Now that we’re all settled into a new decade, let’s think a little bit about the future and the past. It’s a new year, new resolutions, new plans but also new… same. Why in so many cases we, humans, can make so much effort, in some cases we just ignore everything around us.
This reflection comes out of our (smaller 😉 ) neighbouring country, Australia. As you probably know Australia is on fire and it struggles a lot with drought, high temperatures and fires. It’s so bad that apparently there’s one region where the smoke is 14km high and created its own weather system sending lightning back to earth and setting off new fires. It’s just insane. But that’s not what is really crazy. What’s really crazy is when the whole New South Wales state introduces a total fire ban and then makes an “exemption” for Sydney NYE fireworks.
Now I’m all but a fan of fireworks, it’s beautiful but it does harm animals. It’s for the public and let the people have fun times. But when is a better time to grow the awareness of the situation, of showing the consequences of our own actions than cancelling the show for the people. You can deny global warming all you want, you can’t deny the fires and high temperatures because you’re breathing the smoke and you’re hot every day. So whether you like it or not it affects you, it affects your family, your neighbour and many other people. Why not make a change, for a new decade and cancel the fireworks, make a stand. Send the money to fight the fire, educate people about consequences of global warming, and if you still in global warming denial, just spend the time with the family and pray for the hard-working firefighters.
This is what upsets me, whether it’s a decade or century, we humans don’t really learn. We make amazing technological progress but mentally we’re crawling. I don’t want to go much into politics because I don’t like politics, but who else can make a stand other than we, small people, small business owners. I don’t expect Zuckerberg to lead the change, but I’d love to see hundreds of thousands of small business owners to do so. Or even just normal people like you and me.
Here’s what you should do. Change, and change drastically for the better, whatever that “better” is for you. It’s a New Year and your resolution should be drastic. Do you want to drop some weight? Maybe think about eating unprocessed food only from local farmers and stop buying in a big supermarket. Do you want to create a business? Think about how it will change the world and you personally rather than how much money you want to make. Do you want to fight climate change? Do it yourself, show people around you that it is possible.
I’m tired of our humans making such a small political and philosophical progress. We are on a brink of times when AI will drive a car and we still haven’t regulated cryptocurrency that exists for years (now I know that cryptocurrency is really built not to be controlled but the regulation law should be there to protect the citizens). We’re so afraid of the change that we only react for the change but we’re rarely proactive. We’re talking about dropping the carbon emission so we can slow down the climate change before 2050. Great, but what about 2100? Hell, what about 2500 what then? Why can’t we just start a new decade, sit down and say – ok, we’re done with this shit! We have to change. I mean we’re all going to die eventually but we are sitting at the stake – can we stop thinking whether we should keep playing with matches and start thinking why are we at the stake in the first place and how can we change the stake into a comfortable sofa?
I know that I literally said in a blog post a day or two ago that small steps are good, but for humanity as a collective small is too late. There’s 7.5 billion of us, the earth had enough. Small changes of 7.5 billion people might change but a sudden big change of 7.5 billion people will definitely change. And it’s not difficult, start with something simple but drastic. You produce a bag of rubbish a week? Try taking plastic containers to the shop and stop buying plastic packaging. Do you want to drive less? Buy an electric scooter, start your everyday trip to work with some fun and drop emission to zero. Those are just examples but I’m sure you can find yourself one thing that you can drastically change.
So here are my resolutions that I already mentioned. They might not be big for some but for me, they are big based on my own 2019.
- I want to drop some weight, but not too crazy. I just want to feel good,
- I want to create a startup that changes the world in a good way. And if it’s successful I want this startup main mission to be social responsibility,
- I want to eat less meat. And if you know me, you’d know that it’s like teaching a tiger to stop eating meat. But I do want to drastically drop it – maybe even stop,
- I want to help people understand that climate change is not harmful for us. It’s harmful to our children and grandchildren. We probably won’t feel it that bad but there’s really a question whether our children will have the ability to feel at all
- I will most likely step out of WordPress community due to some reasons I’ll describe later this year when I’ll make the final decision. But I would love to step into the young, and especially unprivileged community, education system. I don’t know much but what I do know I can teach some kids that hopefully can change the world in the future.
That is my plan. What’s yours? Despite this grim and serious post, I do genuinely wish you all again Happy New Year, a happy new decade and I hope that your dreams will come true as much as my ones come true all the time.