Dad, Why Are People So Mean?

How I restored my son’s faith in humanity, and how yours can be restored too

Dad, why are people so mean?

Asks my son, rather sad, while I was driving him to school the other day.

What do you mean, dude? How are people mean?

Well, we destroy the environment, we kill the planet, and kill other people for fun. We do all these very bad things. Why do we do them?

My son is 11. He is extremely smart and extremely curious about the world. We have discussions like this one all the time in the car. Not to brag, but I am proud of him. 🥰

Dude, do you remember last year when we went to the seaside, and there were these guys that were killing a lot of jellyfishes?

Yes, I remember.

He said proudly.

Well, I went to talk to them and ask them to stop. They started telling me that they are fishermen. It seems that the jellyfish acted like a certain fish that was dumped in the Danube. I don’t remember the fish's name, but it seems that it had no natural predators in the Danube and what it did is to devour the ecosystem. It eats everything and multiplies like crazy, and it seems that people do not like to eat it, so they don’t fish for it.

Ok!

Says, Andy rather intrigued.

And … what does that have to do with it?

This is something that is seen very often in nature. Animals, that are not used to being at the top of the food chain, and get there somehow, tend to consume the resources without thinking about the repercussions.

I see him a little angry and confused. He looks at me and he says

But we are not animals. What does that have to do with us?

That is the thing. We forget that we are, as a matter of fact, animals. Life is on Earth for more than 4 billion years, mammals are 230 million years old and the first humans are about 2.3 million years old. We have millions of years of genetic memory in us. And we are at the top of the food chain in the last few thousand years.

This is when I realized how much attention he is paying to the conversation. Usually, he starts fidgeting and loses focus after a few minutes of conversation. But now, with the science being presented to him, he kept listening.

I am also a little geek when it comes to the history of humanity and I had the data at my disposal 🤓

The Homo neanderthalensis, another species that evolved from Homo erectus, other than us, homo sapiens, went extinct about 40 000 years ago. You can assume that is when we ended up on the top of our food chain.

That kinda blew his mind. He did not know that there were other species of humans, that evolved parallel with us.

What? Really? I always thought that we were the only humans on Earth.🤯

Well, it seems we were not. But we were the strongest ones.

I totally impressed my son. I felt awesome. I don’t know if anyone else feels this, but when I impress my children, I feel better than how I felt when I impressed a lady 😅 .

So I go further, hoping that this way he gets a better feel of what those numbers mean.

Imagine that you spend 50 years fighting with others for chocolate.

Like anyone else, he loves chocolate.

And after those 50 years, something happens and you are the only one that has chocolate. What do you do?

I would eat it like crazy

Exactly. Now, after 3 days, would you stop? Would you think that you might run out of chocolate after those 3 days?

That is when something hit him. I could see it. He started looking at the upper corner of the car. He was deep in thoughts. Eventually, he said

50 years fighting for chocolate? What? Why? That is harsh.

Yup. That is how we are now with the resources. It’s like we had nothing for 50 years and started having everything in the last 3 days. But do you know what is awesome?

He looked at me intrigued. I just told him about no chocolate for 50 years. What could be awesome in this discussion? It is a nightmare 😅

What?

We are doing that? Maybe not all of us. But a very very large number of people are thinking that this much chocolate, might be too much. We have enough consciousness and presence so we can be aware of all the effects we have on the environment. That is awesome.

Yeah. But we are still doing it.

Yes. But not as much as before. And a lot more than from now on. If we look at ourselves with love and a little compassion we would realize that we are animals, we have hard instincts like all other animals, but we are fighting them. We are fighting, not only our desire to have and evolve and conquer, we are fighting millions of years of evolutionary memory. Memory that has, all those years, told us that we need to take now because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow.

He is silent for a couple of seconds. Intaking what I just said. I let him do that, and when I see him relax a bit I continue

Looking at ourselves with love is to see our progress, and understand that our path was hard. But in spite of that, we got here. We evolved and we are better now than we were before.

“Perfect”, I thought to myself. “He seems to take what I said in”. And then, he puts his head up and looks at me with a small grin.

What about the killing? That is something that does not happen in nature. How is that not making us mean?

I forgot he is still 11 years old, and he hates saying that his father is right. So he found something else to combat me. I love it when he does that. I realize that he, actually, believes me, and the message went through. So that is a win for me. 😎

That is an interesting consequence of what has made us top of the food chain.

What? How?

You see, being an animal is kinda straightforward. They live to reproduce and pass on their genes. They spend a lot of their energy looking for food, being safe, and finding a mate.

Ok. So what?

Well, you see, we have evolved above that. We have food; we have shelter; we are safe. That gave us a lot of time. We spend a lot of that time to improve our lives. But we used it to think a lot as well. And that is when the problems occurred.

Another mind-blowing moment for him, another feel like a good father moment for me.🤓 😎

How can thinking make us do all those atrocities?

Look, those actions are terrible. They should not happen. But hear me out here. We, at that point, had a problem. We found ourselves with a purpose problem. We started to realize that there is more to life than just passing our genes around. That opened a very big problem for us.

That is when he said

What are we gonna do with our lives?

Exactly. And we found a lot of solutions for that. We invented a lot of philosophies to make us feel batter and give us a purpose or to work around the lack of it.

We talk a lot about purpose, and he assimilated an idea that I like a lot. He expressed it here.

Poor people! Not knowing that there is no purpose for life. We choose our own purpose. It is not defined by anyone.

That made my soul glow a little.

Yes. But that is something that not many people think. And, the thing is that all these questions, that we became aware of, and had no answers for, gave us a lot of physiological problems. A lot of us dealt with them. But some of us didn’t. The people that did not find a way to deal with them, or did not have anyone to help them, started doing those actions.

Yeah. But they are terrible.

You are right. Those actions are terrible. A lot of people suffer because of them. They should not do that and we should not let them do that. It, also, helps us know that those actions come from a place of pain and sadness.

I always try to train empathy in my children. It is hard for me to have it, but I understand how it works, so I use that to help them.

But you know what is awesome?

What?

The fact that we know that. We know that we have problems and we look for solutions. If you look at our past, we were a lot more aggressive and violent and uncaring. Now we place a lot bigger price on life and on wellness. We are good, and kind, and understanding. We improve. And that is the most important part. We are better than yesterday, and not as good as tomorrow.

This is when I happened. Every parent’s dream. My son agreed with me. It was like a miracle. He looked at me, he looked at the window again and with a big sigh he said

I see. We are still mean, but we are not as mean as we have been in the past.

My soul just exploded. It was epic. In my mind, every inch of the brain was dancing and singing.

It happened. My son agreed with me.

I took a deep breath and told him

Dude, indeed. Thank you tons for listening and for being open. You, my little friend, are awesome, and I love you.

That’s already too much, dad

And that is how it happened. I hope that a lot of people see the progress that we have made. I hope that a lot of people see the progress that they have made. Comparing ourselves with some perfect imagined idea of how we should be does nothing but make us feel unworthy, not enough, and even evil.

Be compasionate towards yourself and towards others.

We are on a road of improvements. We will always improve and get better, kinder, and more loving. We will do that by choosing to pick our heads up from the ground and choosing to see the light on our path.

Thank you for choosing compassion and love.

You are awesome!

If you feel that seeing the better part of life is hard, you might be interested in how you can be in the present.

Or if you are curious about how to persevere when things don’t go your way, you could read this:

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