The Next Big Thing

Every once in a while something huge comes up, and turns Earth’s inhabitants upside down. First a few meteors came and wiped out the dinosaurs. Later there were a few waves of the bubonic plague. Then the Spanish and Portuguese went to Latin America with their diseases and screwed the place over. More recently, Marx came up with his interpretation of the world social order and initiated a century-long debate confronting Socialism and Capitalism. I’m curious as to what the next thing will be.

Though these concern only me, I’d like to venture three hypotheses as to what could happen:

1) We could screw ourselves up, by means of a widespread generalized chemical-biological-nuclear war. But despite the idiots running the world these days, I think people are cautious when it comes to using WMD’s. I’m hoping there are enough barriers set in place to prevent a rash and thoughtless use of mass-murder technology, and though the president of such and such country may not be an arms or international conflict expert (or expert at anything else for that matter), her/his counseling generals and advisors usually know one or two things about it. This is probably, or at any rate hopefully, the least likely major change to affect us.

2) More seriously though, there is Marx’s prediction that one day or another people who are treated unfairly will rise and revolt. It makes sense, when seen from the poor country that I come from. Humans should not accept unfair situations, and revolutionary spirits are extremely contagious (just look at 1848 Europe or the post-WW2 rise in Socialism for an example). But after a century of Soviet power, head-to-head against the US, after Khruschev proclaimed that Communism would put an end to Capitalism, and after socialist ideals circled the world over and found converts everywhere, our world still is Capitalist, with social classes, economic discrepancies, and opportunity inequalities. I don’t like it, but over a century after Marx made his claims he is still proven wrong. Capitalist societies still exist, and the good news is they can even grow into less profiteering, more ethical societies. Just look at the Scandinavian plus Finland and Iceland countries for an example.

3) The last event, which I think is the most serious, is an ecological revolution, orchestrated by Mother Nature herself. I say this is most serious because we do not control nature, and once a mechanism we have no control over is initiated, we have to undergo its consequences. If the ozone has a hole, if the climate increases seriously, if we finish freshwater supplies, then we are, for lack of a better word, screwed. Seriously, we’re fucked. I’m talking proper metaphorical-penis-in-the-metaphorical-ass, oh-my-god-this-hurts fucked.

Alright ladies and gentlemen, now that you’ve had a chance to look at the menu, which will it be? The social upheaval a la Marx? Or the ecological disaster a la Greenpeace? The chef recommends fasting, but you have no choice but to order.

Well let’s see what’s what.

In the case of social upheaval, we certainly deserve it. Forget Michael Moore's true but relatively minor claims that the US isn’t really a meritocracy. I’d like to focus on what’s happening in the really poor world. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (the British equivalent of Economy/Finance Minister) has been actively fighting to reduce or cancel poor countries’ debts. He also actively tries to donate more money. Which is a very good thing, but as he and other leaders have pointed out, it’s not enough. What is really necessary is to remove selfish leaders, educate the people, and ensure that the countries have strong equitable cooperative governments. Lovely. But is anyone doing anything? Nope. Myself included. I mean, I’ve stopped reading articles or columns about Darfur (and that’s just one popular media topic) because I feel guilty at doing nothing. But we could go to parts of Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, N. Korea, to name a few…), the Middle East, Central America, Europe (Albania, Kosovo…), and even neighborhoods in the USA, and find problems there. Besides, offering money isn’t as effective as making a real human effort to improve someone’s life. And are we doing it? Traditionally, it was we the college students who were most active in bringing social change. But what’s our generation doing? (deuh, anyone for football? booze?)…

So yes, if the world was fair, a large part of the world should get a kick in the balls (I forgive women, it’s not their fault anyways :) ) for what it has done and failed to do. But as I said, there is a difference between theory and reality. Victims have accepted unfairness for as long as humanity existed, and they probably will continue to do so for a very long time. Sorry Marx.

When it comes to the environment however, don’t expect such leniency. The environment is a self-fixing mechanism, and it has never shied away from destroying an unsustainable link in a chain. Nature has no reason to want us to survive. We are so in-love with the miracle of our existence that we can’t accept our existence might not be wanted. But if we don't respect the way a mechanism functions, it will get rid of us. And we're not respecting.

What energy should we use when the remaining oil reserves are close to being used up? What will happen when freshwater is low in poor countries (circa 2020)? People will fight for what’s remaining (I’m not making a reflection, despite how tempting it is, on the War in Iraq). But forget us: what do we do if temperature rise too much? Nature will solve it, and in a very simple way: temperature rises will melt ice and bring more storms, thus more rain and risk of flood. In that way, just like we sweat to cool down, the Earth will sweat to cool down. But if you think you can just keep a nice stock of umbrellas and live somewhere in high altitude, think of this: too much cooling likely means that there will be another ice age. Then what will you do? Snowfights?

Besides, heat means less agricultural production. In 2003 Europe suffered Euros 6 billion worth of losses because of that hottest summer in 500 years. Worldwide effects of climate change cost us 160,000 lives per year, according to Greenpeace. And that will double by 2020. Dandy.

I know that my own generation is in for one hell of a rough ride. However, just like we inherited a harsher world from our parents, what will we cede to our children? I’m dead fucking serious. There will be water shortages. We will need to find sustainable alternative energy sources. The temperature will rise. There will be, by 2025, more than 8 billion people breathing at the same time as you. That’s just four Olympic games away. If I live for 80 years and die in 2065, the world will have been through the roller coaster coaster ride of the century. Literally.

And then, what kind of socially stressed world will we be leaving them? We can already feel effects of the bitter poor attacking unaware rich. When it comes right down to it, that’s what terrorism is about. When two groups are rich, they have everything to lose and nothing to win. But when one is poor, it has nothing to lose, and everything to win. Is that what Marx was talking about? Or is it just a scary coincidence? Regardless, it’s happening now at movie theatres and airports near you.

Call me a pessimist. After all, who am I to complain? I live well, go to Penn, travel a lot, have a loving family, friends to die for, am in more than good health, and dress the way I want to. And who is this kid speaking about children? He doesn’t have a half-serious girlfriend (yes ladies, I am available. Not you, Yasmin). What else could I want?

Well I want the same, at least the same, for my children. I want my world for my children. I don’t want them to read fairy tales about a time when you could see stars at night behind the thick smog. I don’t want them to not know the joy of running in the forest because, lo and behold, there is no forest to run in. I want them to study the diversity of modern biology, not ancient biology. But seeing the way things are going, they won’t be getting it.

We’re all going to have children, hopefully, or we’ll all be uncles, aunts, godfathers, godmothers, mentors, guides, or friends. I don't care who you are, you will have some interaction with children. That gives us a responsibility, a collective responsibility. We all live here, and are all accountable for each other’s actions, because we all suffer the consequences. Sure, we didn’t deserve to have a world in less shape than the one our parents had, but our children don’t deserve to have one worse than ours. We couldn’t do anything in the first case, but we can in the second. And if we can, then we must.

Human Interactions

I've been thinking for quite some time about the nature of human interactions. As you know, I am obsessed with knowing (which is different from meeting) people, and you may not know I like to peer into other people's lives, and let them peer into mine. That is what constitutes the significant moments of our lives. So I have come up with a sort of theory, which follows:

We all lead our lives, with our habits and our routines, and in general most of us repeat a lot of the same things over the days. And we all lead our lives in our mind and heart, thinking and feeling through our days. That thought and feeling process is what I choose to call consciousness.

Now think of this proposition: this life we lead is on a three-dimensional plane, where the 3 dimensions are space, time, and consciousness. We are all, to some extent, like rays (i.e. geometric rays) flying in a 3-D plane, each with our own unique trajectories. The content of those rays is our consciousness: what we think, what we are aware of, who we are, how we view the events in plane we’re traveling inside of. We have routines, and as long as we live by those routines we’re flying in straight undisturbed lines. Those routines are, to name a few, the routine way in which we take a shower, walk to class, sit in our usual chair in a classroom, or talk of the same topics with the same people, over and over again. I’m not condemning this, I’m just saying that they are all part of a routine which doesn’t change and therefore doesn’t affect our trajectories. When we go through a day where nothing special happenned, we fly a straight, undisturbed line.

Then once in a while an unplanned event happens, a dent in the straight line: you crash into somebody else’s ray, and that intersection, because it was unexpected, disturbs the normal course of events. Perhaps you were supposed to go finish homework, but a friend from elementary school studying in Japan you hadn’t heard or thought of in 5 years runs into you on the street, and you decide to have coffee. What I mean by “crash into someone else’s trajectory” is that you have an unexpected interaction with someone that surprises you and changes the direction of your ray.

For example, as happened to me one morning in the Montreal Trudeau Airport. I was expecting to sit down, wait for the Customs officer to call me, fill a slip of paper, answer some questions, get my passport stamped, and get in my plane. Instead, here's what happened: I walked in the Secondary Inspection Customs office and a French guy was already waiting there. He’d been waiting for a rather long time and was understandably sore about it. When I came he spilled his heart out, complaining about the fact that the Customs stopped him for a stupid reason (he’d made a spelling mistake filling an airport card) and his problems with American customs in general. He then told me about how he entered the US eight years ago on a tourist visa, got married, and was given then denied the Green card because he got married in an illegal situation. Then he told me he was in Montreal for his cousin’s wedding, that he was Basque (people I love and admire for their strength), and had since divorced from his American wife.

Do you understand what happened? In those brief minutes two improbable people's (a Basque and a Moroccan in Montreal, how probable is that?) ‘rays’ had unexpectedly intersected. What strikes me most is that that discussion was sincere and unimaginably dense. As I like to imagine in my mind, two distinct rays intersected, folded into one same trajectory for a small period of time, and had deep insight about each other during that period. At that precise moment (time) and place (space) we had met and I was peeking into his consciousness.

Now to take this point farther, I ask myself the question “What is the effect of an interaction?” Obviously, there’s the fact that I’m still wondering how this outspoken Basque guy is doing two months later. More importantly however, when an interaction is sincere (not small talk like that “the weather sucks” bullshit), the two rays’ trajectories are affected by each other. Granted, the example with this Basque guy isn’t a very good one. I mean apart for the fact that we shared a problem and a few good laughs about American customs, he’s insignificant. However, I have a very good example in store to illustrate a major ‘ray collision’:

Last summer, in a typical Othman-at-Paris adventure, I came out of a subway car. To make things simple, let’s say my subway was headed north, and the opposite subway would have been heading south. I made intense eye contact with a beautiful girl standing on the opposite direction (therefore heading south). We were both overwhelmed by each other’s presence and couldn’t take our eyes off each other. I crossed to her side of the subway hoping to meet/approach her in some way (I still have no idea how I would’ve approached her). Unfortunately, to reach her I had to go through an underground tunnel, breaking the eye contact between us, and by the time I got there she had already entered her subway car. We made eye contact again when she was leaving, and to make a very long story short, I took the next train in her direction and followed her hypothetical trajectory for about 50 km out of Paris, not knowing where she was going but hoping fortune would land me there. I know what you’re thinking, I'm crazy, but remember I’m a romantic. Besides, that’s not the point...

What I’m saying is that the brutal honesty and sincerity of our very short connection (no words spoken and not more than a few seconds long) so profoundly stirred us that we couldn’t take our eyes off of each other and I followed her train not knowing where she would get off, for about an hour or so. That is what I call a major intrusion in the trajectory of a ray. She completely screwed up my mind, my plans, and my schedule for that day. And I can still remember that girl from July 15, 2005 at the St. Michel station about five months later (though it’s true there are a lot of women that I remember). My point is that there was an unexpected collision of our rays: I made eye contact with a beautiful girl and we were both interested in each other, and as a result both of us were considerably shook by the collision of our two rays.

And I’d like to take my point just little bit further (for the last time, I promise). I’ve illustrated the fact that whenever these intersections happen we never remain unaffected (unless you’re a heartless robot). Depending on the nature of the experience, we are marked more or less profoundly. Now take this last metaphor:

First consider the physical principle that anything with a mass exerts some gravity. Now imagine that we are little meteors flying around in outer-space in our respective trajectories. Our mass exerts minimal gravitational attraction on other objects, and can therefore affect the flight of other rocks. Now, I believe that the more an interaction is sincere and charged, the greater our mass becomes and the more we affect each other’s trajectory. The beauty is that sometimes we are so sincere and the interaction is so profound on our masses that we attract, and never quite separate again. And that, in my most humble opinion, is perhaps what they call love.