“I can’t breathe….” words we’ve heard repeatedly in the news, on social media, and in protests over the last two weeks. We’ve witnessed another murder of an innocent black man at the hands of those who were supposed to enforce the law not inflict hate and injustice. We find our nations at breaking point, straining under the economic pressure to maintain an equilibrium and not implode. Yet the cracks in our foundations are being so rudely exposed. After months of confinement and isolation it’s not surprising that we see an eruption of grief and of pain. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives in a global pandemic, many have been confined unable to work and in isolation for months. Covid-19 has pulled back the curtain on all that is wrong in our world, and the earth literally cries out “I can’t breathe.”
Inequality
Inequality; the root of our pain, is the foundation upon which we have built societies and established nations. The pre-eminence of many nations and civilisations was achieved through slavery, exploitation, getting ahead by using and abusing others, by adopting a win/lose mentality that is finally catching up with us. We have built a world that was founded on oppression, built on the backs of cheap dispensable labour, harvesting the resources of the earth and pillaging some nations and peoples for economic gain elsewhere. Our world’s foundations are rooted in getting ahead at the expense of others. Is it any wonder we now have a world where the gap between the rich and poor is extreme, where there is racial hatred and prejudice, where the opportunity gap is so huge it seems impossible to close it?
Yet this is our moment. Our moment to reset and to say no more. We must stop exploiting our planet and her peoples, we must level the playing field, we must recognise within our nations and between nations we are not equal because we started our races from very different places, and we must work to close that gap. Covid-19 has exposed lack of access to health care within our communities, lack of equipment, the lack of resources to even provide the appropriate equipment and as a result those in impoverished communities are dying at a higher rate than those who are more affluent. We’ve seen those who have lower paying jobs have suffered infinitely more because of an inability to work. We’ve seen the continued oppression of those who are black. Now on a larger scale we’ll also see many countries saddled with debt they will never be able to repay that will hinder not only their ability to get ahead but even to maintain the economic position they have held. The developing world already sits under trillions of dollars of debt it can never repay. We must forgive it. We must reset.
We cannot continue to treat our planet the way we have, consuming, wasting, mismanaging our resources, polluting, destroying. Our planet literally cannot breathe and soon neither will we if continue to exploit our planet for our immediate gain. We’ve got to reset the way we live, the way we do business, we way we prize cheap goods made far away at the expense of people and to the detriment of our planet. We’ve stood on the backs of others to get where we are today. To change that it will require all of us to stand up and say no more. Without equality, without equity, fairness at the heart of our rebuild we will continue to destroy the world that we all live in. If we do not, the discord we currently see will only result in further strife and further disaster. We’ve got to level the playing field.
How can we do that? Firstly, we recognize the deep systemic philosophies that got us here, accepting the premises upon which we’ve been building are faulty. We have to reimagine our very foundations, prize win/wins recognizing that anything less is just a lose/lose. Equality is the critical foundation that we have to restore at every level of society. We have to recognise that in order to level the field we have to make concerted efforts to pull others up. We have to champion women, people of colour, those who are more impoverished. In 2020 it cannot be acceptable that women and people of colour make less than white men for the same work. It cannot be acceptable that black people are routinely under suspicion of a crime simply because of the colour of their skin. It cannot be acceptable that 50% of the world’s population live on less than $2.50 a day.[i]
Our world is at a breaking point. We need to reset. We need to level the playing field because we are destroying our planet and harming each other. We hear you George Floyd, may your life not have been lost in vain. May your memory help us to reset.
Sarah Dusek
Enygma Ventures Managing Partner and Co-Founder
