Mind vs. Heart
We see in social media many posts sharing how kind someone is to a dog or a fellow human. The reason why we share or read such posts is because we like what we want to be. We want to be humane. We want to show our love to our friends and family. But what makes us behave differently and often create hatred is what we fill our mind.
In a capitalistic economy which puts survival in front of everything else, your mind is filled with how you can get ahead of others in a crowded, resource constrained world.
Given a choice no one wants to stand in a queue. People bribe to get their job done. Everywhere you go, there are several others in front of you. Be it admissions in schools or getting a job or even going and relaxing in a park.
All of this makes you a super survivor. Our schools, colleges, society, workplace everything encourages this one aspect. Someone who can survive the odds that we encounter is considered superior than the rest.
Very rarely you see a live-and-let-live situation like in the Tokyo Olympics where a player agreed to share a Gold medal with his competitor instead of taking a tie-breaker.
For humanity to survive, we need the best people, the best brains. We need the best survivors among us. However the line between animals and humans blur if you take it too far.
Competition is good, but only when the loser finds it meaningful to continue.
The quest to survive at any cost makes this living a suffering. You have to constantly do the math, do the predictions and it makes you restless. When you think you have seen the ultimate, there is more coming to cancel your beliefs. Someone else has bitten the bullet to stretch it a little more, like the greater fool theory of the stock market.
Survival of the fittest brings in obsession. Obsession to win imaginary wars. The real war one has to wage is often small and boring. There is more fun in amassing more wealth, in becoming extremely knowledgeable, in capturing power. Once you taste blood, it is hard to drop the sword. You are not contended with things on earth. You want to go to space, you want to settle on other exo-planets.
Yes, humans have to survive as a species, but not at the cost of humanity. It makes no sense. We need progress, but not something that is imaginary. Real progress is not about making few heroes while the rest follow as a herd. That is a feudalistic mindset.
Real progress is about a larger coverage. A Mobile phone is real progress. Internet is real progress. Crypto if it takes off will be real progress. Technologies that eliminate poverty, frees knowledge, enables health is real progress.
Broadly, anything that is decentralized and enables an individual is real progress. That is what we should compete for. A world that humans can live and practice humanity.
