A burden for future generations

The world is facing many challenges: climate, environment and energy, migration, technology and science, economic and social. These global issues affect every single human being on earth.

This is the paradigm we are in today. The challenges are so powerful, so radical, so disruptive that they seem to go beyond us, that they sometimes seem detached from our daily lives.Indeed, occasionally, we are tempted to ignore them, but then climate disasters, the cities’ pollution, the news on TV serve as a wake-up call to reality. However, more fundamentally, as we struggle with our own fears and uncertainties, we often, without questioning too much, take advantage of the ease of life which is in turn often contributing to exactly those challenges that we are so uncertain about.

On the one hand, we are afraid of progress, on the other we take advantage of it. The world is creating more and more wealth and yet inequalities are growing. Our way of life has never been so easy and its climate, environmental, social consequences never so dramatic. We are taking advantage of globalization and wish increasingly to close our borders. The questions asked are complicated, but we are looking for simple answers. We love fairy tales and too often we do not enough question magicians.

The world is not always ideal, but this is the only one we have. The challenges we face can worry or enchant us: we do not all have the same perspective and above all we do not all have the same perspectives either.

The fractures, the upheavals, the changes in front of us lead to reactions which tend to be conflated, although they often are of a different nature. Some transformations have or will have for many direct consequences on the working conditions, the financial and personal situations. Consequently, they are often felt as existential fears. These situations may not be underestimated; they explain changes in the political landscape and social movements. They cannot be generalized either. Indeed, some fears or anxieties are more diffuse and emotional. They do not threaten our lives but force us to step out of our comfort zone.

Conflating the issues is dangerous since they hide very different situations. Accommodating those who are – often brutally – affected by change is the very foundation of a modern society. The active support and collective contribution to these transformations is the other side of the same coin. These two faces of the same coin represent the required investment for a society in order to emerge strengthened from these transformations and become stronger to better resist to the challenges to come.

Protecting its comfort zones may seem appealing. This mindset, however, prevents to achieve successfully transformation. It weakens even more all those who are already weak and is a burden for future generations.