Canadian futurist Thomas Homer-Dixon was in Melbourne a couple of days ago. He says that the world faces five major stresses: different population growth rates for rich and poor countries; energy scarcity; environmental damage in poor countries; climate change; and the widening gap between rich and poor. These combined stresses result in substantial social turmoil.
According to a newspaper report, Homer-Dixon made an observation which I find very interesting. He said, “The problem is you are getting a huge number of these very smart people who could be helping us solve these problems who have no connection to the rest of humanity because they are so wealthy.” In other words, he seems to be suggesting that increasing wealth actually leads to dislocation from other people. The world’s problems tend to fall off your radar screen when you no longer face the same daily challenges as the vast mass of humanity.
It seems to me that, in an age when the poorest people in Australia and other wealthy nations still have an income five times as high as the median global income, we have become completely blind as to what life is like for the majority of people. If we’re going to address the crises which the world is facing, we have to get out of our cosy couches and start learning more about what is going on in the world.