A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis
LESSONS LEARNED BY THE AUTHOR (Part 3)
A London fog
It was probably in 1952 that I accompanied my father to London and driving back we were caught in a London fog. I got out to be the guide as my father couldn’t see the curb. However, the fog was so thick that I was no help and we had to abandon the car. Over the next few years legislation was introduced to control smoke-stack industries and coal/wood-burning fireplaces and pea-soup fogs are a thing of the past. Fish in the river Thames had died because of pollution by industry but now they have returned and the river is a wonderful recreation area for everyone. In some places clearing up your own mess and leaving a clean environment is accepted as a normal cost of doing business. However, there are far too many businesses that act unethically or do not clear up the mess they create.
Extracting enough resources for maintaining life
One of humanity’s most challenging tasks has been to find a way of extracting enough resources for maintaining life – food, clothing, shelter, energy and other goods – in harmony with the ecosystems’ ability to withstand the resulting pressures – something which today’s civilization is so poor at that it is committing suicide, just as the Easter Islanders did. In 1986 the planet reached a watershed. It was the final year in which the planet lived within its means. Ever since then we have been running the equivalent of a deficit budget, and with our love for the wrong kind of growth that annual deficit has been steadily increasing. We need growth to provide meaningful employment for a world population of 10 billion, but we have to use our brains better and achieve this in harmony with resources available on a sustainable basis. The chapters on Sustainability and The Environment deal with how we must make radical changes if our civilization is to survive.
MY WORKING LIFE
Education is the foundation stone of civilization
My working career after graduation in 1961 as a civil engineer started with 2½ years of voluntary service in a poor part of Greece. This not only introduced me to a radically different culture but helped me to understand the problems of the less well-off. As a period of service is now considered an important part of one’s education by many high schools, colleges, and religions, a chapter is devoted to Service.
Prejudice
My voluntary service led to my working as engineer for Anatolia College in Thessaloniki. One evening I had dinner with Dr. Lucas Kyrides (the creator of synthetic rubber for the allies during World War II) who related how he had attended Anatolia College in Merzifon in Turkey during the Armenian massacre. He hid in the attic of a building and through a small window watched his dead professors being hauled away in a cart. Later, while I was working for the American Farm School in Thessaloniki, I met Erika Myriam Kounio Amariglio who wrote From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back: Memories of a Survivor From Thessaloniki. These two meetings helped me to understand how deeply ingrained are our prejudices against others for no other reason than the womb from which one happens to have been born. This was the basis of the chapter on Prejudice.