Is the world a terrible place? Yes it is. Do you believe in the European dream? Not anymore. Do right wing parties spread hate and racism? Of course they do. Do you legitimately blame your parents and grandparents for the mess you are in right now? Definitely, they had the power to change the direction of history.
What if your grandchildren asked you 40 years later, why didn’t you transform the world you live in today and reshape their future? What if they asked you if you believed that every human being is equal and every person’s dignity is inviolable; why didn’t you stop optimizing yourselves and start optimizing global justice? What if they asked you if you could save millions of people from famine and thousands of refugees from drowning in the Mediterranean, why didn’t you act?
What will be the question of our generation and how will our impact on the world be judged in retrospect? What if our grandchild living in 2055 was standing in front of us, confronting us with the situation in 2015 and 2016? Will we make them proud that we tore down the walls of apathy and indeed changed the direction of history, or will we remain mute like we are today?
What if the tortuous questions we ask our grandparents — what did you do and what did you not do? — comes back to haunt us after decades?
In the below TEDx talk, actress and filmmaker Maryam Zaree forces us to (re)evaluate our current actions in the present, in regard of the future we are simultaneously shaping for our offspring. And if you understand that humanity must be defended day after day, it’s your time to turn all those talks into action…
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