Even as we worry about threats from climate change, nuclear apocalypse, accelerated loss of biodiversity and AI it seems the more insidious of challenges is not getting the same high voltage recognition.
What kind of threats do we like to give attention to? The ones which create dystopian imagery, stark and visible breakdown or those where everything is kind of normal, you are going about life with all its visible comforts and while not exactly utopia, not dystopia either; and yet you are not experiencing well being at all.
You are in a comfortable house and an office, you aren’t swimming on a raft in a flooded street or seen your house burnt to the ground in an uncontrolled ‘climate’ induced fire and yet you are not well. You are hurt and affected by your upbringing, have major issues with how your mother or father or both engaged with you and your life choices, the sparring has not stopped deep into adulthood and life seems a daily grind. The wounds run deep and have no visibility like the raft or the burnt house.
Confidence destroyed, robbed of vitality, seeing the present moment slip by unlived or without vitality, millions of people are being robbed of well being here and now as compared to the more stark effects of climate change or AI a decade or two down the line. The number of people affected with strained through relations with their parents far outnumber that by any of the other concerns and the damage is far more serious and pervasive.
If we are so serious about the human race and the planet then the UN should be setting up a separate task force on this. Parents need help with parenting. They cannot let their children become a vehicle for their aspirations, which they could not fulfill, or forward some social code or justify as some form of love and concern. Affected children (adults) need coping support and transition.
Rishi 