Humanity | Society | Life
What If We Create a New Humanity?
Thoughts on The Evolution of the Species
I’ve had this thought stuck in my mind for years. I’ve been alluding to it a little bit in all the things I’ve written, on all the platforms. All these questions and more are there. And the propensity I have to write comes from this feeling that Humanity is sick and we need to think about It.
Yes, thought is the cure. The cure for this stagnation of human values. Or it is not stagnation and just a normal phase, like so many others. Yet, in these phases, we must think. Think about The Evolution of the Species, looking for a more positive path in what is common to us all: to be Human.
The economy must not define us
One of the big reasons why all this is on my mind is that we have become, over centuries, economic animals. We live today based on economic concepts that are a human creation but that most humans don’t understand. We will talk more about this lack of understanding below.
For now, the economy. And the fact that it proves to be insufficient to meet the needs of the population. You’ll tell me that a world without an economic structure is utopian, that this is the way it works. But why is that? The economy, inflation, interest rates, are not natural laws. They are human concepts. Created by humans.
Think of the Covid-19 pandemic, which threw millions of people home with no income or insufficient support.
Plus millions of companies that, without a production process, are no longer able to pay suppliers and employees.
The cycle is vicious. And economic crises are always felt most heavily in the same pockets: the poorest or the so-called middle classes. Because these are the people who know how much a liter of milk or a pound of meat costs. After a certain income, these factors are not taken into account.
Why must it always be the same people who suffer the consequences of economic crises that are never caused by those who feel them the most?
A bank collapse, a white-collar corruption scheme, or a war are decisions made by the same elites who don’t feel the effects of the crises.
It’s time to think differently about society.
How? Perhaps through the so-called UBI, or Unconditional Basic Income. Which aims to guarantee the minimum to survive for all citizens. Maybe there are other solutions. I don’t assume that there are, nor that there aren’t. But I assume the will to think about them, to discuss them, always ready to receive arguments for and against. Always with the aim of thinking, as a consequence, about The Evolution of the Species.
Human Nature? Or Human Education?
Many of the arguments that try to validate the state of affairs and the way society is organized are based on the so-called “human nature,” as if it were a purely scientific concept.
Philosophers have been debating this topic for centuries, and even the social sciences do their experiments with human beings who already carry with them a history, a living, an experience. They are not blank sheets of paper.
More than human nature, we should think about human education. Let’s look at cases like those of Daesh, Islamic State, where many of those who today defend this atrocity were thus taught from childhood.
They were not born with the desire to kill their “enemies.” That idea was planted in them through education. And those who bring this up, bring up all other religions, many of which have their history stained with blood. Nobody is born religious.
So what if we took that powerful weapon, education, and teach for Humanity? Teach the values that remind us of all that unites us most and makes us similar, precisely the fact that we are human beings?
This Evolution of the Species I dream of has its greatest foundation in Education.
The world is not in black and white
It is, moreover, this same education that allows us to eliminate another of the symptoms of the illness that afflicts us: the absurd divisions that we create among Humans. Far from being a conformist, because I believe that difference is healthy — as a matter of fact, I expect it in the responses to this piece — it seems to me that most of the divisions we make are harmful. Or that they are, at least, when those differences become dogmatic and we can’t get out of them.
For example, the left/right political dichotomies, the different religions, the notion of homeland. Naturally, there are various opinions on the structure of a political regime, it is natural that ideas about the universe and what it contains can be varied, and the different cities, countries, and regions make visible cultural elements that only do us good when we understand them better.
Yet what we see is a permanent aggressive conflict over these differences. Healthy dialogue has become a rarity, especially since technology has cemented a dangerous notion of mob rule that appeals to our worst instincts.
You will say that I am exaggerating.
I answer thinking of Ukraine and all the other places that are ravaged by armed conflicts: at the moment of imminent death, differences are blurred and the instinct for survival and the human essence comes to the fore.
They make individuals once clouded by difference become accomplices, allies, brothers. You know what? They always have been. They were, until then, overshadowed by these complicated differences that we created to label and differentiate ourselves, forgetting in the process who we are.
And it is by going back to thinking about what we truly are that we can think, at the same time, about the Evolution of the Species.
A conclusion and a challenge to you, dear reader
More arguments could be added to this reflection. But, for now, the idea that we are not economic beings, the importance of Education, and the attempt to discipline our differences so that we don’t become slaves to them, are a good starting point for a serious reflection on Humanity.
I leave the challenge to whoever reads this story. Try, instead of betting on the insult or on the easy criticism of one sentence or another, to be constructive. And constructive is to present a different point of view for one or more of the arguments I presented. Send me books, scientific articles, reports, or essays that touch on one or more points of this piece. Let’s think together. Think about The Evolution of the Species.
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