The Seventh Enemy

This troubled world faces six immense impersonal threats – population overload; the maldistribution of food supplies; the shortage of basic resources like oil and water; environmental deterioration; nuclear spread; and the general tendency for technology and "growth" to run beyond human control.

However the deeper dangers lie in the inadequacy of the human response the "Seventh Enemy", first Political Inertia and secondly Individual Blindness.

Our collective political response has been slow, incoherent and ambivalent. National rivalries have blinded us to global needs. Democracies – despite their virtues – can be profoundly short sighted. Meanwhile, ethnic and ideological rivalries have intensified our problems and the outlook may now be worsened by global warming and economic crisis.

But as well as countering Political Inertia we must struggle against Individual Blindness and not just in improving our long term thinking. We may also need to reassess and repair deeper levels of the Self and I make some suggestions .... while also remembering the role of imagination, feeling and sheer play.