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Buddhistdoor View: The Buck Stops Here!

By Buddhistdoor Global | | Buddhistdoor Global

As we head into the darkest period of the year for those of us in the northern hemisphere, we also may feel a sense that we are heading into a rather dark period of human history. The climate crisis, for one, looms large over all of us, as the poles—including the Himalayan “third pole”—melt and wildfires rage across not only the Amazon, but also in the Congo, Siberia, California, and Australia to name just a few places that have made international headlines, if only for a few days at a time. This crisis would, we hope, garner the attention it deserves if it weren’t for the many other troubling maladies plaguing our world today: refugee crises, conflict in the Middle East, trade wars the world over, and, in many places around the world, citizens rising up in protest against unjust leadership. In October, Amnesty International noted that protests were taking place in Bolivia, Cameroon, Chile, Ecuador, Egypt, Guinea, Hong Kong, Iraq, Lebanon, Spain, and the UK. They and others speculate about the causes of the protests, ranging from rising income inequality and protesting inaction on climate change, to allegations of corruption among leaders and the desire for greater political liberty. Those with a keen sense of history will see echoes in these protests with those of the Ukrainian Revolution of 2014, Arab Spring in 2011, the June Struggle for democracy in South Korea in 1989, the American Civil Rights battles of the early 1960s, and the Suffragette movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Going backward in time, we find even more instances of those without rights demanding greater equality from those in power.