Rather by accident, I recently stumbled upon Michael Jackson’s song “Heal The World”. For my work as a music teacher, I had to listen to it a few times. Basically, over and over again. And after a while, the words kept resonating in my head:
Heal the World, Make it a better place, For you and for me, And the entire human race. 

In the ’80s and early ’90s, it was all about the famine in Africa. There was USA for Africa with “We Are The World” and Band Aid with “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, to just name a few. “Heal The World” definitely plays into the same sentiment.

I grew up during this period. As a child, I knew that the world wasn’t an equal place and that we needed to change a lot of things to make all humans equal. We probably all knew this.

Now, thirty years later, I find myself playing these same songs with my music pupils, and I wonder: do they know how upset people were about the famine at the time? They probably don’t. Not because we have solved the problem but because we have new problems. What human inequality was for the generation of the ’80s and ’90s, is climate change for the generation of the post-2000’s. “Heal the World, Make it a better place, For you and for me, And the entire human race…And the animals and the entire planet” we should say now.

It doesn’t give much hope to see that three decades ago we tried so hard to make the world an equal place and that today humans are still not equal. And in addition, we have come to the realization that all this time we have forgotten to take care of our planet. What will be added to the list in 30 years? Humans have the tendency to think in a linear fashion and to avoid seeing the consequences of their doing for as long as possible. We were so proud of our industrial development thirty years ago. Now we know better. But will we ever learn to foresee our impact?

Now we can argue that we have at least come quite far since World War II and that we at least have learnt that if we negotiate and work together between nations, we can get so much further. But it reminds me of the opinion article that the Dutch newspaper NRC published at the end of 2018. It’s an alarming piece and its main concern is that the European generation that lived during the two World Wars is almost gone. And with them go the memories and the first-hand knowledge what war does to our lives. The piece warns us that this is a dangerous moment in time. People that don’t know what war really means play with ideas that might eventually lead to warfare. They romanticize the idea or have a lack of empathy to understand the consequences. In this light, we might not have come so far after all, and if you look at the political tendencies all around the world, we see that this warning should be taken seriously. The question is: Will we ever make this a better world? And do we have real ambitions to live in a place where we care more about the planet and our neighbors than ourselves?

What is heartbreaking in “Heal The World”, is that the song goes up a whole step in the end twice! Whereas the first time that it goes up a whole step, it still sounds like a hopeful manifestation of “Let’s heal the world – We can do it!”, the second time it goes up, it sounds more like a desperate cry for help to alarm people to try the impossible nonetheless.

Did Michael Jackson maybe not believe in the possibility himself that the world could be a better place for our children? Does he, therefore, keep repeating “Make a better place for you and for me, Save the World we live in, Save it for our children”? Until it fades out and only the voice of a child keeps begging us to save the world?