Karen S Zhang

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future (2005) is not a new book. It has been circulated for nearly two decades. It came to my attention just recently while I was looking for a way out of my longest self-imposed confinement due to COVID-19. In this New York Times bestseller, the author, Daniel H. Pink, made a bold prediction at the time that “The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”

Living in a pandemic-laden beginning of the year of 2021, sixteen years after the book was first published and after crises unfolded one after another last year, only fools will still be in denial that we are very remote from Pink’s world of “high concept and high touch.” That is, in Pink’s words, “we’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we’re progressing yet again—to a society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers.”

Our brain’s two hemispheres function differently—if you’re mostly analytical and methodical in your thinking, you’re said to be left-brained. If you tend to be more creative or artistic, you’re thought to be right-brained. Language is what separates man from beast. It is worth noting that language resides on the left side of the brain. In Western languages, reading and writing involve turning from left to right, and therefore exercise the brain’s left hemisphere (Pink, p.18). However, scientists have found that tonal languages use both sides of the brain. A recent study shows in Chinese speech comprehension there are neural dynamics between the left and right hemispheres in the brain. I can verify this finding as my former English linguistic professor in China used to tell us in his first class that Chinese people who actively use English will have both halves of an active brain, showing an advantage against an English native who speaks no other foreign language.

I have no doubt that the future leaders will be bilingual or multilingual. These leaders are likely to be empathizers and meaning makers naturally because empathy and active listening enable a polyglot to acquire a mastery of several languages. At the same time, he or she will obtain information first hand without the sole dependence on AI translation. Some unique meanings may be lost in translation. If you are interested in tapping into tonal languages to stimulate both hemispheres of your brain, in addition to Mandarin Chinese, you may try Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Swedish, Ancient Greek, just to name a few.

To survive in this age, Pink suggested individuals and organizations must examine themselves with these three questions:

1) Can someone overseas do it cheaper?

2) Can a computer do it faster?

3) Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance?

Well said. Every decision that we will make is directly or indirectly related to cost, ingenuity, and external acceptance—indirectly, effect as in the equation of cost and effect.

For instance, in 2021 any family which has at least one unemployed adult must be worried about family expenses in order to make ends meet. What will be the new alternative or substitute for the goods and services that are scarce? How to connect with the outside world when we are trapped at home? Look, John Doe is spending days on the computer to hunt for jobs and Little Jonny is also spending a few hours daily on the screen to interact with his teachers and schoolmates. Will their future be a gain rather than a loss in the digital age?   

For traditional companies, when business may not return to a pre-pandemic normal, the cost issue is a headache to business owners. To keep the employees on their payrolls or downsizing, neither option is an easy one. Investments in developing countries or in exponential technologies such as data science and AI have a brighter silver lining than returning to traditional business practices. But who dares to invest when money is tight for many small business owners? Nevertheless, China’s full speed in development of exponential technologies might bring down the cost and shorten the R&D time. As Pink wrote in his book, “Now, as the forces of Abundance, Asia, and Automation deepen and intensify, the curtain is rising on Act III. Call this act the Conceptual Age. The main characters now are the creator and the empathizer, whose distinctive ability is mastery of R-Directed Thinking.”

For new graduates of Class of 2020, you happen to be in the frigid winter of a job market in the Conceptual Age. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the lowest (3.5%) and the highest (14.7%) unemployment rates in the U.S. in the last 50 years (since 1970) both occurred in 2020, and they took place just two months apart. Yikes!

In 2021, every job seeker is competing with not only another human being vying for the same position, but also the machines which are “hired” to scan the resumes and filter out the bad apples automatically. This preliminary selection mechanism is designed by left-brainers who are supposedly quantitative, objective and rational. Programmers are thought to be analytical experts of manipulating data to the preference of the recruiters. But who knows? The right-brainers might break the norm and crack the code with creativity.  

Today, waiting for humans’ responses has become longer to non-existent while the machines respond instantly in various human voices. In job seeking, can you be the outstanding one that a machine cannot understand and the human handler is eager to know more about? If you’ve discovered the potential of your right brain, you might find your place in today’s isolated and indifferent world, which is imbued with social distancing, e-commerce and teleconferencing.

Keep Calm and Be Patient With Humans. This is this right-brainer’s manifesto in 2021.  

In his book, Pink introduced us to “the six senses”—the six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal satisfaction increasingly will depend. They are:

DESIGN. STORY. SYMPHONY. EMPATHY. PLAY. MEANING.

After a year’s magical thinking, this right-brainer believes she has acquired at least five out of six senses—story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. Among them, she’d like to dwell on meaning a bit as it has become part of her soul searching. Pink highlighted Viktor Frankl’s psychotherapy in his interpretation about the sense of meaning. Pink wrote, “Our fundamental drive, the motivational engine that powers human existence, is the pursuit of meaning.” He quoted Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) in which the Austrian Holocaust survivor chronicled his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. It read:

“Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.”

Frankl’s psychotherapy in search of the purpose in life struck a chord with me. I’m elated that this quote verifies my Eureka Moment two years ago. It was Arthur Rimbaud, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Vincent van Gogh who guided me to live for the second time. My eternal shoutout to them. The right-brainer solidarity. Well, in 2021 when we cannot make sense of the chaos based on our logic and established theories, we will need the right-brainer solidarity more than ever before.  

From Pink to Play to Pablo Neruda

Partly thanks to social distancing due to the pandemic, I spend more time with my collection of original motion picture soundtracks (OST). I’d say listening to music is equivalent to the sense of play mentioned in A Whole New Mind. By listening to music, a listener acquires “various playful habits of mind that underlie invention.” The film score of Il Postino: The Postman (1994) led me to a great film for the literati. If you wonder how a metaphor works in language or in poetry, then this comedy-drama film is the primer. I’d imagine the original screenplay in Italian is very comical as I had chuckled and laughed with the help of subtitles. Check out these fun lines surrounding metaphors. In the movie, the Nobel Laureate in Literature Pablo Neruda was the muse of the fictional character, a postman named Mario Ruoppolo. Mario wanted to use his newfound love of poetry to woo local beauty Beatrice, the niece of the local innkeeper on a scenic island off Sicily. In reality, Pablo Neruda was a testament to Chile’s legacy as the land of poets. If the English translation of his Spanish poems is as beautiful as the original version, we will need to return to the original version in search of the beauty of linguistic sound in poetry. Pablo Neruda has left a trove of treasures for right-brainers around the world. Shouldn’t we compose an ode titled “Salute to Pablo Neruda”?

 Poetry  |  La Poesía (1964)
 By Pablo Neruda
 (Text:move the scroll bar to the right | Spanish Audio)

And it was at that age…Poetry arrived                    Y fue a esa edad… Llegó la poesía
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where        a buscarme. No sé, no sé de dónde 
it came from, from winter or a river.                    salió, de invierno o río. 
I don’t know how or when,                                No sé cómo ni cuándo,
no, they were not voices, they were not                  no, no eran voces, no eran
words, nor silence,                                      palabras, ni silencio,
but from a street I was summoned,                        pero desde una calle me llamaba,
from the branches of night,                              desde las ramas de la noche,
abruptly from the others,                                de pronto entre los otros,
among violent fires                                      entre fuegos violentos
or returning alone,                                      o regresando solo, 
there I was without a face                               allí estaba sin rostro
and it touched me.                                       y me tocaba.
I did not know what to say, my mouth                     Yo no sabía qué decir, mi boca
had no way                                               no sabía
with names                                               nombrar,
my eyes were blind,                                      mis ojos eran ciegos,
and something started in my soul,                        y algo golpeaba en mi alma,
fever or forgotten wings,                                fiebre o alas perdidas,
and I made my own way,                                   y me fui haciendo solo,
deciphering                                              descifrando
that fire                                                aquella quemadura,
and I wrote the first faint line,                        y escribí la primera línea vaga,
faint, without substance, pure                           vaga, sin cuerpo, pura
nonsense,                                                tontería,
pure wisdom                                              pura sabiduría
of someone who knows nothing,                            del que no sabe nada,
and suddenly I saw                                       y vi de pronto
the heavens                                              el cielo
unfastened                                               desgranado 
and open,                                                y abierto,
planets,                                                 planetas, 
palpitating plantations,                                 plantaciones palpitantes, 
shadow perforated,                                       la sombra perforada,
riddled                                                  acribillada
with arrows, fire and flowers,                           por flechas, fuego y flores,
the winding night, the universe.                         la noche arrolladora, el universo.

And I, infinitesimal being,                              Y yo, mínimo ser,
drunk with the great starry                              ebrio del gran vacío
void,                                                    constelado, 
likeness, image of                                       a semejanza, a imagen
mystery,                                                 del misterio,
I felt myself a pure part                                me sentí parte pura
of the abyss,                                            del abismo, 
I wheeled with the stars,                                rodé con las estrellas,
my heart broke loose on the wind.                        mi corazón se desató en el viento. 

It is not uncommon that since the invention and popularity of GIF memes, emoji and other ideograms, words and punctuation have been replaced by ideograms easily in our instant messages. I can’t help thinking of the third question posed by the author in A Whole New Mind. Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance? What if our take-for-granted communication which is conveyed through words and sounds is transformed into graphics and ideograms instead? Are we going forward to the Conceptual Age or going backward to the Stone Age?  

(The Trio version sounds as if three different personas represented by three different music instruments are talking to one another. Composed by Luis Bacalov, the OST of Il Postino won the 68th Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score (1995) and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music.)

“Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it; it belongs to those who need it.”

—Mario Ruoppolo, Il Postino: The Postman (1994)

P.S. In the dawn of this right-brainer’s awakening hour, she experimented with the six senses suggested in A Whole New Mind and wrote a poem to mark the occasion. Listen. Learn. And Create. 2021 can be fun and adventurous.    

Reactivation

by Karen Zhang | Jan 2021

You came back into my life

      on one winter night when

            I was fumbling through

                   those old files,

                         my Chinese linkage, and

                               your old cellphone—

I felt as if we were two living spirits

      beckoning across a massive web

            between reality and virtuality

                   in the same eon.

Your sweet slumber was imbued with a forlorn calling.

       You were beseeching me to reactivate

               a locked diary,

                 a forgotten tune,

                    an untold tale,

                       an unfinished dialogue about the living and

                          about us.

I heard you,

   I sensed you,

     I wept for you,

        I reactived your WeChat account—

           I have opened a door

               for us—

                  Just the two of us.

How sweet!

   Let it be the way it is—

      Forget the time, the space, and

        tonight can you hear my nostalgic tune?     

          Our past is again

             reactivated.

Welcome to 2021—you’ve survived an eventful year of sorrow, pain and anxiety. Here we are into a new lease on life as you’ve just stepped out of your comfort zone. You might still wonder what are the symptoms for feeling no longer in your comfort zone. I did a brainstorming and came up with these words. If you are in the opposite situations of being secure, comfortable, predictable and in control; or if you often feel anxious, angry, worried, disappointed and painful, congratulations—you’re no longer in your comfort zone.

In fact, no one is an exception for leaving their comfort zones after 2020. Children as young as toddlers had their shared memory of the days in 2020 without playmates close by, teachers in a vacant classroom, and summer camps set in the wild and wonderful Mother Nature.

Office workers across all age groups had their futuristic, insulator-like encounter with their clients, families and friends through screens and texting. All those familiar faces and the strange ones crisscrossed on the screens of various sizes like tens of thousands of fireflies at night illuminating our unlit mind. This is how I frame my surreal memory of 2020—I don’t know you in person but I feel as if we’re as close as at an arm’s length by locking our eyes on the screen. I feel your voice is familiar even though you don’t know me, as if a mother is whispering to her child at bedtime when I listen to your podcasts. I’m adapting to a new comfort zone since 2020.

Teleconferencing and its technological advancement will stay with us in this new year and beyond. Elderly, especially those who live alone or in senior homes, were forced to adapt to a no-contact world of communication last year, ranging from doctor’s appointments and family visits to moviegoing and book club gatherings. Like the indigenous people and impoverished, unsung heroes from all walks of life, seniors and medical professionals also faced an unprecedentedly challenging year that their gut feelings and expertise were no longer sufficient to handle the risks—and perhaps danger too—that were hidden outside their comfort zones.

The global public crisis has left no one behind—we are all out of our comfort zones now.

One of my favorite books since I was a youngster is titled Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. It has a beautiful description about how a majority of us choose to stay in our comfort zones. And yet the Year of Pandemic has pushes us willy-nilly to rethink and reimagine the meaning of living in the years ahead. It reads:

“A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit’s fine hairs where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves even deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of the fall off, but other cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.”       

I’ve read this excerpt many times and it still makes my heart race. As we are in 2021, we’re in the New Age of Aquarius. An astrological “age” shifts about every 2,150 years when the Earth’s rotation moves into a new zodiac sign around the spring equinox. Considering the massive transits that happened in the pandemic-laden 2020, astrologers around the world have believed the Jupiter-Saturn Great Conjunction on the winter solstice last year (December 21, 2020) and several celestial bodies move into Aquarius in February of 2021 herald the arrival of the Age of Aquarius. I will explain later what the Jupiter-Saturn Great Conjunction is. We are truly leaving the Age of Pisces which shaped many belief systems.

Whether or not you believe in astrology, Aquarians are often identified by their unconventional ideas and nonconformist attitude. The sign of Aquarius is forward-looking and growth-oriented and it seeks knowledge, equality and individual freedom to all. So, as we have left our comfort zones propelled by COVID-19, facing the aftermath of trauma and depression in the largest scale in contemporary history, we are likely to experience more purging, and an ongoing conflict between the old and the new, marked by the blending different energies from the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius. Superstitiously, I wonder if the brownout in Guangzhou China on the winter solstice was related to the astrological spectacle about the Great Conjunction.

Astrologically speaking, the 2020 Jupiter-Saturn meetup is especially important since it serves as a bridge to Pluto’s entrance into Aquarius in 2024. Pluto will spend twenty years in Aquarius. Pluto is the sign of transformation and Aquarius is a sign of progress. So it is believed that the combined energies of Aquarius and Pluto will advance humanity incredibly on a global scale.

Looking back, the crises we experienced last year and a plethora of broken systems on which the pandemic has turned a spotlight, at which we would normally keep a blind eye, have somewhat shattered the foundation of our comfort zones, haven’t they?

Never should we forget what we fought for in 2020. A systemic problem requires a systemic change by systems leadership and empathy. If you’d like to refresh the purpose of living in a new normal in 2021 and beyond, or better, if you’d rather create your brand new comfort zone in the danger space than living defensively and in denial, you may tune in David Lammy’s outspoken public statement about why climate justice can’t happen without racial justice. As one of the young leaders in the British Parliament, MP Lammy’s viewpoint resonates with my belief that climate policy is the 21^st century diplomacy. And the U.S.-China relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in this century.   

Last month, I was strongly drawn to astrology as if my cognition was suddenly awakened by a gravitational pull from the constellations and the Greek mythology behind them. Serendipitously, I was in the right moment to learn about an astrological spectacle. Jupiter and Saturn met on the winter solstice last year, launching a rare sky show of Great Conjunction 2020.

Astronomers call a close planetary pairing a conjunction. Jupiter-Saturn pairings occur about once every 20 years. Appearing just one-tenth of a degree apart, or about the thickness of a dime held at arm’s length, the two bright planets appeared closer together than at any time in the past 400 years and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn occurred at night. 400 years? How many lifetimes are there for a mortal like me to live through before I can observe such an astral miracle? Am I blessed that I did it in this lifetime? Is it a homecoming present in the Age of Aquarius? Eventually, I will become a stardust returning to the embrace of the universe.   

Jupiter and Saturn last lined up as closely as this was in 1623, roughly a dozen years after Galileo first aimed a telescope at the night sky and discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons. Because of their rarity of closeness in 2020, the spectacle was referred to as “Great Conjunction.” The next comparably close conjunction will be in 2080. I’ll be most likely a stardust by then. The video from the Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, recorded the entire Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21, 2020. I hope you have a blast with the recorded spectacle and the beautiful accompanied music.

With the help of the internet, people around the world, not only in the United States, but from Brill, England and Kuwait City, Kuwait to Koh Chang, Thailand and Guatemala, also posted their images of the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Check out here. This is where I should cut down hundreds of ten-thousand words where pictures speak louder than words.

Let us relive the golden rule in the U.S. Declaration of Independence—Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. A new comfort zone is to be created and ameliorated from now on. Perhaps our life will be less turbulent and troubled if we believe what Democritus said that happiness dwells in the soul.

In the fast-paced, and maybe arbitrary, information age, only the nature of humanity and the reflection of our souls will remain distinct and definite. Leaving the old comfort zone only signifies that a majority of us have to discover and create a new one that will give them “the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.”

2021 will be a very different year ahead for you and me.

“Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.” —Democritus

Without suspense, the Year of Pandemic will follow us into 2021. We certainly have spent an unforgettable year in our lifetime in the lens of social distancing and lockdowns. If we still have faith in the future, we should celebrate for being one-step closer to understand hardship and cherish what we have in this lifetime. The continuation of life is what sustainability is about—this is only the end of the beginning. We need to continue our great efforts to do what we are good at in the coming new year. We need to listen, learn and create solutions for the Year of Healing.

As we are welcoming the new year, I’ve compiled a few odds and ends from my story folder to share with you. You might have seen this famous optical illusion that first appeared on an 1888 German postcard and was later adapted by British cartoonist William Ely Hill, who published it in a humor magazine in 1915 with the title “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law.” Do you see a young woman or an old woman?   

A survey finds that we process faces from ages similar to our own more thoroughly and holistically than those of other ages. In other words, if we perceive ourselves as an aged person, we are more prone to see an old lady in the picture.

In the Year of Pandemic we cannot ignore masks that have become our everyday accessories. Mask making is a new business for fashion designers and ingenious inventors. Have you seen Santas putting on red velvet masks and greeting children in a social distance grotto? Or, have you seen Croatian brides wearing bridal masks in their wedding gowns? Life goes on but with a bit creativity in response to a global public health crisis, we might feel the softness of our heart and the hardness of our will.     

In the Year of Pandemic the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize may add joy to our pandemic-fatigue life. Since 1991, the satiric prize has celebrated ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. This year’s Ig Peace Prize is awarded to India and Pakistan for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other’s doorbells in the middle of the night, and then run away before anyone had a chance to answer the door. Scientists are no different from any ordinary man who knows little about science. Scientists are rigorous in their fields of study but they could be communicative and playful. In my year of magical thinking, I’ve come across scientists who are good at playing music instruments or are outdoor sportsmen. In contrast, my scope of interests is strictly in liberal arts.       

Albert Einstein quipped: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch and do nothing.” This can’t be a more timely statement in the context of the Year of Pandemic. Americans often lament on what one man can do in the White House. But the people around this unpopular WH occupant do nothing; if they do, they have boosted his ego and ambition of destruction. In the Anthropocene, the age of man, if we do nothing to slow down the pace of climate change, the adverse effects will spiral at an uncontrollable speed. Earlier this year, I learned that global warming is thawing permafrost under the Earth’s surface, resulting in the blowout and explosion that causes the craters in Siberia. Methane gas that used to be stored underground is now released from the melting permafrost, contributing to the greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere. Can we really do nothing?

Can we redeem ourselves by doing more for our future? If my generation is the future of my predecessor’s generation, that is, the Baby Boomers, I want to say in 2020 we are still cleaning up leftover Vietnam-era bombs in the Southeast Asian countries. It is estimated as many as four to six million mines and other pieces of unexploded ordnance in Cambodia. Laos is the most heavily bombed country in history. As a result, almost half of its suitable farmland is totally unusable. A group of Cambodians is using Gambian giant rats to find the nearly two million landmines across the country. What’s more, a landmine detection rat named Magawa became the first rat to receive a PDSA medal that honors bravery and devotion to duty of animals. At Helsinki airport, sniffer dogs have begun work to detect covid through their sharp sense of smell. Scientists found that dogs were able to identify diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and the coronavirus with nearly 100% accuracy. Do animals do more for us than we can do for them?    

In the Year of Pandemic we are restricted from traveling afar. But we can appreciate our beautiful world if we open the window of our heart. If you’re looking for ecotourism, South Korea stands out in 2020 with a giant crane across a vast sprawl of paddy fields in Suncheon, 198 miles south of Seoul. The giant rice crane urged the country to “cheer up!” in the face of COVID-19.

And Dongpirang Mural Village in Tongyeong-si, South Korea brought vibrant street art alive. Of course, if we can travel in 2021, we do not want to get on this plane, do we?     

No matter what will happen in 2021, it is up to you to make your life sweet and memorable against all odds. Happy New Year!!!

What is linguicide? It’s a blend of two words, linguo– and –cide. It means the death of a language, either naturally or from political causes. My year of saving endangered species and languages in 2020 has risen to the occasion in the Year of Pandemic. I bet Google Translate must be overwhelmed by requests for translating non-dominant languages into dominant languages, and vice versa. Reports show Google Translate supports only 100 languages, give or take. There are about 7,000 languages spoken in the world. Half of the population in the world speaks 50 languages, and the other half of the population speaks the remaining 6,050 languages. By the end of this century, it is estimated that half of the 7,000 languages will fall into silence. Linguicide indeed.

This is not my baseless speculation. I say it as a translator, so does linguist Mandana Seyfeddinipur. I remember when I defended my creative writing thesis a decade ago, I told my professors that even though I wrote my Chinese stories in English, there were nuances unique to the Chinese culture that could not be translated. That sparked the interest of my professor who was fascinated by East Asian culture. Until today, I still cannot be sure I find the right word to express myself both verbally and in writing. Language is the only feature that distinguishes humans from animal communication. Animals don’t understand human languages but humans can interpret animal communication through animal behaviors and can communicate in a shared language.   

I came across the word “genocide” through historical events. From the Holocaust in WWII to the Kosovo War (1998-1999) and the Rwandan genocide (1994), just to name a few. Sadly, a survey finds two-thirds of young Americans lack basic Holocaust knowledge.  I doubt there would be a more promising figure in the same age group for the understanding of history dating back even further, such as the American Civil War and pre-New World in 1492. If political leaders who committed wartime crimes should be held accountable, shouldn’t the actors who kill languages be responsible?

Years ago I watched a movie titled “Lost in Translation.” I was drawn to its title more so than its storyline. I’ve spend a lifetime to figure out why not everything is translatable between languages. Partly because the pronunciation, diction and facial expressions cannot be captured in a target language whose origin does not have the same connotation as the source language. The latest technologies might fill those gaps but still, in my opinion, every language is unique to its own identity and culture. When we are in a foreign land where exotic language is spoken, we only can relate those circumstances to our own experience in order to understand the context. We form a bond in humanity even though we don’t speak the same language.

If we understand that, we will be more open-minded about the fact that meanings are therefore bound to be lost in translations. We should take a grain of salt when we turn to Google Translate for help, especially when one of the two exchanging languages is a non-dominant language such as Cantonese, my mother tongue. We may want to ask more questions from the speakers to explain the meaning instead of resorting to Google or Twitter—we are “downgrading” ourselves as Mandana Seyfeddinipur put it. Yes, the art of language does not appear out of machine learning or the ever-evolving internet language. When one cannot communicate in a language that she feels comfortable to is comparable with an electrical short circuit in her brain.

Language shift resulting from displacement or the speaker’s adoption to a new environment usually lead to the loss of a language. In order to survive, any speaker will have to confront with this painful decision to give up his or her heritage to another language. Globalization, climate change and urbanization are some of the determinators in this decision making.

Globalization does bring us closer by sharing of ideas, cultures, goods, services and investment. That is a major reason why Google Translate has exponential growth because of increasing data feeding and usages by global citizens. The classic reminder for language students is use it or lose it. I haven’t spoken Japanese for a while and soon it becomes a reading language only. If I don’t expose myself to Japanese texts often enough, perhaps it will become a total stranger. I believe the same situation happens in any non-dominant language. Its fate is even direr because many of those 6,050 languages spoken by half of the global population are not written. They vanish without a trace before we notice it. My mother tongue speaks of itself. If I need to write Cantonese literally, I have to borrow homonyms from Mandarin Chinese or from English to capture the sound of a particular word. Imagine those indigenous people who are not literate, how can they capture sound in written form?  

Climate crisis displaces wildlife and humans. We may have heard of the term “climate refugees.” Urbanization is another form of migration, the internal migration. Neither migration promotes diversity of language. Our languages reflect our living environment. When we are confronting the loss of biodiversity and habitats, the richness of our languages will lose its luster as well. The “my way or the highway” mentality doesn’t help either. If you cannot accept other’s culture and identity, it’s no different from genocide.

China’s latest efforts to speed up the assimilation of its ethnic minorities into the majority Han culture have reached Inner Mongolia, following a cultural-revolution-style cleansing of Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Years ago when I visited Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, the traditional Mongolian script captured my imagination. I thought to myself then that at least the Mongolians had their own written script comparing to Cantonese. Those vertical lines derived from the old Uyghur alphabet carry sounds and melodies of an old culture. An old tune is worth repeating and remembered, isn’t it?

When Han Chinese are traveling to Tibet and Xinjiang to chase their dreams of seeing a wonderland, they may not notice the draconian language rules for Tibetans, Uyghurs, and now the Inner Mongolians have further eroded these underprivileged ethnic groups in China. I think of my trip to a gallery in Hanoi some years ago. I learned that many ethnic groups in northern Vietnam actually have their cultural heritage from southern China. That explains why a cluster of endangered languages dotted on the map of endangered languages in the region. If you’re interested in contributing to language preservation, a worldwide collaboration called the Endangered Language Project is a good resource.            

When I look at the NAT GEO calendar of 2021 that shows two different globes—one is a blue planet, the other is a fire ball resulting from global warming, I can’t help thinking what can be more horrifying than a language massacre. If climate change is a political topic and global warming is due to human activities, aren’t we the actor responsible for linguicide?

From the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House to Suzhou gardens and Japanese Zen gardens, I’ve been drawn to this architectural design for years. I had not been able to articulate this concept of incorporating natural environment with our living space until this year. Socially distancing in my comfort zone and retrospecting, I’ve finally learned that its name is called biophilic design.

Biophilic is the adjective of biophilia, a term originated from The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973) by German-born American psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. Biophilia, literally, bio- means “love of life” and –philia, means “love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom.” If we look at its Greek roots, “biophilia” literally means “love of living things.” The term was extended by American biologist Edward O. Wilson in Biophilia (1984) to mean “the rich, natural pleasure that comes from being surrounded by living organisms.” 

Do you know there are 50 Eskimo words for “snow”? To name just two: “aqilokoq” is to describe the frozen landscape with “softly falling snow,” and “piegnartoq” is for “the snow that is good for driving sled.” In 2014, Terrapin Bright Green, an environmental consulting firm, published a paper titled “14 Patterns of Biophilic Design.” to define aspects of nature that most impact our satisfaction with the built environment. The 14 patterns of biophilic design akin to the 50 Eskimo words for “snow,” bringing aesthetic creators greater clarity to the nuances of design opportunities, including the roots of the science behind each pattern, then metrics, strategies and considerations for how to use each pattern. Of course, the paper is also a gem to this amateur linguist who is often mesmerized by les bons mots, the good words.   

Residing far from East Asia, I constantly think of the familiar scenes which now only can be found in films and magazines in which porcelain fish bowls displayed in the courtyard, bonsai in Japanese homes, and shady Chinese banyan trees forming a canopy in an old neighborhood in Guangzhou. We don’t need to go too far. Nature is around us, and we are part of nature. If you care for discovering nature around you, you might notice sound as well. My biophilic rhapsody is not complete without sound. Or shall I say the sound of nature?

I’ve found a recording created by George Hempton, founder of the independent research project One Square Inch of Silence. As Hempton said, “Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything.” Indeed, especially in the year of 2021, perhaps we will need more of tranquility from nature to heal our mind, heart and soul. For that, I will continue to discover the sound of linguistics in this column next year, coupled with my biophilic rhapsody for healing. This is only a sampler. Check out the video for Icelandic musician Björk’s interview about her journey to discover music and biophilia. Make sure to listen to the introduction narrated by our favorite natural historian David Attenborough. Björk’s project reminded me of a recording of pure music translated by scientists from coronavirus protein structure early this year. Today’s technology is making nature and music possible to soothe us without our traveling to discover them in the wild.

Listen. Learn. And Create.  

I’ll invite you to come back to this essay by the end of 2021 to see if you’ve grown to be more biophilic and innovative. This will be the theme throughout my advocacy in 2021.  Perhaps a moment of silence will calm the noises in our heads, a forest of birds’ chirping will lift up our sorrow, and a fountain of frogs’ croaking will add joy to our boring life. Japanese “forest bathing (森林浴)” or shinrin–yoku (しんりんよく) ,  is the perfect interpretation of biophilia. The magic behind “forest bathing” boils down to the naturally produced allelochemical substances known as phytoncides. They help ward off pesky insects and slow the growth of fungi and bacteria. When humans are exposed to phytoncides, these chemicals are scientifically proven to lower blood pressure, relieve stress and boost the growth of cancer-fighting white blood cells. If you’d like to learn the science of “forest bathing,” follow Dr. Qing Li, author of Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness (2018). Now you know why I’m a tree hugger. I’m trying to be a vocal one.

Forest can cleanse our body and mind as if a soulmate will listen to you when you are at a loss. If you are willing to talk to nature, the nature will talk back to you. That explains why when we travel to a foreign destination, nature always evokes our senses. A little bit of biophilia in our life will harmonize relationships and perhaps, only a wild guess, we can rebuild trust in an age of disinformation with the help of biophilic design.

In closing, let us immerse ourselves in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson from Nature (1836). Let us examine human’s biological need to connect with nature in this timely and timeless biophilic rhapsody.

“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not a solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. . . The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.”

When I first came across this English idiom long time ago, I found the speaker very unreasonable. To some extent, the tone of it disgusted me. On what ground is one licensed to be so assertive that he/she cannot tolerate dissent? But as the year of 2020 is coming to an end, we’re hearing more often than not—My way or the Highway.

What is done cannot be undone. Although the U.S. has elected its next president fair and square, the country remains so polarized and divisive that the narrow-minded only can accept one voice, one opinion, one idea, and one way—My way or the Highway. According to statistics released in September by the U.S. Treasury Dept., the outstanding debt of the federal government has grown from $22.6 trillion on 9/24/2019 to $26.8 trillion year on year, an increase of $4.2 trillion in the last 12 months. How do we get here? American citizens are not debt-free, far from it; neither will the future citizens be debt-free. Since 1960, the U.S. Congress has acted 78 separate times to permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit. What if the future generation does not want to follow their parents’ and grandparents’ way of spending? Will they have a say?

Apparently, Trump’s “MY WAY” rhetoric and behavior have done greater damage than any of his predecessors. Some damages are far-reaching and even irreparable such as the integrity of the GOP. I doubt the GOP could return to what it used to be or even excel at its party history during Lincoln’s time. According to the annual index produced by the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank, the U.S. saw its relative power drop the most of any country in 2020. The U.S. registered the sharpest declines in economic relationships, economic capability and diplomatic influence, with its reputation taking a greater hit due to COVID-19 than any other country. The US’s death toll of COVID-19 is on the rise like an atrocity in the Kosovo War or the Rwandan genocide. To what end, will we get off the highway of craziness?

The U.S. is not the only country that proclaims its “MY WAY” policies, if there are any policies per se under Trump rather than political hot air. The world’s second largest economy is also asserting louder and prouder about its “One China” and “Internal Affairs” principles. But today’s China is no longer China in the 1980s—it is a driving force of the system of globalization, a determinant of colonialism in the information age, and a colossal beast in intergovernmental cooperation. If you want to join the club in an international game, you cannot forbid other players from checking on you; you cannot abuse your special status as “a developing country” and ignore international rules.

While I was doing my case study about the Sundarbans, India, I saw this article with respect to the establishment of Rampal Thermal Power Plant just north of the Sundarbans in Bangladesh. Scientists and activists have repeatedly voiced concerns that the plant could threaten the world’s largest mangrove forest. You’d think intergovernmental institutions could pressure local government or even stop it from green-lighting the project. Sadly, a recommendation to add the Sundarbans to the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger was rejected by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, which is chaired by China. The Chinese, Bosnian, and Cuban delegations even passed an amendment erasing mention of the Rampal power plant and two joint Bangladesh-China coal-fired power plants from the decision. Who says China is disinterested in global affairs? Who believes China is only interested in self-development with friendliness?

I’ve particularly grappled with the inconsistency and hypocrisy mirrored in individuals as well as global leaders. Thanks to Trump’s flip-flop attitude that reinforces my skepticism during the past four years. My way or the high way. Should I remain skeptical or should I believe there are still opportunities—the ones with good intention—to be taken place between nations? In 2020, China’s pledge to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 has made headlines, followed by Japan and South Korea. China is influential, at least geopolitically. China scored 76.1 in this year’s Asia Power Index, holding steady to retain the second place from the previous year.       

And yet, how will China achieve its carbon neutrality goal? Consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie estimated it would require investments of more than US$5 trillion. Solar, wind and storage capacities will have to increase 11 times to 5,040 gigawatts by 2050 compared with 2020 levels. How will low-rung Chinese people adapt to the loss of coal mining jobs that are projected to be halved? Perhaps that explains why China invests heavily in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to retain coal mining activity in key provinces.

Internationally, perhaps lesser known to its citizens, China is following the path of any developed countries to export unwanted electronic junk to Africa. Millions of used and new inefficient AC appliances are being sold in Africa every year, many of them illegally. According to a research by two nonprofits, a quarter of the sample low-efficiency AC units were imported from non-African countries, primarily China. If you are interested in reading more about the dirty secret of e-waste recycling between China and the United States, click here for my comparative case study titled “Turning Trash Into Treasure.”

Humanity does not seem to be interested in learning about their mistakes from history. Perhaps, it lends a louder voice for Alexander Pope’s “To err is human” to excuse us from not reflecting upon our deeds, specifically, those are done wrongfully. Perhaps that’s why history repeats itself, if not completely, at least somewhat in the similar trajectory as if were the free fall of water from a fountain; perhaps that’s why humanity is trapped in history; and “My Way or the Highway” is being incentivized by arrogant mortals for their ignorance of our shared past.  

I was heavy-hearted for days after my case study about Kiribati. I don’t relish Trump’s rhetoric except for his dubbing those Least Developing Countries (LDC) such as Haiti as “s***h*** countries.” I hope he understand (of course he doesn’t) what these LDC have become is largely an historical problem traced back to colonial times. The rich countries achieved successes through overexploitation of natural resources in LDC. Under British rule, the phosphate mining in Banaba, Kiribati has forced out indigenous residents for good. Phosphate mining also devastated Nauru, a neighboring country of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean. In the process of mining phosphate to fertilize fields in faraway places, the country had rendered its own landscape infertile. Today, the island is a barren wasteland with jagged limestone pinnacles that cover 80% of the island. Remotely, I sob for those indigenous people who are living in hell.   

Look, there has been international aid given to these LDC countries from the West as a sort of a gesture of redemption from the former colonial countries to their former subjects. Today, China’s global outreach for trade and natural resources is also expansive and disrespectful of local ecosystem services—logging, poaching, offloading toxic waste, and exploiting labor forces by not hiring local workers. As the United States is recuperating from severe trauma associated with COVID-19 and the unpopular White House occupant, why wouldn’t an authoritarian superpower rise to the occasion and amplify it’s “my way or the highway” air of arrogance in the void of democracy and diplomacy?

As I’ve constantly stressed that climate action won’t take flight with the “my way or the highway” mentality. Disinformation and misinformation are further dividing us through laissez-faire attitude to Internet of Things. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the heavier toll is afoot. There is no vaccine to a climate crisis, only more deaths and losses encounter us following disasters. Ahead of COP26 in 2021 (the UN Climate Change conference), let us tune in a webinar presented by Susan Biniaz, former U.S. negotiator of the 2015 Paris Agreement. This is what we the Americans left off after the country was formally withdrew from the Paris Agreement on November 4, 2020.    

And this video is why countries need to expedite the efforts of international cooperation. NASA, US and the European Space Agency partnered to launch Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite into the space on November 21 to monitor global sea levels. If what lies ahead is uncertain as a result of the pandemic and U.S. politics, there is one thing we should be certain that we don’t save the planet before we save ourselves. We live on this planet and we are responsible for making sure our living condition is intact as if it were bestowed to us before we were born. It is my way to call for solidarity and sustainability.

    

During my months-long, anarchic covid lockdown in America, I’ve had a chance to rewatch, reread, and rethink movies, video clips, books, and notes that were yellowing and dusted in my slush piles. Among them was a 1995 music video (MV) “Earth Song” featuring Michael Jackson. The global success of this MV has stood the test of time. At the time the melodramatic visual of man-made destruction of the Planet Earth and Jackson’s give-it-all performance reached as far as my birth country China, where its gatekeeping of foreign trade and cultural influence was just loosening. “Earth Song” revealed to viewers regardless of age, gender, race and national origin that mankind is a powerful species, perhaps, a cut-throat kind that would cause havoc for dominance.  

That was my early reckoning of the Anthropocene—the age of man—a name coined by Dutch Nobel chemistry laureate Paul Crutzen, a name that was introduced to me during my magical thinking in the XMNR program.

The covid lockdown has ruined many of our plans in 2020. Is the cause of our loss man-made? I ask myself. My longest self-imposed confinement also surprised me that how adaptable humanity is. As long as we develop a new pattern of living, or forming a habit, we are pretty much on autopilot every day. Reading, thinking, and writing predominate my solitary life this year. I’m a living proof of a rigorous routine tracker. I bet your pre-covid commute to office and school was a habitual pattern as well. So was your moveable feast during travels. If you need a piece of reaffirmation from a heavyweight, Scott Kelly’s tips on isolation in space is enlightening. In the covid months, Zoom meetings become part of our life just as wearing our masks in public.   

Because of our abrupt halt of economic activities, we had experienced a brief moment of unintended rewilding this year, or better, a mirage of human harmony with nature. From deer wandering through Nana streets in Japan and monkeys brawling in the absence of tourists in Lopburi, Thailand, to dolphins appearing in Venice’s canals and villagers in northern Punjab India seeing the Himalayas clearly for the first time in almost 30 years as a result of clearer air quality from India’s lockdown, they remind me on a daily basis that humans are dependent on nature for physical and mental survival. No one would disagree that covid hit hard tourism which supports low-income people’s livelihoods, the middle class’s mental health, and upper class’s luxury lifestyle. We are far apart and yet we are so close. It is because of globalization of goods and services and the Internet of Things (IoT).   

On the other side of world where IoT is primitive to non-existent, I saw humanity’s fragility and hunger for basic needs. Those necessities and wants are no different from the rich world. Just a click under my fingertip, I traveled to South Africa where informal settlements like ant colonies were strewn close by the high-rise buildings. That overcrowding scene was not typical of what I saw in Mumbai, India or South Tarawa, Kiribati, with the help of Google Earth and other technological tools. At some point in the history of the Anthropocene, the rich world has gone through the periods of development that the poor countries are pursuing. And the hard truth is the wealth and health of the rich world is largely built on the overexploitation of resources and offloading of pollution in the poor countries.

As the Bard quipped: “We suffer a lot the few things we lack and we enjoy too little the many things we have.” I’d add, we suffer a lot the little we know about our past and we enjoy too little the many mistakes we repeat. The minute we are born on this planet, history is recording every second of our activities and behaviors. In David Attenborough’s latest documentary film, A Life On Our Planet (2020), the nonagenarian natural historian has sounded the most gut-wrenching alarm yet of his witness statement for the natural world. “The way we humans live on earth is sending it into decline,” he warned.

A quarter of a century following the release of the MV “Earth Song,” human activities of poaching and deforestation in the fossil fuel-based economy that appear in the MV have not ceased. Whether it is during Europe’s Age of Discovery or today’s digital era that divides us between the haves and have-nots, no one would disagree that we are still the same warm-blooded, social animals. We are yearning for connectivity and yet vying for dominance. Living on the same planet with other non-human species, we are not that different from what we think.

Like COVID-19, climate impact is not felt simultaneously in every corner of the world. Even the spike of covid cases varies from different countries and periods of time. The damage of climate change is usually assessed case by case, and region by region. However, water plays a crucial role in the climate system as its travel pattern (evaporation and precipitation) and construct (volume and speed) are disrupted by natural abnormalities such as rising temperatures. We all know temperature changes the physical properties of water from liquid to gas to solid. Reducing the Planet’s temperature is a collective commitment to make the impossible possible.

Kiribati, a tiny Pacific island nation, encapsulates most, if not all, of challenges to fight climate change. From climate change discord among big greenhouse gas emitters and land erosion caused by sea level rises to water scarcity and poor sanitation, Kiribati will define what is climate diplomacy and defense under determined climate leadership. Kiribati will also showcase the world how climate deniers and climate advocates will coexist in the 21^st century.

Former president of Kiribati Anote Tong once called his people “the polar bears of the Pacific.” Both are losing their homes very soon as glaciers are also shrinking fast. The low-lying island countries are on the frontline of sea level rises whereas the Scandinavian countries feel the impacts of glacier melting in their backyard. Wildfires, hurricanes, floods, nor’easter, Snowmageddon, blizzard, and even distinction of seasonal changes are becoming blurry. These natural phenomena are impossible to comprehend without science, and yet we have to cope with them, or better, conquer them.

Under former President Anote Tong, Kiribati drew international attention following Tong’s audacious purchase of 6,000 acres of land in Fiji as part of his contingency plan in response to rising sea levels. The $8 million property investment with public funds was sensational because one, this is the first time a country has to plan ahead for climate change-induced migration. Two, it is uncertain that Kiribati people will relocate to this plot of land abroad in the near future, but Tong has made his case about the predicament of his people’s livelihood resulting from global warming in the international community. The elephant member states in the UN cannot cover their eyes and ears from the grievances from small nations. Small nations outnumbers big countries in the UN but by influence, the big countries determine not only their countries’ future but that of the small ones. Above all, the UN serves the world but is manipulated by its big donors. If you want to learn more about Kiribati and other 90 small countries in the same grouping of “Vulnerable Member States of the United Nations,” click here.   

As mentioned, Tong’s government pushed forward “migration with dignity.” Tong said in an interview that he didn’t like the term “climate refugee” as they were regarded as second-class citizens, thought of as no longer belonging. He said, “I want people to be not only belong but in control.” It won’t be the first time for I-Kiribati to migrate to Fiji. Back in the 1950s before the country gained independence from Great Britain, the exhaustion of phosphate reserves on Banaba Island had driven hundreds of people to settle in Fiji. The 20 sq km of land on Vanua Levu, one of the Fiji islands, is used for agricultural and fish-farming projects for now as seawater is increasingly contaminating Kiribati’s groundwater and coral bleaching.   

Kiribati owns the Pacific’s second largest maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), behind French Polynesia. In 2012, joining other small Pacific countries, Tong’s government implemented the Vessel Day Scheme to ratchet up the fees they charge tuna fishing boats to enter their waters, aka EEZ. According to a recent study, in 2011, Kiribati’s fishing license revenue was just $29.1 million (17 percent of GDP), but by 2015, revenue had risen to $207.1 million (90 percent of GDP). Alongside, Tong’s government banned commercial fishing in the Phoenix Island Protected Area (PIPA) effective on January 1, 2015. PIPA, which makes up 11.3 percent of the EEZ of Kiribati is the largest marine area on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. In Tong’s word, this is his country’s “commitment to fight climate change” and a demonstration of making a sacrifice in order to make a major contribution to ensure biodiversity and the maintenance of fishing stocks well into the future.     

President Tong’s ambition for climate adaptation is not only rested in the present. During his tenure, the idea of constructing a floating island had been explored. No one would want to leave their homeland because of climate change, thus elevating the sinking land would be a possibility. This is a project for international cooperation and Japan’s Shimizu Corporation is the chosen one. If you visit Shimizu’s demo video of the floating island, you’ll not be disappointed by the promising future taken place in a tower that connects the vast sea and sky. The sky is truly the limit for Japanese ingenuity that is mixed with futuristic and traditional inspirations. But Tong’s floating island does not appeal to his successor, incumbent President Taneti Maamau. President Maamau believes “the ultimate decision is God’s” to determine if Kiribati will be drown.” To won China’s favor, Kiribati cut diplomatic tie with Taiwan in 2019 and signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative for considerable Chinese aid. Fisheries and tourism are key economic sectors in “Kiribati Vision 20,” a twenty-year sustainable development plan under President Maamau’s administration. 

As author Joshua Keating described, “Climate Change will transform them [countries like Kiribati] physically by eroding coastlines, economically through impacts on agricultural production, and socially through increased migration.” That we don’t see these problems does not mean they don’t exist. Kiribati is living in our unequipped future from climate change. It is our will power to make the impossible climate adaptation possible now.

What are the basic needs of a person to survive? How many days can a person survive without food? How many days can a person survive without water? During my covid months, I constantly associate these questions with my sustainability case studies of South Africa, Laos, the Sundarbans in India and Bangladesh, e-waste trade, and now, Kiribati. My conclusion is for the low-rung population around the world, people strive for food, water and shelter every single day, presumably they’re all clothed and civilized. Economic migration is closely tied to our basic needs. Aren’t we who live in developed countries also making our days count to meet our basic needs in covid-afflicted 2020?

With global warming in sight, Kiribati is among the world’s first countries that will disappear under the sea in this century. The country that falls into all four hemispheres—northern, southern, eastern, and western—is also a destination for mankind to witness the fragility of life without water, food, shelter, and telecommunication. According to the World Bank, despite the rising number of telephone connections, Kiribati is one of the least “connected” countries in the world. Out of the 33 coral atolls, only 21 islands are inhabited. And yet, the majority of the population either has no access to information communication technologies (ICT) or unable to afford the service, which is often unreliable. Wouldn’t isolated Kiribati be an ideal place where a message in a bottle could be washed ashore?

Connectivity enables us to understand the world and communicate with our own species. Without the Internet, I doubt big countries can function with pride and prejudice in 2020. In Small Island Developing States like Kiribati, unless you’re holding high office like former President Anote Tong, you won’t be able to travel around the world to campaign for global climate action and leadership. People in Kiribati are innate optimists and their worldview is not shaped by social media nor science. Their livelihoods are not dependent on the Internet of things (IoT). Their simple lifestyle boils down to the simple basic survival activities of eat, drink, poop, pray, sleep and trade. You may call this pattern “a short-term, self-rescue system.” 

Humans are short-sighted animals. In the world of connectivity where people are fed with overloaded data, we become less patient and prudent. Instead, we are more judgmental and siloed. As the Bard quipped: “We suffer a lot the few things we lack and we enjoy too little the many things we have.” In the days of Benjamin Franklin where there were no telephones or the Internet, leaders made plans so far-reaching that immortals today can still see their legacies influencing our life. Colonial legislation is one example. Nevertheless, we have everything and we don’t seem to find a fungible solution that will sustain our life without worrying about food, water, safety, and in Kiribati’s case, land too. With good healthcare, people can now live as long as 100 years (it’s less fortunate for I-Kiribati whose average life expectancy is 68 years in 2018). Our sustainable development plans often set in 2050 and 2100. What will happen after 2050? 2100? Our lifetime won’t reach that far, but does that mean we are okay to leave our problems to future generations to solve? Are we solving our forebearers’ problems now? 

If we put aside climate change, what threatens I-Kiribati’s survival is truly water and sanitation. That explains why Scientific American crafted this alarming title in a 2015 article: “Kiribati’s Dilemma: Before We Drown We May Die of Thirst.” Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink. I found these three facts about my back-to-basics questions in the beginning of this piece: Humans need food and water to survive. At least 60 percent of the adult body is made of water. A human can go without food for about three weeks. It would typically only last three to four days without water.

Where can you get fresh water in Kiribati? Glaciers, lakes, reservoirs, ponds, rivers, streams and wetlands—these geological features are either non-existent or inaccessible in Kiribati. Groundwater is the main water source. However, overcrowding in South Tarawa has snowballed the pre-existing condition of water scarcity and poor sanitation, accelerating the vicious cycle of poverty, or in economics, a poverty trap. According to the World Bank, the population of South Tarawa grew from 3,013 in 1931 pre-independence to over 40,311 by 2005. The density in Betio (pronounced Beh-so), one of Tarawa’s neighborhoods, is comparable by an NPR reporter to Hong Kong whose high-rise housing is at exorbitant prices.

Access to safe water and basic sanitation are human rights. Water issues in Kiribati are acute with or without the lens of climate impact. Metals and chemicals from mining activities and agricultural chemicals have polluted Kiribati’s coastal waters. The lagoon of the South Tarawa atoll has been heavily polluted by solid waste disposal. No tourists and few residents would concern about New York City’s underground sewage system. Out of sight, out of mind. Such aged but functional urban sewage system in NYC is a dream in Kiribati. If you care about quality of life, diversity, and changing other people’s life, water issues are the first and foremost threats to survival in Kiribati. The lagoon in low tides reveals the true color of this remote island nation.       

The poverty trap can be broken but it requires immediate action and long-term planning. Education and healthcare will provide foundation for any underprivileged global citizens to survive and even solve their epidemic problems. An old saying goes, you don’t give them fish, you teach them how to fish. Water is a lever. Like covid, diseases can wipe out a population too. Leprosy is one of the waterborne diseases that are caused by pathogenic micro-organisms that are transmitted in water. And Kiribati is one of the few countries in the world that still has leprosy.

Rising sea levels not only damage forests and agricultural areas but also contaminated fresh water supplies with salt water. Rising global temperatures increase drought periods. Just imagine, how to survive on a desert where there’s neither rainfall nor clean groundwater?        

If Hong Kong were drowning due to rising sea levels like Kiribati, Hong Kongers could migrate to mainland China or elsewhere where democracy lies. Kiribati has no “motherland” to fall back on as it is drowning. The truth in 2020 is Kiribati is a sinking land with an increased population for limited fresh water reserves. Is this the basic brutality of Darwinian survival for the fittest? Stay tuned for the last post of the series about Kiribati’s climate adaptation.

Migraine is a painful nuisance. You don’t know when it will act up, nor do you have control of its duration before it dissipates. The recurrent throbbing headache drains your brain power and at times paralyzes your sensibility. If you’re a patient with migraine, I bet you will do all you can to prevent and reduce its chances to recur, no? What about a migraine that entails humanitarian action? Many countries and local communities consider immigrants as a group of job-seizing-and-welfare-siphoning raiders. Whether immigrants come from legal or illegal channels, they often begin their pursuit of happiness in a newfoundland against discrimination.

In Kiribati, a remote island country in equatorial Pacific, migration of I-Kiribati, as its people call themselves, has taken place as a result of rising sea levels. Half of the country’s population of 111,000 people lives in South Tarawa, the capital and hub of Kiribati. The rapidly growing urban area is less than 9.8 feet (3 meters) above sea level, and yet Tarawa has an extremely high population density. Generally, the reasons for people to relocate can be divided into economic migration or non-economic migration such as political asylum, war and drought. Kiribati certainly fits the bill for both.

Kiribati is recognized as a Least Developed Country (LDC) and is ranked 170^th of 186 countries on per capita GDP, according to an official paper. The economy is highly dependent on fishing licensing fees, remittances and donor assistance. The phosphate rock mining until 1979 has accumulated a large reserve fund with growing interest to government revenue. But still, with an increased population and rapid urbanization that are commonly seen in many other developing countries as well (except China’s aging population), Kiribati has to deal with an alarmingly high rates of unemployment and infant mortality resulting from insufficient healthcare.

If there’s no job in the home country, it’s natural for youths to seek opportunities abroad. Well, global warming aggravates this outgoing labor force. The sandy, tropical islands have few natural resources including water and are prone to drought. Joshua Keating, author of Invisible Countries, poses a poignant question: “Countries cannot be destroyed; they can only become other countries, the land they occupy now controlled by someone else. But what if there is no more land?”

As glaciers melt at an unprecedented speed, warm seawater and overfishing are bleaching coral reefs, further damaging the food chain as high up as humans’. Where do you think our favorite seafood comes from? The land erosion has driven I-Kiribati to move to higher ground or even relocate abroad. The term “climate refugees” is derived from a headline-making lawsuit surrounding I-Kiribati Ioane Teitiota. Long story short. Mr. Teitiota brought a case against the government of New Zealand at the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) in February 2016 after authorities denied his claim of asylum as a “climate refugee.” He was deported from New Zealand to Kiribati six months before. Early this January in its first ruling on climate change-related asylum seeking, the HRC stated that countries may not deport individuals who face climate change-induced conditions that violate the right to life. The landmark decision surely sets a global precedent. To the developed countries, an influx of climate refugees reaching ashore to enter their boundaries of sovereignty is akin to a migraine, especially to those xenophobic leaders and citizenry. You don’t know when the aliens will come to you and how long will they stay in your country. You have to deal with this humanitarian migraine, as you are the last resort of homeless climate refugees who exert their rights to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. In this case, the inhabitable condition of home countries is a persecution.         

This is the beginning of an end of climate diplomacy in this century.

Kiribati is only an epitome of the international and internal migration that is confronted by low-lying countries and coastal communities around the world. Because the tropical country is only at Michael Jordan’s height above sea level, it is prone to be one of the first countries that will be wiped out off the world map as a result of rising sea levels and land erosion. After all, Kiribati is so small that you can barely see it on the map. Until you zoom in will you find a string of dots.

It is a known fact that climate change displaces wildlife and humans. When Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, tens of thousands of people had to be evacuated and relocated, some even resettled elsewhere permanently. As the planet warms, species are shifting where, when, and how they thrive. According to the National Geographic citing a federal study, half of all species are on the move. Fishery communities will be hard hit as they depend on certain kind of marine commodities for livelihoods. Kiribati may have a shrinking land but it has one of the world’s largest maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). However, bathed in the cruelty of global warming and marine pollution, schools of fish including tuna—Kiribati’s largest economic resource—may have swum on migration toward cooler waters or die together with the bleaching coral reef. That’s a migraine to the fishing industry.    

To Pacific islanders, being labeled as “climate refugees” connotes a stigma equivalent to being second-class citizens. During Anote Tong’s presidency (2003-2016), the government launched the “migration with dignity” policy to allow I-Kiribati to apply for jobs on offer in neighboring countries such as New Zealand. Educated young I-Kiribati seem to be more receptive to the policy than their parents or grandparents who would rather live and die where they were born. Researchers shed light on one projection that a 19.7-inch (50 centimeter) rise in sea level could displace 1.2 million people from low-lying islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Indian and Pacific oceans. That number almost doubles if the sea level rises by 2 meters, approximately Michael Jordan’s height. When ethnic groups are disbanded and displaced, their culture including languages is susceptible to assimilation with new culture or gradually lost over generations. If this is not a migraine-turn-terminal-illness in linguistics, what is?       

Make no mistake. The migraine of migration could lead to far-reaching implications. As I randomly find an image of Kiribati on the internet, seeing a long strip of beige land covered with dense palm trees, shades of turquoise and gray in fluidity hugging the contour of land, I thought to myself what if rising sea level has already threatening Kiribati’s drinking water supplies. Stay tuned for the next post on water and sanitation.