Humanity at a Crossroads: Enlightenment or Ignorance

(drawing by Dan Perjovschi)

We live in times of turmoil and democratic backsliding all around the world. It's started some years before the pandemic, with so many crises that have been ignored: the growing income inequality, environmental problems, overconsumption, pollution, illiteracy, wars.

This is how our world looks today, few facts and numbers:

Wealth distribution: bottom 70% of the world population has under 3% of the world wealth share (< 10.000 $), the next 21% has 11% (10.000 – 100.000 $), next 8% has another 40% (100.000 - 1.000.000 $) and less than 1% of the world population has 46% of the world wealth share (> 1.000.000 $).
These numbers make the charity/donations programs look like a sham.

Wastage: We generate at least 3.5 million tons of plastic and other solid waste A DAY and only a very small percentage is recycled (around 9% of the total that's ever been produced). Most of it—79%—is in a landfill or escaped into the natural environment, and only 12% has been incinerated. Basically we eat it, drink it, breathe it.
We are almost 8 billion people on this planet, of which almost 1 billion are starving. Yet we annually lose and waste 1,3 billion tons of food – or enough to feed 3 billion people. Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted.

Illiteracy: According to UNESCO, there are more than 770 million people around the world (two-thirds of adult women) who cannot read or write.

 
Fire arms: There are more than 1 billion fire arms in the world, around 85% being in the civilian hands.

Democracy: According to the Democracy Index in 2019, only 22 countries are full democracies. More than 1/3 of the world population lives under authoritarian regimes in 54 countries.

(drawing by Dan Perjovschi)

So we've been having global issues that we cannot address with global solutions because of the damn national/local politics. There's been anger and frustration going around even before Covid, now they just started to be expressed louder and louder.
Five years ago Trump won the elections with the promise to make America great again. Brexit promised no more immigrants and living standards much improved. Nationalist parties in Europe have been on the rise since a few good years.
What do all these populists actually bring up? The past. They promise to bring back "the great past". So, back to mine coals, hardcore capitalism, island mentality, religion, obsolete morality obsessing over sexuality (same-sex marriage, abortions), but no commitment to solve the root causes - all the forms of abuses and crimes - because these can't really be solved easily, can they? 

We can't think only as nations anymore, we have to start thinking as one great humanity.
As citizens of a global society we need to make a decisive choice between make-believe (the great national or religious past that should be brought back, as this would even be possible!) and the undertaking of a totally new paradigm with political reforms at every level.

But what chances do we have to succeed when this pandemic is putting so much more pressure on people, and the societies are getting even more polarized? In these times we've tended to stick with minds alike and that has fractured the communities into small homogenous tribes, with the risks of losing some to various forms of radicalism.
Under these circumstances what do you think it gets done easier: 

- empowering an authority who promise to fulfil dreams 

OR 

- accepting that we are all part of the failures, so we must all take responsibility and contribute (by paying our taxes, respectig the laws as they are, going to vote to improve them, controlling our wastages, respecting our human diversity and environment)? 

(drawing by Dan Perjovschi)

Today we have half of the world population living in democracies (full or flawed) and the other half in hybrid regimes or dictatorships.
But how long even these democracies will resist with decisions based on majority criteria, when the majority gets poorer and/or insufficiently educated?

More and more elections and major political decisions pass with a weak majority, leaving the societies deeply divided (traditionalism vs. liberalism) - that is, at risk.

A new age is coming. Of which kind?