There is a classic Buddhist story about a farmer and a horse. The moral of the story: you never know whether something is a blessing or a curse. With time and perspective, curses look like blessings and blessings look like curses.
Most people, myself included, have direct personal experience with the concept. We’ve had the unimaginable catastrophe — the end of a marriage, public failure, existential loss — that ended up being the spark of new growth, discovery and happiness. And we’ve finally arrived at the dream — dream job, dream house, dream spouse — only to think “careful what you ask for.”
As a society, we are heading towards one of those moments right now.
History is rife with them. In September, 1938, Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Adolf Hitler, ‘solving’ the “ Czechoslovakian problem” (the Czechs, of course, didn’t sign-off on the “solution”), and declared “Peace for our time.” Less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland.
At the time, Chamberlain looked like a hero. War had been diverted! Phew! Dodged that bullet!
But denial is not the same as solution. The “blessing” that was eventually mocked as “peace for a time” gave Hitler the time to finalize the re-armament of Germany. Many historians believe that decisive action rather than appeasement may have prevented the German aggression that was to come. We’ll never know for sure.
The war that followed was so horrific that it burned certain truths into the retinas of all those who survived. Foremost of these was the centrality of equal human rights and the rejection of dehumanization and ethnocentrism. It wasn’t just a theoretical principle; it was a hard-learned lesson through devastating loss. The world had tangible proof of the inevitable end to any system that treats some humans as less human than others — and a commitment to never forget. The blessing of a shallow peace that turned into the curse of a global war led to a new blossoming of human potential; a new blessing.
And so, for a time, Western societies re-organized themselves along these principles. We took the idea that everyone is equal under the law seriously. We knew that we were falling short on that promise, but we made efforts to move towards a noble goal. We recognized that a rising tide should raise all boats and set policies and laws to ensure that it happened.
And it worked. Prosperity, education, health, and well-being increased. Rights were extended, and wrongs started to be addressed. It even seemed possible that we might eventually overcome many of those old, petty, pointless, ethnic divides.
But as so often happens, the blessing soured. Somewhere along the way, the old American dream of a comfortable life in exchange for an honest day’s work morphed into the fantasy of winning the lottery — unspeakable wealth with no effort. Ideals about fairness changed into fetishes of greed and the society changed to reflect it. “Citizens” turned into “consumers” and happiness became synonymous with consumption.
And that is where we find ourselves today: staring into the curse that is to come. Our insatiable craving for more trumped our recognition of the inevitable end to any system that treats some humans as more human than others; that thinks it’s possible to exchange the suffering of others for the pleasure of a few.
The decline of democracy around the globe and the inability of people to talk through differences with their neighbours. The relentless attacks of predatory capitalists on even the most vulnerable. The rabid sense of victimization by the comfortable when anyone questions their unearned privilege. The visible destruction of the very ecosystem on which human life depends and the militant refusal to change in the face of overwhelming evidence of the grave threat we face. These are not separate crises. They are all simply the result of one core problem:
We forgot.
The wages of sin are death, we are told, and we have built a society based entirely on the seven deadly sins: greed, gluttony, anger, envy, sloth, lust, and pride. What other end did we expect?
But this is where a curse can be turned into a blessing.
The rules of the dance are simple: the curse is transformed to blessing when the lesson is learned — when the truth is remembered. You can choose to learn the easy way or the hard way, but you are trapped in the curse until you do. And, until you do, the curse will ramp up until it gets your full, undivided attention.
Sadly, it looks like the world has chosen the hard way. The world continues on “as normal” in the face of events that would have been the stuff of dystopian science-fiction even a few years ago. Our institutions and leaders double-down on the same lies and delusions that got us here and the average person-in-the-street zones out.
So the horror will grow until the lesson is learned. World War II cost over 75 million lives — over 3% of the total world population — and over $11 trillion in today’s dollars. Mother Nature’s revenge will likely be far more costly.
The good news is that the lesson will be learned — one way or another. The system balances itself. It has no choice. If need be, the system will reset itself — revert to the basics of Life and try again. It’s happened before. It will happen again.
The only question is: will we be here when the system resets? Or will we be a relic of the archaeological record; a victim of our own hubris?
The only choice is whether we learn the easy way, or the hard way. And now is the last chance we have to choose.
