Gregg Braden: The Turning Point
Dirk Terpstra: You explain that we live in a time of extremes. Many people might think: “We’ve been living in times of extremes for a long time already. Just think of WW II, threat of the Cold War, massive starvation the African countries, the Great Depression in the 30’s and so on. So what’s different about this time?
Gregg Braden: Dirk, it’s such a beautiful question and it’s a question I have asked myself often for many years and it’s also a question I hear people ask me when I speak to audiences all over the world.
We know that humans are resilient as a species – we have learned to make the best of whatever situation we’re in. We adapt to the changes – Humans adapted to the sudden shift of climate during the Ice Age and we survived. We survived not one but two World Wars, we survived diseases. We find that we’re really good at focusing upon one problem at a time and solving one problem at a time, adapting to one huge overriding issue at a time. What’s different now, that a single generation has never been faced with, is that we face so many different extremes and some are calling them crisis. And each one is of such magnitude and they are all happening at the same time.
We never had to deal with global climate change, while we’re dealing with the collapse of the global economy, while we’re dealing with energy that is more expensive than many families in many parts in the world can afford, that makes the food for many families in many parts of the world more expensive than they can afford. Multiple pandemic diseases that we’re facing now. We’ve never had to deal with so many major extremes converging all at the same time. That’s what makes right now so very different.
This is the thrust of my work Dirk. In the past we’ve relied only upon science in the 20th century to solve many of these problems. I am trained as a scientist and I believe science is good. It has served us well in some respects. I also know that science does not have all the answers. Science can only tell us how things work. Science tells us the nuts and bolts, the mechanism of how things work. Science cannot tell us how to solve the problems. Science lacks wisdom.
