You know the old saying. “Statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics.” That may be 100% true, and maybe you don’t take statistics too seriously.

 

Regardless of your trust of statistical measurements, there is something alarming about the World Clock website found at http://poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf. It gives running yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, and present estimates of several activities occurring on our planet. It measures the continual stream of everything from traffic accidents to HIV infections to global population growth to gallons of oil pumped to the number of computers produced.

 

At minimum, the World Clock reminds us that nothing stands still—it’s the whole “time and tide” thing. Maybe most of us could use an occasional nudge awakening us from our self-focused slumber. It’s easy to become so introspective and overly focused on our own narrow slice of the world that we overlook the global picture.

 

We all live on what Buckminster Fuller called “Spaceship Earth.” Notwithstanding all of the scientific research to date, life has not yet been located elsewhere in the universe. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist; it’s just that the only life we know of exists here and only here. Knowing that this is our home helps us to awaken to the reality that our individual and collective choices play a major role in shaping our physical environment, our living space, and our human geography.

 

Increasingly, social scientists, philosophers, and spiritual thinkers are reaching similar conclusions about the human contribution to spaceship earth. We are the most highly developed in terms of consciousness. Collectively and individually, humanity can consciously think about and participate in our development and the care of the creation. Perhaps, our earliest ancestors recognized this unique responsibility. The Genesis account explains God’s intention for humanity; namely to tend and keep the garden. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15).

 

Of course, several factors influence the environmental, political, and cultural changes that contribute to societal transformation. Many of them may be out of our control, and others we simply perceive to reside outside our reach. Nevertheless, we have the ability to consciously shape much of our world. We decide everything from what material we use in the clothes we wear to the power sources we employ for the heating of our homes to the forms of entertainment we engage in. Economists are coming to see that market forces are created by collective human decision-making; they don’t exist in an etherworld of their own. Social networking websites generate trends based on thousands—if not millions—of individual decisions.

 

In his book Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken explores the nature of society’s current transformational process. He notes that it has taken on the shape of an organic, even biological, structure. He draws from biologist Mahlon Hoagland who identifies traits of all living organisms. The first is that life builds from the bottom up (Blessed Unrest, p.175). Just as complex organisms like the human body develop from the basic cell structure, society grows from the grassroots level.

 

On one hand, this may cause people to feel powerless because they may not be witnessing deep change over a wide-scale area—or even as broadly in their local community as they would like. However, thousands (or even millions) of small groups, nonprofit organizations, and ordinary people who build from the bottom up affect change globally.

 

Looking at the World Clock may cause shock and awe. It might even lead to despair, causing you to feel out of sync with a world apparently spinning out of control. Yet, if we simply throw up our hands in despair or determinism, we will abandon our tilling and keeping of the garden. Meanwhile, even a decision to disengage and withdraw from society contributes to overall societal evolution.

 

In their inspiring and revolutionary book Breakthrough, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger write that in light of the multiple crises we face today “it is hard not to feel overwhelmed. And while fear is an appropriate response to crisis, it matters what we do with it. Fear may be inevitable, but despair is a choice” (Breakthrough, p.10).

 

Precisely. In the same way as intentional ignorance or withdrawal are choices, so is despair. We can choose eat, drink, and be merry while spaceship earth spins seemingly out of control, or we can engage society creatively with innovative solutions to pressing issues.

 

Global issues may seem too massive to be solved by changing to newly designed light bulbs or by working with your local government to eradicate human trafficking. However, Jesus promised that the small gift of a cold drink of water makes a legitimate difference in the world. “Inasmuch as you did it to the least of love my brethren, you did it unto me.”

 

While the clock may be ticking, it isn’t necessarily running down. Clocks tick because that’s what they’ve been designed to do. Millions of “small” changes won’t stop the clock. They will, however, cause different numbers to be accounted for. How many acts of kindness and compassion are being performed? How much pollution is being cleaned up? How many hungry children are being fed? How many cases of HIV and malaria are being prevented and cured?

 

We look different than we did a millennium ago—not to mention a century, decade, and year ago because the clock keeps ticking. The society of the twenty-second century—and that is just about 90 years away—will be different than ours today. While the numbers on the clock will not be the same, they will be what we choose them to be today. We can act with indignant indifference or reckless despair, or we can make conscious, long-term, and loving decisions. Yes, you help create our society, and together our apparently small loving choices can create a global society of compassion that can raise all people and tending to our local gardens.

 

“When the small things are done with love. It’s not a flawed you or me who does them; it’s love. I have no faith n any political party, left, right or centrist. I have boundless faith in love. In keeping with this faith, the only spiritually responsible way I know to be a citizen, artist, or activist in these strange times is by giving little or no thought to ‘great things’ such as saving the planet, achieving world peace, or stopping…greed. Great things tend to be undoable things. Whereas small things, lovingly done, are always within reach” (God Laughs and Plays by David James Duncan, as quoted in Blessed Unrest, p.188).

 

 

 

 

URL: http://www.presence.tv/cms/soc_the-clock-is-running.php

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