“According to an old saying, it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. The quest to discover feeds creativity in all of its fields, not just science. If we get to the goal, the human spirit will wither and die. But I think we are never going to be able to stop: we will grow in complexity, or in depth, and we will always find ourselves in the center of an expanding horizon of possibilities.” – Stephen Hawking.

I have read this quote years ago and it taught me to re-invent myself every time I got the chance to do so in order to keep myself in movement, not getting stuck and not getting settled with the routine.

Many times, those who maintain a positive or optimistic point of view regarding the social and economic changes implied in creating –amend– a symbiotic relationship with nature, get the same question over and over again from the skeptic… How are you going to make it? How do you think you will change the world?

And some get surprised when I tell them I DON’T KNOW how we are going to manage to change the world, but that is the challenge, and hope is set on being able to do so. Having as a goal a sustainable lifestyle within society is the horizon, what serves to guide us and not necessarily to be reached. How to achieve this is a call to all of society to get down to work.

 “The problem has to do with will. Just getting the job gone is not sufficient. (…) It is knowing that the job is being done that is the grabber.” – Fred Alan Wolf. Taking the Quantum Leap. 1989

Hence, let’s enjoy the fact of owning a latent transforming potential in each of one of us, whether we choose changing our consumption habits, studying nature actively in order to understand it, expressing awareness art, talking and debating in every circle of people we encounter. Lay out reality before us to transform it, not to fear her.

“We are convinced that the world can save itself. No matter how big the human problems can be, a positive aspect exists. These problems were not created by cosmic facts, external to the Homo sapiens control. They are the result of a bad human negotiation, in essence given by the discrepancies between our old mentality and the new world, a world created by our old mentality. The human beings created this mess and we must solve it. Then, when people ask us if we are optimistic or pessimistic, we always respond that we are optimistic about what we can achieve, but rather pessimistic about if humanity is willing to do the effort to achieve it.

The reason of our optimism is historic. Given the political and social will, recent history has shown us that societies can undergo rapid and dramatic transformations.

We hope you are the kind of citizen capable of transmitting these messages to their political representatives, or to dedicate yourself to politics. We ask you to pay your debt to society, investing at least a ten percent of your time informing yourself about the human problematic and try to create a better world for you and your descendants. Only a massive movement can solve de population´s crisis, the resources and the environment before is too late” – Paul R. Ehrlich y Anne H. Ehrlich, “La explosión demográfica. El principal Problema Ecológico. Capítulo XII: Lo que Usted puede hacer”. Ed. Biblioteca Científica Salvat. 1993. Págs. 253/4 y 257

(The bold is mine)

Until next week,

Brian Longstaff.-

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