Humankind needs to grow up
And start talking some sense to itself
Some things are engraved into our hardware. Survival is the first and most important mission we have on this earth. When we have offspring, their survival becomes paramount. It is not noble to love and protect your children, it is just natural. This is why we hold at such high regard all truly selfish actions: because they represent the next step of our evolution. This is what we could say is the adulthood of our species. A state in which we all agree that we need to act looking forward and not just in the present. A distinct characteristic of children is that they live in the present constantly. We revere them for that because we adults cannot do this. We have bills to pay, medical check-ups to be taken, and responsibilities. Well, humanity is living for the present constantly. We deal only with issues that are too pressing to be ignored, refuse to stop living for our desires, and take seriously only those matters that are a threat to our well-being now. Examples of this behavior could be the constant overuse and misuse of natural resources, as well as the recent pandemic and how we collectively dealt with it, especially in the west.
Part of growing up is accepting that we cannot win in every single situation. The ability to compromise, to manage defeats, and make the most of every outcome is a crucial part of being a responsible individual, or if you prefer, an adult. Sometimes, we have to understand that protecting our way of life is not the most important thing in life. At some point, we need to understand that slowing down the economy is the only viable option for our species’ survival.
However, the way we collectively function is to just do whatever we want and give in to our desires, no matter the cost.
The most important part of this procedure is the ability to accept your mistakes and integrate them into your personality in a constructive way. So, the issue with society today, in my opinion, is adulthood. We are still at a stage of childish behavior in every aspect of our life.
We are thrilled by stories that deal with coming of age because this is an experience we all have had.
I think it is time for humankind to come of age. We have lived like spoiled toddlers for far too long. And we continue to do so. We see that we live on borrowed time regarding the earth ecosystem, yet we refuse to mitigate our desires to avoid a catastrophe. Most of us are like the toddlers that are warned about the danger of our actions, however, we still do it. But when things go wrong, we accuse everybody else of our mishaps and demand to be given back what we lost. This is the way that most businesses reacted to the recent pandemic. None of them had the wisdom (or good business, in reality) to prepare for a time of need. The possibility of a pandemic did not come out of the blue. It was a serious possibility and in fact, it has been almost exactly 100 years since the last outbreak that threatened the world. Yet, all businesses are more eager to pay dividends, rather than have the financial cushion that would enable them to survive even for a short period. And why is that? It is because they know that the state does exactly that. It takes money from society and is eager to give them to the private sector to save it.
Instead of taking action for our life, we prefer to have representatives even in that. We love martyrs and heroes because we like to believe that, through their actions and sacrifices, we can do whatever we want, since we are absolved of our sins. But no change has come from the actions of individuals alone. They are merely the inspiration for the millions of others that get up and act to impose a change to society.
