The greatest problem facing the people in the world today is our own
stubborn and willful refusal to accept responsibilities for our actions.
We are the species that introduced the notion of atomic global
destruction to the world and all we seem to be able to do about it is
point our fingers at faceless governments and assign blame. We shake our
heads sadly and sigh: "If only the leaders would lead then the people
would surely follow." The best we seem to be able to muster up in
dealing with nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction is protest.
Protest is fine, but it's not enough. Demanding stricter controls from
governments proven to be incompetent will not handle this problem nor
will any mutually assured destruction solve this problem. This
particular problem is overwhelmingly complex and requires a people much
wiser and stronger than we are today.

The age we live in today is often called the age of information but if
anyone is really paying attention it appears to be more like the age of
disinformation. Propaganda abounds across the globe and it is only
effective because people are such easy prey to propaganda. It requires a
higher level of awareness to discern fact from fiction and truth from
talk. That level of awareness will not be accomplished before we learn
how to accept responsibility for our actions. Accepting responsibility
for our actions requires we become more honest with ourselves and admit
we are too lazy and to willing to stagnate on all levels. Our marriages
fail because we don't make the effort to keep them working, our children
become estranged because we don't make the time for them, our
communities fall into disrepair because we let them crumble, all the
while waiting for someone else, some expert or someone wiser than us to
fix our problems. We eat to much fast food and then turn to our doctors
expecting some sort of little yellow pill that can correct the imbalance
we created because we eat garbage for sustenance. We turn to
psychiatrists and psychologists asking for medication that will help us
ignore the mess we've created so we might keep plodding forth making
bigger messes. We hide in our churches scolding others because they
aren't as holy as we are ignoring the message that comes with attending
church. We blame, and we blame and we blame, never satisfied with the
results of blaming and so, astonishingly we blame some more.

We are woefully human and to err is human but there is evidence that we
are also divine. We build remarkable cities filled with breathtaking
edifices and homes, we build dams, superhighway's and learn the
mechanics of rocket science. We care and we love just as deeply as we
are indifferent or hate. We discover that our actions and thoughts are
caused by synapses in the nervous system and brain but we wonder if that
is so, how is it we know about synapses. We are much, much more than
we've ever been and when we finally figure out how to accept
responsibility for each and every one of our actions, we will finally
become all that we are and all we are supposed to be. This is quite a
problem and solving this problem will not be easy. It appears, however,
that life is not easy. Life is hard and it is the struggle we make that
defines who we are. All of us are capable of so much more than we have
ever accomplished and perhaps one day, the people will face their
problems until the only real problems we're confronted with are in the
decisions we face in handling new problems. That will be an epoch to
remember.

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Clearly the greatest single problem which faces the world is
overpopulation. The rate of increase has to be stopped in no time flat
simply because there is going to be an ever increasing energy shortage
which will continue to impact lives in ever increasing ways in time to
come. This energy shortage will impact the ability of the peoples of
this world to feed themselves in time to come. Arable land will be used
up in cities and industrial areas. There will be crises which people
will not be able to overcome.

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Any one who has ever flown in an airplane over the vast and wide open
spaces of this planet would have to ignore the obvious in order to agree
that it is clear that overpopulation is a problem at all let alone the
single greatest problem the world faces. How would we stop population
rises? Is some form of tyrannical licensing of parentage being
advocated? Energy shortage? The single greatest abundance in the
universe is hydrogen. We are better served to find ways to harnessing
this abundant resource and creating a renewable source of energy than we
are in oppressing the individual and demanding that we all stop being
so successful at propagation. The world is still very large and the
universe even larger.