, dealt with the hole in the ozone layer and so much more. (Perhaps some of them were not done well, but they were done.)

We will do it when enough of us stand up and tell our governments and the financial organisations that only care about profit that we have had enough, and we insist that they act. To do this, each one of us needs to talk to everyone we know about the situation we are in. We need to talk and act as if there is already change happening for the better, because there is. We need to stop reading and listening to the doom-sayers, take all our courage in both hands and act. Of course, do all the things that we as individuals can do easily like eating less meat or buying an electric car or giving up flying but there is so much more we can do.

But first we need a vision of that future we are aiming for. How would you like it to be? Can you picture it? What can you do to help bring that future into being?

Doreen Hosking is a retired scientist, a grandmother and an environmental activist. She believe we can build a better future if we all actively participate in its creation.