Some of the wisest aphorisms in Oriental wisdom pertain to the importance of prevention over cure. Problems are best solved before they occur, advises the ancient Chinese classic, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching. This advice is particularly relevant regarding the twin plagues of terrorism and environmental damage haunting the 21st century.
Consider, for example, the spate of terrorist attacks in Europe and America during the last few years. Horrible as they were, history can argue that they were not entirely unpredictable given the insensitive treatment of Arab countries by Western powers over the past century. Recent US policy in the Middle East has just been the latest in a succession of abusive exploitations by the British, French, Italians and Germans in the region and across North Africa.
The cause of Arab and Islamic resentment is deep and complex: partly Islam's gradual fall from world influence and prestige since the 16th century, partly the West's convoluted political manoeuvring that claimed Middle Eastern oil resources to feed industrialization. American connivance with the Sauds of Saudi Arabia to secure strategically critical petroleum supplies is just one of the current irritants that triggered the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
The following are rarely published words by Osama bin Laden explaining his justifications for the terrorist act for which he has admitted complicity: "What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our nation (the Islamic world) has been tasting this humiliation and degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked and no one hears and no one heeds. Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any sins.... To America, I say only a few words to it and its people. I swear to God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it here in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him."
History, of course, is always clearest in retrospect. Very likely though, if Western powers had been more helpful and accommodating in the Middle East, if they had taken a more respectful attitude to Arab culture, values and religion, and had nourished the region's economic and political well-being rather than manipulated them for self-interest, the region would not feel so oppressed, resentful and vengeful today. Some empathy and foresight should have been a warning that exploitive maltreatment is a path to trouble. When measured by 9/11, the fiasco in Iraq, the tragedy in Afghanistan and the growing volatility in Pakistan and much of the islamic world, the price of oil has spiralled into a tangled mess that has become very, very expensive.
Similar foresight could have avoided the global environmental crisis that is beginning to loom ever larger and more threatening to humanity and the world's ecosystems. We were warned in 1789 by Thomas Malthus about an impending catastrophe from unchecked population growth. We paid no attention. We were warned in 1896 by the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, about the risks of global warming from rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. We paid no attention. Since then, we have carried on with a naive optimism more akin to denial than realism. Limits were never a concern to us. Now we find ourselves with too many people on too small a planet. The result is a discordant dance with food shortages, depleting resources and environmental degradation that we seem to be losing.
The precautionary signals these days are coming faster and thicker, with portents more and more ominous. We are running out of fresh water for drinking and farming. We are using antibiotics so indiscriminately that we are breeding super diseases that are becoming immune to treatment. We are presently fishing our acidifying oceans with such industrial zeal that no commercial fish will be left by 2040. Genetic engineering, despite its touted benefits, has sobering risks that seem to be overlooked by commercial enthusiasm. Ambient levels of environmental toxins are rising. Demand for critically important oil is about to exceed supply. Ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica are becoming increasingly unstable.
Risk, of course, is a crucial part of living our individual lives. We each take chances to enhance the quality and richness of being alive. The cumulative effect is that we take risks collectively as communities, as civilizations and as humanity. It now seems that all our innumerable risks have brought us to a place of multiple dangers. "And we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night," wrote the English poet Matthew Arnold during a bleak period at the end of the 19th century. He should be alive today, in a time charged with stupendous perils and incredible prospects.
Today, however, our "darkling plain" is illuminated by the brilliant light of information, arriving with a density unparalleled in human history. And this is creating a global consciousness, an awareness of what is happening on the entire planet. The insights that accrue from this unprecedented perspective can transform our behaviour by allowing us to anticipate dangers and then to plot strategies of avoidance and prevention. If we use wisdom, resolution and bravery – and act quickly enough – we might even imagine a long-dead old Chinese sage being proud of us.