Humanity Is Good.
Sometimes I want to stand on the rooftop with the largest megaphone and scream this at the world. I get so tired of all of the negativity that passes for content in the news media and on social media.
I get that we are not always the smartest species, and sometimes I think that the elephants and the whales are looking at us with a perplexed and bemused look.
But most of the time, we do all right.
Because for every news story that leads because it bleeds, there are a thousand quiet actions every day, performed in silence rather than with fanfare, performed out of humility rather than hatred.
Quiet caring people who give their time and their resources to try to improve the lives of those around them, and yet their names are never known, never made famous like they should be.
All of the traits of humanity, I believe one of our most enduring is kindness.
Yes we can be cruel to each other as individuals, and yes we can be hateful sometimes, but when you look back at how far we have come, especially in the last couple of hundred years, we have a lot to be grateful for.
Both in scientific advances, and also in advances in the way we look after those around us who may not look like us, pray like us, love like us or vote like us.
We still have a ways to go, but we are so much farther along than we used to be.
But I truly believe that in order to take us to the next level as a civilization, we have to be willing to change how we exist within ourselves, so that we may be able to change how we function as a society.
If you don’t have a sense of kindness and compassion towards yourself, you’re never going to be able to share it with others around you, and ultimately change the world.
So why don’t we focus on ourselves as individuals?
Because there’s no money to made off that. In politics, in religion, in companies, in competing systems of thought and existence, there is a never ending clamor to section us into groups, and somehow derive our sense of identity from being part of a group, rather than being an independent consciousness of self.
Loving yourself means you don’t need what someone else is selling – and that’s a danger to a system that relies on making you feel worthless to increase someone else’s net worth.
So today, I invite you to extend your compassion to humanity, because as a group we are worthy of love and respect. Yes, there are always going to be the few who will make life more difficult, because they have not yet arrived at a peace that requires not external validation, but they are a pathological minority.
The vast majority of us are good, and worthy of each other’s love and empathy.
Love is a verb. Go do something.
Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings