Project Vision 21

It has been said that soccer is the most important of the least important things in life. For that reason, soccer can sometimes teach us lessons about life. That happened to me recently when, after a match that Boca Juniors should have won but did not, a well-known sports journalist wrote, “This is not Boca, but what remains of Boca.”

Reading that sentence in the context of our planet today, a different version of that statement came to mind: “This is not the world, but what remains of the world.” Perhaps we do not live among the ruins of the world, but rather in a world that has been diminished—where little or nothing remains of what humanity once hoped to become.

Throughout history there have been many crises, some so catastrophic that they nearly led to the extinction of our species. The most recent catastrophe, the Bronze Age Collapse 3,200 years ago, was so devastating that (I believe) we have still not fully recovered from that severe blow.

Yet it seems we have not learned the lessons of the past, even though we should have. This is not the first time the world—understood in a sociocultural sense—has collapsed around us. For that reason, it is difficult to find reasons or excuses for failing to see that we may be living in what remains of the world.

I once read that polar bears prefer, when searching for food, to approach seal pups because the young seals do not move away or hide when they see the bear approaching. Apparently, the seals’ lack of experience with polar bears prevents them from recognizing the danger they are in—with unpleasant consequences for them.

But we humans have experienced numerous global transformations in the past—often unexpected, always irreversible, and rarely chosen. For that reason, there is no excuse for failing to see or understand the moment of profound transition we now face.

That situation reminded me of a documentary I once watched that analyzed the behavior of moose walking along railroad tracks in the northern regions of North America. Unfortunately for those animals, many of them never learned to step aside in time when a train was coming down the tracks. Why? Because moose do not “think” about trains.

Something similar certainly happens to us in everyday life: we walk the same path again and again, in such a way that we fail to react when danger approaches—even when that danger is real, undeniable, and moving toward us at full speed.

There is yet another factor that blinds us to the present reality: fear—but not fear of the future. Rather, fear of the monsters of the abyss.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §146 (1886)