The Modern Student

“Problems” is a word I very rarely utter. I use careful consideration whenever I do use it, and then I am still hesitant about doing it. Why? Because the less I use the term, the less problems there are in my reality, and it works like a charm. I am not, however, disillusioned regarding dilemmas and problems of our modern world.

The past 20 years have been a relatively calm period in history, or so we would like to think. It would seem that our world, for the most part, is in a rather peaceful state, apart from a few exceptions here and there. These exceptions would include the war on terror. It used to be waged in Iraq a while ago, but these days I am not so sure anymore about where exactly the battlefield is. As I see it, according the most of the world media, this battleground is all over the globe, and the enemy is pretty much everywhere. It includes some religious conflicts which has been going on for who knows how long as well. In the past year I have frequently heard the term “Holy War”, that was at least until recently, when I stopped paying attention to what is going on the international news channels on the television. 12 killed in suicide bomber attack here, another 7 injured in a car bombing there, you know the headlines.

Then we have the more familiar problems, or at least the more “modern” ones. Global warming has been around for a good while now. Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient truth’ is already old news, shocking as it might have been. Most people know about it, what it is, how it is going to impact our planet in a couple of decades. Fossil fuels are slowly but surely being depleted, although each year more barrels of crude oil are being consumed, fed into the international combustion engine.

A lot of talk has been going on about the gap between the rich and the poor as well. Those who have are getting more, and those who have not are losing more, like it is a social “rule” or agreement that is the product of a greedy economic environment of some sort. Almost like Pareto’s 80/20 rule, 10% or less of the world’s population receives 90% or more of the world’s income.

And yes, racism is still there. It rears its head in almost every country and society, varying only in degrees of severity. In South Africa, where I live, it is still a huge problem, despite the fact that the world media turns a seemingly deliberate blind eye to what is going on here. Another interesting phenomenon is that in this country, you only ever hear white people being accused of racism, with exceptions amounting to about 1 in 2000 or something similarly ridiculous. This is probably the case in other places around the world as well. It must be the case, because you see, such occurrences have a tendency to repeat indefinitely throughout the world, in large and small scale, creating an infinite but reoccurring pattern that can be observed in the smallest villages to the largest cities. Go and read about Mandelbrot sets if this pattern idea seems too incomprehensible or foreign to you.

You are familiar with all of these boring old problems. They are as familiar as they are unsolved. Why am I going on about these issues? What am I getting at?

Ignorance is bliss

I do not wear the banner of morality or ethics, nor any other banner for that matter. I am, however, by measure of physical age, part of the world’s youth. The fact that this youth is being handed a world with numerous unresolved problems is not a new phenomenon. Again it can be seen as a reoccurring pattern. It has been going on for thousands of years.

What is interesting about this pattern is that it is not that difficult to change. If you go and read about the Mandelbrot sets and the principles behind their mathematics, you will see that if you change one small thing in a Mandelbrot formula, the whole pattern (or visual image) changes entirely. Does the same property apply to reality, which is seemingly so factual and objective? Let me say this – ‘Maybe’, and ‘What If’. In general, we are tremendously ignorant. There are always the exceptions, as in the case of the extremists and the fanatics, whatever they stand for, but we generally tend to be ignorant.

It is pretty easy to keep a blind eye to our so-called global problems. You probably will not be here when the shit really hits the fan. Global warming is a good example of a ‘distant’ problem, and we have not even begun to hear the thunder rolling in the distance over the mountains. The extrapolation of when the effects of it will really begin to impact us on a catastrophic scale is still far away, right?

So what?

If you probably will not be here when the ‘trouble’ starts (if you think it is not already here), then why should you care? I do have an answer for myself. You do not have to care. It is a matter of how you exercise your freedom of choice. People who are very trapped in their conditioning might argue that this statement is totally immoral and unethical, religiously incorrect and blah blah....

Are you even aware of the fact that you have free will? That is a topic which I will voice in another article.

So it is your choice – and you can always choose, but most people have somehow forgotten it. Having said that, let us suppose that Earth, our planet on which we live, has a kind of awareness, or primitive sentient intelligence. This could simply be called consciousness. If our planet had consciousness, it is obviously aware of us and what we are doing. Generally, we are damaging it. What do you do when you have a fungal infection on your skin?

What is the point?

What the <censored> this got to do with students? You see, there is a certain matter of ‘urgency’ that is staring the younger people in the face. These ‘younger people’ are according to me the 16 to the 22 year olds. Younger people are not really thinking about stuff outside of their immediate environment, although that might soon change. The majority of the older population, and I do acknowledge the exceptions with great respect, do not really have the incentive of urgency about what is happening to their world, because of the “I won’t be here” mentality”. This urgency that I speak of is elegantly expressed in Eckhart Tolle’s book ‘A New Earth’. Not quoting his exact words, he says that there humanity is now presented with an ultimatum that says “evolve or die”. Gloomy and depressing? I would rather call it ‘the natural way of things’ and say that it is exciting. Why not see it as an amazing opportunity for humankind to transcend its current limitations.

But then again, you have freedom of choice. It is your choice how you feel about what, and what you do, over and above morals and ethics, religions ways and cultural beliefs. For me, I choose to make informed decisions.