PAGBABAGO
Dr. Florangel Rosario-Braid
Today, Black Saturday, I remember that when we were children, we would get up early in the morning and join friends who had gathered in a neighbor’s yard to engage in a ritual of jumping as high as we could manage. The belief was that if you jumped high enough you would get taller by several inches. Since my two sisters were taller than me, I must have failed to reach the mark.
I joined a group in an online spiritual retreat last Maundy Thursday which I believe was most helpful considering the months of abnormal self-imposed isolation because of the pandemic. As I write this, I thought that I would share an analytical paper about the future we are facing. I am sure we are all experiencing mixed feelings of optimism as well as anxieties that are brought about by the uncertainties of the political process we are about to face.
The paper, written by Julian Cribb for Mother Pelican, a journal on the environment and sustainable development, is entitled “The End of Politics – Paralysis, Atrophy, Inertia, Perplexity.” It is not a very comforting article and yet, we would perhaps all agree that after the election, we shall be facing almost insurmountable problems that would make us sorry about the support given to our favored candidates.
But I think most of our expectant leaders realize that if they don’t feel paralyzed or bewildered at the start, they will, sooner or later, give up since the problems may not appear to be solvable.
The author starts by describing the state of mind of governments around the world – that they are grappling with a crisis they do not understand. But this is something that has been going on for some time and “modern civilization is headed for collapse.” There are exceptions – New Zealand, Bhutan (where their GNP is “happiness”), most Scandinavian countries, Germany.
“These threats require global action,” the author notes, and our earth won’t be saved by “ism” or ideology like socialism, liberalism, communism, capitalism.
The data telling us that “civilization is in peril” has been available for up to 50 years now, but politicians have managed to bury the facts.
“With the exception of Angela Merkel, most leaders have no education in these disciplines that foretell these dangers – for example, 200 plus billion tons of chemicals emitted by human activity thus killing over 12 million people a year but that governments are not seriously trying to stop it because either they do not understand it or that they are “hand-in-glove” with the polluters. It is a case of politics failing to serve the interest of humanity.”
“But the good news is that for the first time, humans are sharing knowledge, experience, wisdom, and solutions to these mounting threats, Cribbs notes. The Internet has over five billion participants out of the eight billion world population. By 2030, everyone will be online.”
Thus, while many world leaders have failed to take note or to inform us, the Internet technology is able to explain these threats and what we can do about them. It may be a bit too late, but the situation can still be mitigated.
And he makes this observation which other knowledgeable scholars have said in the past but was ignored because of our patriarchal culture.
The solution “resides in female leadership, not male. It lies in the universal sharing of wisdom and cooperation.”
And women, by nature, show more empathy and compassion, more willing to share, cooperate, and collaborate. New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, and women leaders in Germany, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, are known to have proven to have successfully led their people out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Research had shown that women had shown clear communication in their call for unity. They had shown preparedness by listening before they acted. Their relational style had been effective when leading through a crisis as it allowed them to alleviate fears and build trust. Thus, they were able to successfully manage a crisis through their transformational leadership styles. These situations are called “glass cliffs” because they are more difficult to manage.
Thus, we face a most challenging future -- a “savage” and “toxic” environment, and pandemics. These, within rising scarcity of vital resources like water, forests, fish, and fertile soil. We pray for the right mix of government and citizen leaders who can rally the people in seeking solutions to this “existential” crisis.
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