Where the 21st century should have become an era of reason, we are now living in a world full of uncertainty, fear and hatred. It started with the corona pandemic, causing governments around the world to destroy millions of existences and severely cut down our fundamental rights, and it is now escalating in a war we always thought we would never see again.
Meanwhile, we continue to rape the earth as if she will never seize to support us.
Which is not true, of course. When we continue the way we do, we will one day have much bigger problems than pandemics and wars. But most people (first of all, so it seems, the global leaders who are supposed to act in service of the people) do not care or do not see the problem. Too busy just trying to survive and fighting for a little bit of space to live.

When you look at human life on earth without emotions, it is quite obvious what the cause of all the problems is. There's just too many of us.

Every single human being needs space. Not just a little bit of space to move around, sit down, relax, study, sleep, et cetera. Every human being also needs space for the fruits and vegetables to grow in order to feed him. Those who eat meat need extra space for the animals they eat to live and grow and for the crops to grow that feed the animals. Every human needs space for the trees to grow that turn CO2 into oxygen. Every human needs quite a lot of space for water. Not just to drink, but also to transport and break down some of the waste we produce (excrements, the soap we wash ourselves with, etc.). Every human needs space for the production of sustainable energy to support our lives. And last but not least, every human being needs a hell of a lot of space to regenerate all of those things we maybe should not have produced in the first place, like plastics, nuclear waste, toxic substances and non reusable batteries.
And when you add it all up, there simply is not enough space on earth for every human being when we continue to live the way we do.
And people around the world notice it and suffer from it. Conscious or not, people have been changing their behaviour because of it. Check the comments in social media. You will soon find that the tone has become harsher, people are not shy of verbally bullying each other and respect for each other is hard to find. Like every other animal on the planet, we fight for our territory. But unlike other animals, the one we fight does not have anywhere to flee to (there's not enough space) so we fight to the bitter end. Often verbally, sometimes with our fists, sometimes worse.

For that reason, I have said (and written) many times that we either need a real catastrophe or a new world war, killing a couple of billion people to solve the problems we have.
Imagine for a second, what your world could look like when 50% of the population was gone overnight. 50% less needed of everything (transport, production, commodities, food) would immediately solve our CO2 problems and most of the other problems we have.
Sometimes I stated that if that is what is needed to safe our planet, I would accept the risk that I or someone from my family would have to die.

And now it is around the corner. A war.
Certainly not the World War I have been thinking of when I said we need something to kill a substantial part of human population. But enough of a war to see the brutality and the sheer stupidity of it. And close enough to feel the heat.
And do I want it to spread and kill half of the world's population? Of course not!
I want to go and help the Ukrainians to fight against Russia. I want to take my 9mm and go there and blast those Russian brains right out of their helmets!
At least for a minute that's what I want. In a first wave of frustration and anger, and maybe even fear, I want to fight. 
And then I calm down a bit. And think.

​No matter what, violence is not an option. If we really want to pretend to be more intelligent than animals, we must be able to settle differences without violence. And sometimes, our differences are so big that we must learn to accept that we can not settle them. And we must learn to respect the ones we have these differences with and allow them and us to each go their way in peace.
But to be able to do so, we must create enough space for each individual to live in.
It his high time (way overdue, really) we used our intelligence to find solutions to provide for every human  being on a lot less space and with a lot less resources than what is needed now. It is high time we used our oh so superfluous budgets and money for the development of sustainable technology instead of weapons. And it is high time we find political structures that will not allow people to abuse their power for acts that are not in the interest of humanity.
Because if we don't, and if we keep living the way we are now, that catastrophe or that big world war will come. And every second one of you reading this, will not survive.
Are you prepared for that?

Claudia Niemanns is an extremely interesting person. Not only is she very beautiful, but she has a very personal style with lots of cool tattoos, runs a kindergarten outdoor group and writes awesome short texts with her instagram posts (you'll find her at @claudia_niemanns).
This week, she posted a question to her story, asking what you would do if there were no consequences.
My first reaction was writing "get in the car, drive to where you live and try to get to know you better". Because there are some people I know from social media but have never met and would really like to get to know in person, to talk about their looks on life, happiness and what they would do if they could change the world. And Claudia definitely is one of those people.

I never answered her question, but it did make me think about it.
At first, I was wondering if there was anything I would do if there were no consequences (apart from driving to Claudia). But then it dawned on me that the question is rather tricky. Because it somehow implies that "consequences" are always a bad thing. And you could see it in many of the answers Claudia posted. "Rob a bank", "print money and live on a topical island", "kiss you". All answers of which the writer has to fear that in every day life, the consequences are not nice, to say the least. Being prosecuted and sentenced to jail, being slapped in the face by Claudia (or worse, being attacked by a husband or boyfriend if she has any). 
But when you think of it, consequences are merely the result of an action, aren't they? Yes, especially in the plural form, it is mostly a result that is bad or not convenient. But it can also be something positive. Like for example "The projects had positive economic externalities, as a consequence of the positive environmental 
effects" (found this as a sample sentence on linguee.com).
So if there were no consequences to our acting, there would be no bad things happening to us as a result, but there would also be no good coming from our acting, would there. Stopping the budget-cuts for fire brigades would not have the consequence of increase in personnel and quality of material, leading to fires not being extinguished as efficiently or not at all. The good act of hiring young women from neighbouring villages as rangers in a natural park would not have the consequence that poaching in the area goes down.
But then, on the other side of the medal, the clumsiness of human beings (stupidity if you like) would not have the consequence of fires starting and poaching would not have the consequence of wildlife populations being endangered.
So would the world be better off without consequences?
I don't know, really. But it sure is a nice philosophical question for when you're sitting at a campfire with nothing but the sounds of crackling wood and animals in the night to distract your thoughts.
In that sense: have a good weekend and give yourself a bit of time every now and again to think about such theoretical topics. It's relaxing.