The Driving Force Beneath Our Crises

The level of uncertainty is on the rise in the World and can feel quite disorienting. One can feel excitement and despair alongside each other leading to a perplexing feeling for the current state of things. 

There are three trends in particular that I’ve been trying to make sense of - 

#1 Technology - The rise of AI + Robotics. 

#2 Geopolitics - The rising geopolitical tensions around the World. 

#3 Climate change - The increasing # of devastating weather events around the World. 

The rise of AI + Robotics is already accelerating the pace of work and leading to burnout. As AI advances it’s set to reshape our relationship with work itself. Will there be mass unemployment in a few years as AI & Robotics advance into uncharted self-governing territory? It’s hard to say but that’s what the experts seem to be forecasting. AI is using unprecedented amounts of energy to grow whereby most technology companies have essentially abandoned their climate goals. We are told that the technology itself will solve the problem of excess carbon pollution so we need not worry. They say that if handled well, we will live in an age of abundance because the cost of producing incremental goods and services will drop dramatically while the fruits of productivity get shared widely through universal basic income or some form of wealth distribution as such. If handled poorly, we will have mass unemployment, widespread distress and likely live under a modern authoritarian government that will track our every move and control our every life decision. As with every major technological revolution, one thing is certain that this change will require us to adjust and adapt in many different ways.

At the same time, we are witnessing rising geopolitical tensions around the world as underlying tensions held under the surface for decades come forward. Extremists on both sides are attempting to overtake the larger narratives in their respective geographies leaving most of us in the middle without a representative voice. Ukraine-Russia, Israel-Palestine, US-Iran. The trends seem to be ripe to reset the world stage and world order. Ray Dalio offers a particularly rich summary of the larger shifts in World order that happen roughly every 80 years.  Our current American government is bent on flexing its muscle through brute force to retain its old dominance but can we really prosper if we turn the rest of the World against ourselves? We are willing to sacrifice long-standing alliances, shared democratic values, and international trust for short-term strategic and economic gains. But what happens when the pursuit of dominance undermines the very relationships upon which lasting prosperity depends? Currently we are bound to make the same mistakes made by the British empire at the end of World War I and II which led to its own demise. Will we recognize our shared humanity and create a world order that lifts all boats or continue flexing our temporary dominance only to find ourselves left alone in the end?

At the same time, the rising number of severe climate disasters is bringing to the surface the consequences of our neglect for the natural world as the level of carbon in our atmosphere continues to climb. As glaciers melt, rising seas are causing homes to disintegrate along the coasts. The ocean has been quietly absorbing the excess heat trapped in our atmosphere and all of that heat is now giving rise to hurricanes in the pacific ocean at a rate never seen before. Weather patterns and systems are no longer reliable. We are confronted with droughts and floods often in the same region. Crop yields and quality are reducing as rising temperatures and severe weather events hurt plant growth and encourage pests.  It has taken a long time for us to destabilize our climate and even if we started taking all the right actions tomorrow (which we’re not doing), it will take a long time for us to stabilize it again. What we're seeing today is just a preview of the uncertainty ahead. 

We sometimes forget how deeply dependent we are on the natural world and on one another. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food that nourishes us, and the countless relationships that sustain our lives are not things we've created independently. They are gifts of a living world that makes our existence possible. To me, this relationship is sacred.

As I sit with these three crises, I’m reminded that our entire existence on this planet is in a sacred relationship with life. And because we have violated that sacred trust, we are now confronting the consequences of that violation. 

For me all three of these trends (AI, Geopolitics and Climate Change) have one thing in common, they represent the dynamics of humanity's uncontrolled desires for domination and control.  

After all, our economic and political systems don't exist independently of us. They are shaped by our collective beliefs, fears, desires, and decisions. When enough of us believe that security comes from having more power, or that happiness comes from acquiring more wealth, we create systems that reflect those beliefs. And once established, these systems reinforce the very behaviors that created them.

Our systems desire for unchecked AI growth because we fear that the other side might outcompete and dominate us. We fear that others may not collaborate and so we compete instead. All the while ignoring the impacts on the environment and the social fabric of life.

Our systems support the acts of domination and control in global geopolitics because it supports our desire to feel ‘safe’ and to ‘win’. We still operate under the old narrative of us versus them and ‘survival of the fittest’, having not realized yet that we are one giant family on this planet.

Our systems convert more and more of the earth into numbers in a bank account as we neglect our sacred relationship with life and ignore the costs that our planet has been quietly absorbing. The politicians are scared to tell us that we will need to tame our desire for more. Sooner or later, we will need to confront the truth for ourselves.

The crises we are confronting are in effect a crisis of our relationship to life itself and more personally a crisis of undisciplined desires. Our systems have assumed that all of life is a natural resource that we can extract and exploit with no limits or sense of responsibility. Hence, we are told that we don't need to govern AI, we don’t need to govern unchecked power and we don't need to govern the free markets that exploit our natural resources. We are told that we can take - make - waste as much as we want with no constraints necessary.

It sounds like the narrative for a life with all the freedom and none of the responsibility.  When my kids behave in this way, I often have to remind them that freedom and responsibility are but two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. 

Now more than ever, each one of us needs to recognize our sacred relationship to life. We need to begin examining the desires that drive our decisions, individually and collectively. We need to question whether our pursuit of ‘more’ is actually bringing us greater fulfillment, security, and prosperity, or whether it is slowly undermining the very foundations of our existence. We need to wake up the systems within which we operate from the narrative that views life as a resource to exploit and extract. This doesn't mean abandoning progress or prosperity. It means redefining progress and prosperity to be in a more conscious, responsible, and reciprocal relationship with life.

I invite you to sit with the following self-inquiry - How will I recognize and nurture my own sacred relationship with life?

P.S. If you feel this disconnect for yourself and would like to understand how we got here and how we might navigate ahead, I recommend reading the book True Human. Also, consider joining the author guided book reading circle Kinship Journey which starts on Nov 4th. 

- Nitin