I viewed Michael Pritchards TED presentation of his amazingly efficient portable filter for creating sterile water the other day. It is yet another story of one guy who had enough of misery fed through the media. In this case that even a super industrialized country were not even able to help its own people with clean drinking water after hurricane Katrina in 2004. He literally went into his workshop and fairly quick came up with a tool that could solve the problem, the Lifesaver bottle
.Michaels story is amazing, but from my continuous search in these matters, not unique. There is a problem that would improve or save hundred thousands of lives, we have a solution (at least one), but we just choose not to act to solve it - against what may seem logical or humane. As Michael points out, the foreign aid for one EU country could actually give clean drinking water to everyone who needed it. For a single person like me, it is off course difficult to imagine why this would not be attractive to a government. Imagine the PR value of such sponsorship. Almost anyone who had such a bottle would be grateful.
Apathy, "same-procedure-as-last-year", or "more-of-the-same" seems to be the only 3 options I can see in work now. It seems like a loop without end. Michael Pritchard mentioned it as well; at one point you just shut off mentally. The brain can not handle all the misery and the things you feel you "should" act on as a decent human being. It is easier to turn away. You stay sane. Personally I believe this is the most dangerous disease of human kind - apathy. We can ride our way to extinction in a sofa.
Dalai Lamas book "How to see yourself as you really are
" gave me a clue how to deal with this myself (because I do not believe it is in any ones right to tell others how to live). The book confirms that it is not possible to act on all the misery on your own. Global issues should be handled by the leaders. One can act by improving, first one self (probably the hardest part), then the near surroundings, local community etc. Not through force, but by example. Curiously, this kind of thinking is also reflected in martial arts (not referring to sport): if you can not save yourself, you can not save your family. If your family is not safe, you can not worry about your friends safety. And so on.I live by this. It works, for me. I do not create miracles, but it rubs off on others from time to time. I will write more about this later - what I have done.
Further reading and related items:
. Amazing how one man playing around in his laboratory can create revolutionary technology for a percent of professional equipment. But the best part is - he share it! And better yet, according to himself, what fascinates him even more than the actual inventions is how quickly people pick up an invention through the internet and improve it when offered it freely.