I've often thought the world can be described in a single diagram. After all, how complicated can one planet be? This is not it, but it's a little bit of the way there - a diagram which explains how we need to understand current world events by means of a pyramid. If I was really clever I'd make it an iceberg with the top item and half the second sticking out of the water but if you want cute and pretty you'll just have to look elsewhere. (If you click on it, at least you'll see it full size). The idea behind this diagram is that we spend a lot of time focused on surface symptoms of deeper problems. Because we spend so much of our effort on the symptoms we often fail to see what lies beneath them, so we opt for superficial solutions too. We focus on cleaning up after natural disasters, playing with monetary and fiscal settings to smooth out fluctuations in our economy, surveillance and policing to prevent terrorist attacks, "stopping the boats&
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson