The Big Answer

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MCs cannot change the past, but they are the context that will enable us to have a future. MCs are essential to needed world change. As people improve their lifestyles and become secure, satisfied, and happy with their existence, they will soon be able to think about the rest of humanity. Those living in MCs will have the personal security and compassion to look at world problems and act to solve them. As Bertrand Russell said: "If the world could live for a few generations without war, war would come to seem as absurd as dueling has come to seem to us. No doubt there would still be some homicidal maniacs, but they would no longer be heads of governments."

If the world could live for a few generations without war, war would come to seem as absurd as dueling

The most excellent solutions presuppose that people need to change, but never before has a context been presented in which this change can happen. And naturally, that's where MCs come in.

In doing this research, it was difficult to systematically categorize the symptoms—poverty, war, drugs, excessive military spending, environmental destruction, and nuclear weapons proliferation—because they're all interconnected and interrelated. There's only one problem; that's the beauty of it and, at the same time, the horror of it. "Solving" one or even a few symptoms—like a doctor cutting out cancerous growths—won't get the Earth back on track. We must heal the organism; in doing so all symptoms will eventually dissipate. The research for the novel The Forest Through the Trees was in itself a forest-through-the-trees experience.

Some of the best sources of information carefully outline the interrelationships among Earth's problems and then present insightful and holistic views and solutions. (Academy Award–winning documentarian Al Gore says in a wonderful documentary that if people begin to feel a sense of hopelessness about the present, it depreciates their commitment to the future.) But only rarely, offhandedly, and indirectly do any of these sources dare to look at why humans have let the world get so close to the point of no return. No one asks directly: What has made us so greedy, so selfish, so self-absorbed, so terrified of each other, that we continue to live as if there were no tomorrow? (And, of course, living like there is no tomorrow is insuring that there will be none.) See also Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google, Privacy, and Anonymity—also about greed and living like there is no tomorrow.

What has made us so greedy, so selfish, so self-absorbed, so terrified of each other, that we continue to live as if there were no tomorrow?

What follows is far from being a source of pride for humanity. In WORLDWIDE SYMPTOMS, you'll see how people have decimated other people in war and with terrorism; how trillions of dollars spent on the military for "security" is a major factor in most of Earth's problems and most "insecurity," how funds that proliferate the military, ultimately, can provide solutions; how the Earth and its people are suffering from hunger and poverty; and how we have, in some cases, irretrievably affected the Earth with pollution and devastated its resources.

Air pollution

We recommend one book in particular besides the novel cited above. It presents a comprehensive view of the problems we face along with reasonable, attainable solutions. We have briefly quoted from it and it is one of our reference books for this section. It's called The Gaia Peace Atlas, Survival into the Third Millennium.

In Good News and Bad News, we have carefully outlined what is going wrong in the world, the main sources of the problems, what can work to bring the world back from the brink (yes, the world is poised on the edge of a dangerous cliff, and it will go over this cliff soon if nothing changes). It's the ultimate world survival plan.