When I started my research to change the world to the better 10 years ago, I quickly became curious about the root-causes for the challenges. I questioned friends and experts from the fields of business coaching and psychology. After my novel was published in 2014 I questioned the audiences at my lectures after presenting the 9 challenges for possible causes.

Looking for the causes

The vast majority tap the causes to be human shortcomings like greed, abuse of power, egoism, inconsistency, laziness, irrationality, seducibility and the lack of sustainable thinking. The list is long.
Of course the results of brainstorming for causes included too: capitalism, large corporations, money and interest, manipulation, politics, inequality in income and wealth, elites, monopolies … up to the dangers of the atomic- and genetic engineering.
Naturally such discussions do not represent scientific analysis. We looked first to the planetary challenges humanity suffers from. Which is different from researching what causes these sufferings. Causes can show the way to solutions and feasible means to overcome them. In this causal analysis we discern the root-causes which need to be addressed.
Often reasons like capitalism, money and interest are assumed. Here we need to scrutinize what gives rise to these assumptions. “Do we suffer because of this – or is it only an assumption and not really an issue we worry about?“ Which mostly brings us back to human shortcomings. Most of the terms two paragraphs above we can identify as „System“. We realize, these systems are manmade (except for the climate circuit itself and scientific relations in biology or chemistry).
When we study the works of wise masters we notice what they have already known centuries ago: the human being is the root-cause for all our sufferings – with the exemption of natural disasters. The vocabulary we use for these issues is secondary.

Categories of human weaknesses

We come now to an attempt to categorize the human weaknesses. The list can easily be expanded.
o Missing knowledge of facts, of understanding our live circumstances and economic relations in our society of divided labor and technology.
o Lack of self-esteem and self-confidence. Anxieties and tendency to project problems on other people. Fear of strangers. The complex of fear.
o Material greed and comparing with others, base for corruption too. Complex of envy.
o “Power corrupts”. The Power-Complex.
o Issue of comfort, resulting in seducibility and inconsistency. Tendency to stay in the comfort-zone.
o Violent communication and treatment of other people due to lack of emotional and social intelligence
o Problems with values and moral intelligence (issue of character).
o Lack of mental capacities for objective perception, thinking and decision-making

The consequence

This lists some of the main root-causes for most of the sufferings (9 challenges) in the world: the human being with its many faults and weaknesses (besides his undeniable qualities like love, the desire to help others, and to be of service, etc.).
We don’t need conspiracy theories which make us feel powerless. Wise men in the past have already proclaimed this insight: There is one main root-cause for our problems and it is not helpful to project this cause onto other people and categories like politicians, bankers, Americans, major corporations, etc. We all bear the same characteristics as these people with power and influence.
Even religion, often in the guise of fundamentalism, can be included in the category of problems created by human beings. Actually this can be felt in area 3 of the challenges (terrorism). The issue of inegality can be considered as part of the human factor too. He is treated in another part on this website.