DP: Acknowledging the truth: our fault as Homo sapiens
The current state of disequilibrium in which humanity finds itself, is largely due to the decline of a social, economic, political, cultural and spiritual model, which is demonstrating its ineffectiveness in establishing an environment conducive to perpetuate our existence in a harmonious and sustainable manner with our planet. In other words we have failed big time!
The Homo sapiens sapiens, have been around this planet for more than 100.000 years, long enough to get hold of the entire planet. It is very interesting that our species is defined as sapiens, meaning “wise” or “capable of knowing”, referring to our human condition as “rational animal”, an distinctive character that distinguish us from all other species. However, being honest and objective, I don’t think we have used our ability to think and learn properly, looking at the way we have damaged our own environment putting at risk our own survival. This is without even talking about the damage we have done to so many animals and plant species that have led to its extinction. This is another lesson in how our man-centered society has failed; you just have to ask the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty about our performance as a society.
One reason of why we have failed is that, our society as we know it today was founded on precepts of competition and struggle for “the survival of the fittest” (I’m sorry for Charles Darwin, who could not foresee the misuse that humanity has made of his theory of evolution), criteria that separate us from other animal species, in addition to creating significant differences within our own species. We are programmed to be parts of a whole, living in society, but with the intrinsic need to be independent entities and establish hierarchies based on dominance over the weak and the generation of power groups that manage the collective fate. These ideas and foundations have led us to become what we are today, unbalanced societies unable to recognize the common elements that define the human group. Terms such as belonging, inclusion, union, which form the basis to define the summary statements have been largely forgotten and have been replaced by negative values such as selfishness, antagonism, separability which aggravate the dynamics of human relationships and those of their habitat.
Today we hear about a paradigm shift and the need for a new sustainable model for society, however; it seems unlikely that humans change their ways and disarm the neural network formed by hundreds of thousands of years. We are experiencing the “curse of knowledge” (a term coined by Robin Hogarth), natural disasters, environmental degradation, the emergence of new epidemics do not receive the same consideration as the falling markets and stock exchanges, we are convinced that the latter allows us to deal with the first, providing us with the financial resources necessary to generate new technologies that will allow us to adapt the environment, to alleviate our health conveniently by fighting diseases and to increase our life expectancy.
Can we really change? Can we overcome the differences and work together to solve the problems we have caused?
In the next post, I will discuss some current efforts and actions to change this course, stay tuned!