My Wish for 2019. Nothing Special. Just The Saving The Human Race.

Jim Murray

6 years ago · 4 min. reading time · 0 ·

There was a time in my life when the coming of the new year was kind of appealing. It brought with it the promise of a blank sheet of paper on which you could scribble your dreams. It was a time when I made concrete resolutions and busted my hump to keep them.

January 1st felt like the first day of the rest of my life, which it was technically, but back then it felt like that spiritually as well.

Over the years that feeling, like a lot of others I have had, kind of dialed itself back. I like to think that it’s simply because I have become wiser now and really understand that there’s nothing genuinely magical about the coming of the new year.

Most people make a big deal out of this but it if you were to really ask them they would simply tell you that it’s not much more than just a great excuse for a party.

And I’m all for that. We all deserve to have as much fun as we can whenever we can grab it. And New Year’s eve is probably as good a time as any to do it up big.

But in point of fact, when you wake up on New Year’s day with that head pounding hangover and a grogginess that just won’t quit, I would imagine you will just really think of it as a day you’re glad you don’t have to go to work.

This Year…Oi!

As I look back on 2018, I’d really like to say it was a pretty good year for me personally, as I have started to come to terms with a lot of things that were bugging me. But I’m not sure that everybody would agree with me about how good a year it was for them.

Especially the tens of millions of people displaced by war and revolution and ethnic cleansing in their countries have created refugee crises the like of which the world has seldom seen.

And theose who have been displaced by climate change events that have devastated parts of the world.

There are a number of chronic challenges the world faces today that it has never faced before. From the refugee crisis to climate change to the pollution of the oceans to dangerously high CO2 levels in the atmosphere to overpopulation to the rise of right wing nationalism and more.

You would think that this would be an incentive for the world to start working together more closely, and get over all the petty bullshit that keeps that from happening. However….

But The News Is Not All Bad

Believe it or not, there are solutions out there. There are whole countries that are, or soon will be, powering everything with non-polluting sustainable energy.

There are solutions for the repurposing of plastic waste.

There are new farming systems being developed that can easily feed the entire population of the planet.

There is even new technology being developed to help lower the earth’s temperature. And the list goes on.

But, and the buts are always a bitch.

There are too many people out there whose vested interests lie in outmoded and environmentally damaging technologies and their greed is the real reason why things aren’t changing as quickly as they need to to embrace non-polluting technologies. And it is these very technologies that represent the keys to our future survival on this planet.

I know that all sounds pretty heavy handed. But this is what our reality has come to. Unsafe CO2 levels in our atmosphere, rising sea levels and and more violent weather patterns aren’t just something that are coming soon. They are already here and they are doing incredible damage to many parts of the world.

My Wish For 2019

So my wish for the new year is a simple one to write out, but so far has been impossible to realize, and that is that the world, as a united front of all countries, start really working together conquer these challenges.

This means getting rid of all the politicians and decision makers who are bought off by or married to polluting technologies. Because if we can make that happen, the rest of the pieces will be all that easier to put into place.

If we can all become part of the solution then the solution will be realized.

But right now, this situation does not exist. We are still hung up with petty differences, and a good percentage of us either don’t believe that the core threats to our continued existence are real or they are simply too greedy to pay the price that comes with change, even if that change will ultimately prove to be profitable.

The way the world works right now is that all market systems are dependent on steady growth and preservation of a basic status quo. These markets do not take into account the vast amount of pollution that is created in the processes that are needed to preserve this steady growth.

There are relatively few companies out there who are working on this problem, when it really should be every company in every market sector’s responsibility to the world that has made them so successful.

Can you imagine the progress that would be made if that were to happen, and these companies would pool their knowledge in the sustainable area? It would be fucking incredible.

So that’s my wish for 2019, that alternative thinking in all areas of business accelerate at a much faster rate than they have been.

I know that this probably won’t happen. It really is just a dream.

But I’ve always been kind of a dreamer. And I have always been a firm believer in the logic that you can’t make dreams come true if you don’t have any dreams in the first place.

So I want to wish you all the best for 2019. And let’s all work to strengthen our collective resolve to be part of the solution in any way we can. It’s needed more than ever these days.

jim out till next year.

Jim Murray is an experienced advertising and marketing professional and amateur photographer. He has run his own strategic and creative consulting business (Onwords & Upwords), since 1989 after a 20 year career in Toronto as a senior creative person in major Canadian & international advertising agencies. He is a communication strategist, writer, art director, broadcast producer, and prolific marketing & op/ed blogger & beBee Brand Ambassador. Jim lives in St Catharines Ontario, aka The Quiet Side Of The Lake

You can follow Jim

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Comments

CityVP Manjit

6 years ago#8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARBduyoXsP4

CityVP Manjit

6 years ago#7

The world we have today is because of the lack of awareness about the world we have been living in for several decades and not because of one calendar year. Documentaries like The Forecaster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PySLh15mqug provide clues to the crime and as to why the reactions to those decades has resulted in people cutting off their own noses to spite their face i.e. a reactive response rather than a proactive response - a.k.a. electing a Donald Trump in the US, electing a Putin in Russia, electing a Modi in India, electing a Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil etc etc We are not at the level yet of seeing a Mussolini, Stalin or a Hitler rise to power (though Putin might make the grade if he scales up his evil doings) - so comparatively there are yet even worse leaders that places like the US, India and Brazil can elect as compared to the brutalities of history, but if we isolate what is happening today to a calendar year perspective, then we are a part of the problem too because there is insufficient awareness about the big picture of how decisions made decades ago have brought us to our present state. Our social existence is being drugged by media and politics too polarized to provide the mass perspective we need and so these instruments of power are the same old, same old propaganda and mass control machines of old - and yet what we are experiencing today is not even close to something far more chaotic and worse (to come). It is true that there is some really good things happening and I want to focus on those things and not on getting more depressed, but changing a President does not eradicate the underlying causes and it simply makes us feel better because it means the TV news is pissing us off less.

CityVP Manjit

6 years ago#6

The world we have today is because of the lack of awareness about the world we have been living in for several decades and not because of one calendar year. Documentaries like The Forecaster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PySLh15mqug provide clues to the crime and as to why the reactions to those decades has resulted in people cutting off their own noses to spite their face i.e. a reactive response rather than a proactive response - a.k.a. electing a Donald Trump in the US, electing a Putin in Russia, electing a Modi in India, electing a Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil etc etc We are not at the level yet of seeing a Mussolini, Stalin or a Hitler rise to power (though Putin might make the grade if scales up his evil doings) - so comparatively there are yet even worse leaders that places like the US, India and Brazil can elect as compared to the brutalities of history, but if we isolate what is happening today to a calendar year perspective, then we are a part of the problem too because there is insufficient awareness about the big picture of how decisions made decades ago have brought us to our present state. Our social existence is being drugged by media and politics too polarized to provide the mass perspective we need and so these instruments of power are the same old, same old propaganda and mass control machines of old - and yet what we are experiencing today is not even close to something far more chaotic and worse (to come). It is true that there is some really good things happening and I want to focus on those things and not on getting more depressed, but changing a President does not eradicate the underlying causes and it simply makes us feel better because it means the TV news is pissing us off less.

CityVP Manjit

6 years ago#5

The world we have today is because of the lack of awareness about the world we have been living in for several decades and not because of one calendar year. Documentaries like The Forecaster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PySLh15mqug provide clues to the crime and as to why the reactions to those decades has resulted in people cutting off their own noses to spite their face i.e. a reactive response rather than a proactive response - a.k.a. electing a Donald Trump in the US, electing a Modi in India, electing a Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. We are not at the level yet of seeing a Mussolini, Stalin or a Hitler rise to power - so comparatively there are yet even worse leaders that places like the US, India and Brazil can elect as compared to the brutalities of history, but if we isolate what is happening today to a calendar year perspective, then we are a part of the problem too because there is insufficient awareness about the big picture of how decisions made decades ago have brought us to our present state. Our social existence is being drugged by media and politics too polarized to provide the mass perspective we need and so these instruments of power are the same old, same old propaganda and mass control machines of old - and yet what we are experiencing today is not even close to something far more chaotic and worse (to come). It is true that there is some really good things happening and I want to focus on those things and not on getting more depressed, but changing a President does not eradicate the underlying causes and it simply makes us feel better because it means the TV news is pissing us off less.

John Rylance

6 years ago#4

To paraphrase L P Hartley in The Go-between. 2018 (The Past) is another Country they did (do) things differently there. The most we can do is to learn from the mistakes of 2018, make hopefully the right changes, together make 2019 a better year

Ken Boddie

6 years ago#3

I share your dream, Jim, and trust that humanity will find a way to drop the bullshit and preserve itself and the world we inhabit. After all, I get bored and listless on a local 2 hour plane ride, and can’t see me enduring a 300 day rocket trip to Mars. Happy New Year!

Jim Murray

6 years ago#2

#1
We're writers, the best we can do is write about this stuff.

Jerry Fletcher

6 years ago#1

Jim, Tis only a dream but it is along way from the nightmare so many purchased politicians all over the world would have us believe is "Best for mankind." Many of our problems are a matter of circumstance caused by both the "Devil take the hindmost" and the "do-gooders." Neither ever look far enough into the future to see the consequences of their actions. Yes, there is another column like my last festering. Working title is "A Matter of Circumstance" And so it goes