My 10 year old son Aarav told me that he wants to boycott school… His school has a program where kids watch CNN 10 minutes news to make themselves aware of the world affairs… and the story of Greta Thunberg caught his attention… Talk about the school not having thought this through… And imagine the horror of a parent who is paying through his nose for sending his children to costly international school hearing such a statement…
To the uninitiated, Greta Thunberg recently caught the world’s attention because she decided to boycott school as she believed that going to school is not helping the global warming issue… And by boycotting school she aimed to help raise awareness globally about the issue… Following her million of children followed suit… And she got an audience in the UN assembly…
Anyways… I pleaded with Aarav… I said, see – she has made lifestyle changes… Why don’t we also make and inspire others to follow suit… One family at a time and that will help… Not going to school will not help right…
Thankfully he is of the age where he accepts his dad’s advice and he agreed and dropped the idea…
But that whole episode got me thinking… There is an inherent issue in this whole support and going viral of something like this…
It is not that the world leaders ain’t aware of global warming (the paris accord was not for anything else)… It isn’t that schools are not aware of global warming (reduce, reuse, recycle is an unit in my son’s class every year since last few years)… The world is aware of the issue – even if it accepts the cause and extent or not…
The issue was and is that leaders are not taking it seriously enough to enforce sweeping solutions… and her attempt hence was to create pressure… But then that is where it ended… An attempt to create pressure to solve a solution… It was noise for highlighting a problem… Not a call to support a credible solution…
And look around… That is what typically happens… People want to do candle light marches, ice bucket challenges and what not to highlight an issue… But how many support causes go viral for constructive solutions that are being attempted in the world???
How many of you have heard about three cups of tea? A book on Greg Mortenson and his attempt to build schools in the remote areas of Gilgit Baltistan so that kids are not deprived of education or have to physically be in peril for reaching them for the 6 winter months… Or walk miles across in summer… Even though the book on him became an international best seller – he surely received less fame and support to create schools than Greta Thunberg whose call was to boycott them…
It is easy for anyone to shout at someone to solve a problem as long as someone else has to find a solution… The one shouting believes that their only responsibility is to highlight… This is true to for so many things in our day to day life… In offices, everyone expects that someone should arrange for events… In social gatherings everyone gives ideas, but few want to take responsibility of organising… many want to criticize the government for lack of support for anything – but few want to make sacrifices or suggest solutions… Take Brexit for example – people voted in UK for it… But no one supports the government there for any solution it comes up to implement it… Support is lacking even for the implementation plan of the leader who led the leave referendum for Brexit!
The point is – its hard work to find a solution… It takes time and effort to get a solution working… And not many want to support anything that has a chance of not working or is not so easy / complicated… Shouting for attention to a problem on the other hand is foolproof… There is no chance of it being wrong or needing any responsibility…
Take the case of people who want to save the trees in Aarey (a part of Mumbai, India that has a jungle) from being cut… The government wants to build a car shed so that the new metro line can work… 140 odd people were willing to be arrested to stop the trees from getting cut… But I don’t know how many shouted for support to an alternative solution that could work… Has anyone highlighted any alternative solution? Remember, almost everyone in Mumbai will agree that the metro line is absolutely essential to solve the growing traffic, infrastructure and also the resultant pollution issue in Mumbai… So it’s tricky…
I am not saying that it’s wrong to fight for a cause… Highlight the issue… Publicize it… Drum for support… The intent and the heart of almost everyone is in the right place…
But the intent is too easy and the mind is not rational…
We all have limited time and resources… Instead of simply cribbing and criticizing… Why not we invest those energies to vociferously encourage a constructive solution?
Why not say that unless recycled paper bags and steel cutleries become mandatory… Unless their manufacturers get tax exemptions… Unless the people affected by loss of jobs in plastic industry not given unemployment support for 6 months… We will not vote for any candidate… And to fund all this, of required, a 10% tax surcharge on all will be ok…
I am not even asking everyone to find a solution… Rather just support the ones who are trying implementation of solutions rather than the ones who just want to highlight issues…
There is another downside as well… If by now you have googled Greg Mortenson and three cups of tea… You will have read that it went through a financial scandal of money mismanagement… And somewhere like many your heart will sink and feel bad…
Every glorified solution that fails or has a scam is another nail in the coffin for the others that are still trying… The limited trust that is available and is painstakingly gathered gets eroded and masses become skeptical of every other that is out there crying for support…
So honestly it’s not the overwhelming support for issues that only sucks away the support for solutions… It’s also the skepticism on the false hopes that many in the past have given and failed…
Yet… Is it not better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all… To have tried and failed than to have never tried at all…
It is very difficult to judge intent… And yes there are masqueraders out there who sell ideas but are really cheats… However we have to have our minds in a default to truth mode (borrowing Malcolm Gladwell line here) for solutions else the world will only have problems…
Anyways… Aarav has come back and told me that he needs 20 dollars to replace the plastic shuttlecocks he uses in badminton… And he is going to start looking at replacing all things plastic at home to alternatives available… Greta Thunberg – please help me 🙂
Inside VG... 