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I’m convinced that humanity has not improved over the last 500 years. Our quality of life has grown by leaps and bounds, but humanity? Not so much. We fool ourselves into believing our species has advanced, because our quality of life is so much better than that of our ancestors. Among other things, we enjoy higher life expectancy, air travel and the ability to own and carry mini computers with us everywhere we go. We can’t be blamed for assuming that because our lives our better, we are better.
Over the years, technological advancement has been stunning and rapid, while human frailty has stayed depressingly stagnant. We humans are plagued with the same petty impulses that our ancestors indulged; greed, tribalism, jealousy, anger, envy, egotism and a million other shameful behaviors. These behaviors exist across all of humanity, irrespective of wealth, social standing, ethnicity, race or gender. Technology is advancing, but we are not.
Is my assessment too harsh?
Consider this. Wars are raging all over the world and our world leaders, appear to be at a loss as to how to stop the killing. They wring their hands and shrug their shoulders, rather than take definitive action to end the conflict. This while combatants “mistakenly” attack schools and hospitals. The persistence of the archaic practice of warfare leads me to think that humans are simple people living in an advanced world.
War is absurd. It’s nonsensical as a concept and barbaric in practice. It’s the tool of the powerful and the tragic predicament of the people. In every single case, the horrors of war overwhelm the motivations for it. Yet, in defiance of logic, war is still a thing.
War involves the mass murder of individuals, who have not been tried, nor found guilty of a crime. At its heart, war amounts to punishment of the masses, in order to exact revenge, gain more power or compel a specific response from their leaders. The practice of war, cheapens human life. It is wholly unjust.
After centuries of progress in every other aspect of human endeavor, why don’t we work harder to rein in the violent tendencies of egocentric men who use their power to bring catastrophe to entire nations? I say it’s because we are distracted by new advancements in all the things around us. We forget to stop and examine the flawed nature of who we are and what we do. So, we just keep doing it.
It’s time we work on being better humans.
A good first step would be to decide in no uncertain terms to ban war. It would be easy to get the masses to agree that war should never be tolerated, since it is the masses who suffer the most. If we stop romanticizing war, it will be obvious that there are other options. A hard line must be drawn where each nation is required to achieve its goals without attacking its neighbors or sacrificing its citizens. It’s a low bar to clear.
As the conflicts around the globe escalate, more resources and attention are channeled to them, instead of climate change and ecological issues. More detailed International laws should be written outlawing violent aggression between countries. The United Nations should be refashioned and given more authority on this one subject. New laws should be created to hold the leaders who wage war accountable, using enforceable consequences. Cooperation, sanctions, arbitration and criminal liability for the architects of war, should be used to resolve conflicts and quell even the smallest suggestion of war. If we ban war, we will be better.
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The act of stopping the powers that be from starting wars may be the right thing to do, but good luck with that! Even if the majority of common folk fall in line with protesting war, the fact remains, those in power have the control!
People once thought that air travel was impossible. Humans can do anything we set our minds to; that’s been proven a million times.
UN was established to stop war, not anymore. It has become irrelevant, a waste of money.