Life is full of false dichotomies and the more polarised we become as a society, the more that are thrown at us to force us to choose a side.
You are either with us, or against us.
Right?
And I think that this is part of the problem, because we always see ourselves on sides of things, without realising that we are also part of whatever problem there might be. Evil doesn't manifest in a vacuum, it is part of a whole ecosystem, meaning that in order for it to grow and thrive, it has to be fed. There is a hand, and a mouth, but both of those things are within the same singular system. There is no us and them, there is just us.
But of course, this doesn't track very well with the way we process the world, especially when things are happening that we don't agree with, pushed by people we don't like. It is much easier for us to come to terms with to create an opposition of they, plus it gives us some insulation to protect ourselves from our own part and responsibility in the situation.
Our brains aren't able to really process or understand the entire singular system, so we break it into pieces we can understand, which ultimately means splitting it up into increasingly small fragments. And these fragments become the points of focus, which means that while something like the environment we need in order to survive as a species is collapsing, we can spend our time on a myriad other fragments that keep us from dealing with what is fundamentally vital to our survival.
What we need to recognise, is that no matter who we are, we are all part of something that is larger than us, even if we don't make that much impact directly on it. For instance, the powers of governments and corporations are only possible because we facilitate it. The addictive control of social media is because we keep choosing to use it, even encouraging people to use it as if it is impossible to survive without.
The world is full of arguments. It is also full of solutions. Unfortunately we seem to have trapped ourselves into a habitual process of arguing without aiming for solution. Arguing for argument's sake. Argument itself is about "making something clear and providing proof" but we seem to pretend that we can argue and disagree on something, and that is where we can leave it. Nope, not when it comes to the survival of the species. Agree to disagree is something we can do with friends and acquaintances, but when actions have to be taken, decisions have to be made.
A single decision?
Perhaps. Maybe multiple decisions aiming to tackle a problem from different angles. But no matter what the approach, decisions have to be made that take us singularly forward as a species. Instead of spending the majority of our resources on earth hobbling each other, we should be putting it all into our survival first, and then our ability to thrive together.
That is not what we do.
It could be that we are just not made to work together at scale, where our evolution has made us tribally competitive, and we are unable to break out of the many thousands of years in competition. If that is the case, we are destined to fail as a species as we will continually be put into a quickening cycle of tribal wars. Populations will dwindle, but the next war will soon follow anyway.
Will we ever grow up as a species?
I am not sure. At least, I don't think we are going to do it in time anyway. And I guess that just makes making a decision to act even harder to make, and encourages more flaccid arguments not aiming toward a resolution. Instead of acting to do something, we will stay on the course of the status quo, that put us into this mess in the first place. A process of consolidation of power into fewer hands, and the conditioning of the masses to accept it as the only way.
A false proposition.
There are many ways forward.
Standing still and arguing, won't get us very far.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
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