2024 further dismantled the beliefs millions held about global systems—politics, spirituality, technology, economics, and more. Many of these themes were explored in my 5-Part blog Series found on this site called, Who Bombs Hospitals and Inherits the Earth?, which used the accelerating genocide in Gaza as a multi-faceted lens combining numerous themes and questions to examine the interconnected root causes of not only the extermination of Gaza and its people, but
humanity's current polycrisis.
At its core, the Series aligns with Ursula K. Le Guin's short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
Omelas is a seemingly perfect utopia, where the happiness of its people depends on the suffering of an innocent child locked away in squalor. The child’s pain is understood by all as necessary for their joy, and when it dies, another is brought in. As citizens mature, they learn to justify the child's abuse and ignore its suffering, accepting that their
comfort hinges on this moral compromise.
The "ones who walk away" do so because they can no longer bear the moral and ethical cost of their happiness. They refuse to participate in the harm and, in leaving, might seek to create a more just and compassionate world.
Omelas illustrates the consequences of prioritizing individual happiness over collective wellbeing.
The story challenges readers to reflect on their own societies, where similar moral compromises exist to sustain personal comfort. It asks: If the suffering of the world were embodied in a single child, would you accept it in exchange for your happiness? Does morality demand action, even when it means confronting systems of harm that sustain your privilege?
*
2024 was a stark revelation about our global separation-based systems and the need for deeper compassion, empathy,
and global solidarity. It illuminated how our understanding of oneness, interbeing and interdependence remains incomplete. The individual exists only through connection, and our fates are intertwined and inseparable. There is no ‘over there’.
2024 also showed how easily we accept harmful conditions under various justifications—‘national interest,’ ‘spirituality,’ ‘karma,’ or simply the way things are. Thus far, we’ve been unable to evolve past “never again” and watched as it became a normalized “never-before-livestreamed” genocide and mass violence on an industrial scale, broadcast to the
entire world. We saw that burning children alive isn’t a red line at all and that International Laws and UN declarations need enormous overhauls in accountability and application.
In 2024 the paradox was even clearer: can we truly create a ‘New Earth’ while ignoring the painful realities of the old one? As in, can we heal a broken leg without acknowledging it’s broken? Stop the abuse of a perpetrator by pretending it doesn't exist or doesn't hurt?
Hence, ‘who bombs hospitals and inherits the Earth’?
2024 challenged how we view Earth itself—Is it and the millions of species that it hosts (including humans) worthy of care and reverence, or just an ‘old Earth’ to be discarded or bypassed? Is it a place to be dumped for colonization on a supposed New Earth or perhaps on Mars?
2024 highlighted the necessity of confronting one’s own and humanity’s shadows, rejecting outdated frameworks and beliefs, and transforming grief and disillusionment into collective compassion and action, rooted in reality and shared responsibility. Polycrisis is polycrisis. A broken leg is a broken leg.
2024 showed us that transformation isn’t about escape; it’s about embodiment—living our highest ideals amid darkness and working to co-create a thriving world. It’s not about ‘ascending’ and escaping out of here, but descending fully into the present, grounding ourselves in this moment and in our connection to Earth, realizing our hearts are actually stronger than we thought.
2024 also taught us that, at times, simple beauty—like a sunrise, a shared meal, or holding someone through trauma—becomes enough when nothing else is possible. Personally, it showed me the power of connection, love, and empathy, especially through my own experience with serious illness and through the courage, resourcefulness and ingenuity of those fighting global injustices in unparalleled dedication in so many ways.
2024 deepened my understanding that turning away from suffering is a conditioned, dissociative response that enables and fuels personal and collective harm. Seeking ‘higher’ states of consciousness can become a dangerous form of escape that may do little or nothing to transform the Earth or the realities of its inhabitants—it may in fact deepen the
harm.
Life, in all its beauty, darkness, good, evil and mystery, is here to be fully met and engaged with.
2024 reinforced that Earth and all its inhabitants are invaluable; we cannot bomb our way to a New Earth. True transformation is a collective effort, requiring enormous passion and presence and a willingness to courageously confront darkness. It showed me that fully embracing both light and shadow empowers us to navigate life with much greater
awareness and mastery. One then fully knows the terrain.
In the end, 2024 personally underscored for me that I am here for it all—rooted in my Heart in shared existence, seeing the sacred in everything, and grounded in reality, never turning away from it. Everything is interconnected, and every experience is part of the whole.
2024 merged everything through Gaza in particular and showed that all is a mirror, all is grist for the mill.
2024 saw a shattered Heart to be a rite of passage into the mystery, terror, majesty and miracle of Life.
2024 showed me, through a diseased body, the sacred intelligence of material existence.
2024 reset millions of us entirely, deep, deep into the experience of the Earth, its human beings and all its species, as well as our place within the Cosmos.
And finally, 2024 showed us that it’s always about chopping wood and carrying water and that you get up again.
(c) Fatima Bacot All Rights reserved