{"id":316866,"date":"2026-06-01T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=316866"},"modified":"2026-05-30T19:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T18:57:12","slug":"stratagems-for-change-saving-humanity-from-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/06\/stratagems-for-change-saving-humanity-from-ourselves\/","title":{"rendered":"Stratagems for Change: Saving Humanity from Ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

29 May 2026 – <\/em>We are living in a challenging time with far too much suffering, stemming from a variety of ailments, including armed conflict, poverty, and ecological destruction. The symptoms of our dysfunctional world are many, the causes few, and yet complex, intricate, and hard to elucidate in simple terms. It\u2019s easy to blame one individual, but of course the problems we face predate him and his rise to power, even if he has made so many of our problems more acute. It\u2019s also easy to blame one state that has acted as a hegemon for far too long, but of course, others have contributed as willing and active participants, often even leading the calls for war, whether in Ukraine or West Asia or elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Amidst all this suffering lies an existential threat to humanity \u2013 the possibility that human civilization could end as a result of nuclear war, which would not only kill hundreds of millions of people, but cause environmental changes to the planet that put the very survival of human beings and other life forms into question. Albeit operating on a different time scale, global warming also has the potential to fundamentally disrupt life as we know it on our beautiful planet. Continued greenhouse gas emissions and consequent increases in temperature will not only threaten inhabited areas with consequences of wildfires, droughts, and heightened impacts of storms, but may make entire regions uninhabitable due to sea level rise, unlivable temperatures, or collapse of ecosystems. In both cases we are quite literally playing with fire.<\/p>\n

How did we get to such a place? How is it that we have made ourselves completely and inexplicably vulnerable to total and utter destruction? That the existence of nuclear weapons – the most monstrous weapons of mass destruction – continues to threaten the very existence of humanity is a never-ending source of incredulity for all those who understand just what is at stake in a world in which nuclear war could begin and end in mere minutes, not hours, or days, or weeks. That global warming continues apace, while the merits of the scientific evidence explaining and demonstrating the human role in the warming continue to be debated as if there were anything reasonable to debate at all, is yet another conundrum.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a historian or a policy analyst or a spiritual leader, so I will not attempt to explain the role of the empire, or the moneyed interests, or evil in how we arrived at this place. What I do want to highlight is that regardless of the root cause, the reason that we are here, living under the cloud of the existential threats of nuclear war and global warming, is that those behind denying these threats \u2013 whoever they are and for whatever reason they do this \u2013 have managed to convince even many well-meaning people, let alone the non-well-meaning ones, that nuclear weapons keep us safe and that the science of global warming is not settled. Until these notions are challenged, rejected, and eradicated broadly, comprehensively, and forcefully by the media, by so-called leaders, by academics, by ordinary people, it will not be possible to pull away from the brink. We cannot operate from alternative facts. We cannot discount science and history. Continuing on this path, we will find ourselves in a place far worse than where we are today. Or as John F. Kennedy said in October of 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, \u201cIf we\u2026do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what can be done to steer this ship around?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Consider the Pale Blue Dot, a photograph taken of the Earth in 1990, by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, from six billion kilometers away, far beyond the neighborhood of Neptune. In the words of Carl Sagan, who originally proposed that such a photograph be taken, \u201cThat\u2019s here. That\u2019s home. That\u2019s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.\u201d Sagan went on to say, \u201cTo my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another, and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we\u2019ve ever known.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sagan reminds us of a responsibility to:<\/p>\n