Amy Chua, Professor of Law at Yale University entitled her penetrating and critically acclaimed 2004 book, “World on Fire.” According to Chua, the world is currently facing a plethora of burning issues on a global scale as never before.
As this is being written Wall Street has just experienced one of its most devastating blows in decades with the bankruptcy of 150-year old investment bank Lehman Brothers, a venerable Wall Street institution. The failure has resulted in the loss of more than 25,000 jobs worldwide, jeopardized the financial stability of tens of thousands of individuals, sent stock markets around the world reeling, including the Dow Jones which saw its sixth largest drop in history – 504 points in one day, obliterating over $700 billion in wealth. Yet, as the financial chaos compounds, its CEO, Richard Fuld, waltzed away with more than $60 million in compensation. Global insurance giant, AIG, Merrill Lynch, and other global financial institutions teeter on the brink. The world is on fire!
Today in South Africa, more than a decade after the end of apartheid, a child is orphaned every 30 seconds as a result of the rampant HIV/AIDS epidemic. Though the world celebrated Mandela’s peaceful revolution, which brought an end to more than half a century of brutal apartheid rule, before he or his ANC could take office, the outgoing National Party had negotiated away the economic future of the country, making a Faustian bargain with the shock doctrine proponents of Chicago School style, unbridled, free market economics, leaving the new government responsible for transformation, but economically powerless to bring it about. Today, for the vast majority of black Africans, the economic present is worse than the apartheid past. The world is on fire!
In spite of more than enough resources to adequately care for every person on the planet, two thirds of the world’s inhabitants are forced to eek out an existence on two dollars a day or less. In this world of plenty, 30,000 children die every day around the globe from a lack of clean drinking water, while we in America care more about keeping our golf courses green and our suburban yards flourishing. The world is on fire!
We live in a tinderbox of global conflict on an unprecedented scale where the slightest spark could fuel a conflagration the likes of which the world has never seen. The global community is in desperate need of profound reconciliation that strikes at the roots of conflict, not merely pontificating superficial political platitudes and posturing. Israeli versus Palestinian, Sunni versus Shiite, North Korea verses South Korea, the terrorists against the West; China verses Taiwan, and an Iran ambitious for nuclear capabilities versus the rest of an anxious world. The world is on fire!
As America faces its worst financial crisis in decades and recovers from the aftermath of two horrific hurricanes, all in the shadow of the somber 9/11 remembrance ceremonies, the candidates for the highest office in the land call each other names and debate who’s lying about who, as they conduct one the most childish campaigns in recent political history. The campaign would almost be comedic if it weren’t being played out against the backdrop of a world on fire – a world in desperate need of serious solutions to staggering problems. Yet it seems we are still content to fiddle while Rome burns.
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