We’re Doing it to Ourselves
If you look at the state of the world, you might wonder why all this is happening, who to blame and how we can fix it. But first we need to accept a simple fact:
We’re doing it to ourselves
“We” as in America. “We” as in society and even humanity itself. We’re all here together and we don’t know how to get along.
We don’t know what’s good for us, or at least we’re not able to act on it.
With so many people without food, shelter, we defiantly put our smartest minds to making missiles and new types of sugary cereal.
We diagnose the masses with “mental disorders” but refuse to look at the systemic causes of our psychological suffering.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
We could get along (for the most part), but we need new systems. And before that, we need to admit…
We’re doing it to ourselves.
It’s not “their fault.” Everyone has someone to blame, but it’s us, as a species. We’re failing.
It’s okay, we didn’t have a say in the matter. We were born into this spiritually and emotionally immature society.
Now we’re stuck with deeply held beliefs planted inside of us by our parents and culture.
And one of those beliefs, at least in America, is that there’s something wrong with us.
There’s nothing wrong with us
We spend most of our days in a low level state of panic because our brains don’t want to adapt to this unnatural, overstimulating world.
There’s nothing wrong with us. We’re just not supposed to live in this type of environment.
If you give an ape a button that generates infinite bananas, it will sit there, getting fat, pressing the button. It will become addicted, especially when other apes around it are also pressing the banana button.
They will neglect their personal relationships because they live in a culture of infinite bananas. They will allow terrible things to happen to apes outside of their immediate circle if it means they get to keep pressing the banana button.
Apes love bananas and humans love whatever gives us dopamine.
There’s too much of everything and somehow not enough of what we need. And the humans in charge have convinced us that we’re unhappy because there’s something wrong with our brains. And what do you know! Only a pharmaceutical company can fix us.
Looking at our collective problems through an individualistic lens will prolong our suffering.
We’re all connected psychically and physically. We don’t exist as individuals in a vacuum. We’re all one organism connected in ways we don’t understand. We don’t have to understand it but we need to acknowledge that if we want to progress beyond these cycles of abuse we put ourselves through.
Our collective suffering requires collective effort to repair. So what do we do?
Enough of the blame game
If we’re done blaming individuals or groups of people and accept that it’s a collective failing, then we can move on to forgiveness.
Our goal should be to look at each other and ourselves, know what we’ve done, and be okay with it.
It’s not our fault. We have brains meant to forage, hunt and gather while we live in megacities in the sky. We have brains equipped to have relationships with up to 150 people, but we’re surrounded by millions of strangers all the time.
No wonder shit isn’t working out. We are immature as a species. We think we’re better than other animals because we’re more self-conscious, but really this focus on “higher faculties” has us neglect who we really are: animals, driven by instinct.
These instincts, in turn, continue to drive our behavior, just unconsciously.
We can’t change our brains but we can change our lives with these 3 easy steps:
- Accept we are failing collectively and it’s not just because of 1 individual or group of people
- Forgive ourselves and each other.
- Deprioritize developing faster and tinier computers and instead, prioritize rest, breath and reconnecting with nature.
How can we turn the world around?
We have to start small. Getting billions of people on the same page isn’t a realistic short term goal.
Perhaps we start with a house where people can leave the old ways behind and be in community. A house that offers more than coping mechanisms and distractions. A place where people can grow together and deprogram each other.
A self-sufficient organization whose members collectively figure out better ways of doing things. With systems in place to re-route our natural human greed into cooperative channels.
Inventing the metaphorical banana button without the right social systems in place was not in our best interest. Now we find ourselves in a world where we’re all fighting over access to these buttons when the reality is there are enough bananas for everyone.
I believe we can create a better world for future generations, but it has to start away from all the noise. Mainstream society even doesn’t allow us time to process. That’s how it keeps us in these abusive cycles.
You have free will. Let’s try something new. What do you have to lose?
