Original title: On Life, the World, and Society
Published February 14, 2008
Present-day note (2025):
This post was originally written in 2008 and is preserved largely as-is, as a snapshot of my thinking at the time. It reflects an early attempt to grapple with humanity’s relationship to nature, society, and itself. While my language and framing have evolved since then, many of the underlying concerns remain familiar.
Sometimes I think we, as human beings, need to take a good step back and simply notice all that we have been missing out on from our hard-pressed lives; lives which are continuously bound by the daily weight of work and stress. As humans, it is absolutely essential to remember to step back every so often and just notice things: The crisp smell of clean air (if you are lucky); the gentle touch of grass; the soft warmth of the sun; the relaxing sound of a forest; the sight of birds flying effortlessly through the air; and the beauty of a sunset.
There is so much that all of us take for granted, but we are so distracted by our nearly robotic lives that we have unfortunately become oblivious of and desensitized to the awe and wonder of the natural world, which is all around us. We constantly fear the unpredictability of weather and its effects on human society. We try to avoid things like rain and snow because it interferes with our ability to carry out our daily lives in comfort; and we panic in really bad weather, or during natural disasters— where for the most part, we are ill-prepared.
Over hundreds of thousands of years, we have almost completely forgotten about our most basic natural abilities— especially our ability to survive in the wild; our the ability to adapt to varying situations and environments; our ability to live self-sufficiently— with only what we need, without modern tools and technologies; our ability to live in a world without (unnecessary) medicines— by utilizing plants, trees, and other natural resources; and our ability to live in harmony with one another— and the natural world.
We should be embracing nature, not ignoring it; not fearing it.
Like it or not, we live in a world that has the ability to harm us— naturally or not. Man-made threats— such as war, overpopulation, waste, pollution, climate change, toxins, resource depletion, habitat destruction, and land degradation— all pose a significant threat to both humans and wildlife.
We also have the ability to protect ourselves from these things— that is, if we are willing to help ourselves pioneer necessary solutions—and not just technologically— no matter what the cost.
It is our responsibility to take care of what we have effected and infected with our harmful waste and negative habits. Like it or not, we must sacrifice some basic conveniences so we can live efficiently, and in harmony with our environment. We need to be developing new and more efficient technologies as well as producing clean, renewable energy. Of course, the cost of producing new technologies that are efficient will be significantly higher than what we have now, but the cost of doing nothing will not come without severe consequences— and even greater costs.
Our dependency on the very things that are harming us— our transportation, our fuel, our homes, our products, our population, and our waste— are without a doubt, the biggest threats that we face today.
We’ve become so dependent, so manipulated by ourselves. We’ve put politics and economics in front of our most basic and fundamental rights, needs, and abilities as human beings. We’ve put the economy in front of our ability to advance forward with new technology in order for us to change at a much faster rate. We’ve basically limited the ability to protect ourselves from worldwide problems because of the size of our budgets. We try to balance the economy on a scale, and try to convince ourselves that the economy is more important than the entire planet — especially when it comes to dealing with international disasters, whether they be natural or man-made.
We are told that we should protect our children from everything — and that everything is a potential danger to them. Yes, we live in a dangerous world, and it is only natural to want to protect our children, but there comes a point where we are overprotecting them. We childproof everything, we set rules for them, and we only teach them about the dangers of everything.
We should be allowing them the chance to explore these things, so that they don’t grow up in a world of fear and uncertainty. In many ancient civilizations, children were able to do things like own a knife, use a bow and arrow, utilize fire, and learn dangerous skills early on.
Children have the amazing ability to learn quickly, and at an early age. If we allow them to be explore their world, than they won’t freak out later on when they do make a mistake — and they will be that much stronger, smarter, safer, and more responsible.
We live in a sort of socially constructed reality, where we are shaped and molded and conditioned by our society rather than our own natural lives as human beings. We are born into a world of rules and standards and expectations.
It’s like we’ve completely forgot about who we really are.
Just try to imagine being born on an uninhabited island, with no government or rules or problems, and then imagine trying to build a whole new civilization from this.
A great number of early civilizations were formed just like that, and many still exist today — some who have never met modern society, some who have never experienced modern technology, and some who aren’t bound to the same politics as us.
They’ve survived on nothing more than their surrounding environment, and the dependency on nature — which played a crucial part of their everyday lives.
They respected nature with great honor and appreciation, and always gave back what they took from it — some tribes would go as far as sacrificing themselves in the name of nature.
Nature was more than a resource to them, nature was a part of them, nature was a life force, nature was everything.
We saw these people as “uncivilized” and “primitive,” and they saw us as “barbaric” and “unnatural.” We were two completely opposite peoples.
We were both completely different, and that frightened us. We had dissimilar beliefs and views on the world, and that brought us into conflict.
Try imagining two entirely unalike civilizations, both whom have spent thousands of years in separate parts of the world — isolated from each other, teaching, learning, and practicing different philosophies, different theories, different ideology, and different ways of thinking.
Imagine that, and then multiply the number of different cultures, societies and civilizations hundreds and thousands of times over. Billions of people with vast and immeasurable amounts of variation.
Sooner or later we all end up discovering each other, and sooner or later we all end up fighting to defend our ways of living, thinking, and existing.
As the only beings on Earth that are capable of possessing intelligence, it was, in effect, inevitable that we’ve evolved into who we are. We fight for survival, we fight for our beliefs, we fight for everything.
Like it or not, all life is forced to live with each other, and that is how it will always be.
We must forget our petty conflicts and our paltry differences. We need to band together as a community, we need to help each other as a humanity, we need to fight for what really matters — because we are all inhabitants of the same world.
We are the cure for our condition, we are the answer to our questions, we are the solution to our problems. We are human beings, and we are one voice with many faces.
If we fail to apply all that we know and are capable of to our lives in a constructive manner, than we will risk an uncertain future.
Shouldn’t we be investing our knowledge and abilities as human beings in order to save ourselves from ourselves?
If we fail to live together in peace, we will fight each other until there is nothing left of us, or our world. We will all risk loosing everything that we’ve accomplished over thousands of centuries and generations.
Are we really going to wait for disaster, devastation, and destruction before we finally change?
We are always going to be dependent on each other. We are all made of the same stuff, we all require the same resources, and we all live under the same cosmic roof.
We are the only limiting force upon ourselves and our future.
Crime is another major issue in society, and it is a big one. Crime has shaped us into what we are today. Crime is one of the reasons why we are bombarded with so many different laws, justice systems, and governmental oversights. Crime isn’t just a problem of knowing what is right and what is wrong, crime is a problem that rises from a person’s personal background and experiences.
People aren’t born as criminals, they are made into them. Someone’s childhood can affect what kind of person he or she might become in the future.
Ultimately, parents are responsible for the wealth of their child’s development. Of course, this all depends on the parent — and their parent’s parents, and their parent’s parents, and so on. The reality is that family plays the single most important part of a person’s life.
It is the combination of events that we are subjected to during our entire lifetime — everything from family issues, pressures from life, personal struggles, pressures from life, and expectations from society — that we become so confused and vulnerable, and we just break down.
We are born into this world as innocent beings that grow on whatever path society has paved for us. We can loose that innocence in so many different ways and through so many different people.
We’ve lost our ability to trust ourselves, so we live in a society with borders and boundaries and governments and laws and regulations and rules and ordinances in order to protect ourselves from ourselves. We do this to shield ourselves from all that we have imposed onto ourselves, and we do it to balance the system — a system that we’ve established so that we don’t drive ourselves into chaos and disorder. An artificial system that divides us — that splits us up into countries, and states, towns, and communities. All so that we don’t conflict with each other. Its even hard for us to get along anymore.
It has all gone so terribly wrong over the course of human history. Are we, as humans, really that ignorant? Are we so conditioned by the way we live and learn and think and reason that we have totally lost touch with our common sense? Even if we think we have it, even if we keep telling ourselves that it’s there. Unfortunately, the human ego plays a rather overzealous role in our everyday lives. It drives us when we are too ambitious, it pulls on us whenever we need to feel good, it feeds on your hunger to be the best. Sometimes it is so predominant, that we feed on it unconsciously and without even blinking.
People are going to always try to take advantage of you, people are always going to try to influence your opinions, people are always going to try to get you to conform to their own ways of life. People are like that. You need to know what is legitimate, you need to know what is right, you need to be aware of these things.
We are exposed to so many different messages everyday — from advertising, to propaganda, to pop culture, to television and music. There are so many messages that we often pick them up subconsciously. Humans are highly susceptible to suggestion, and we can be manipulated, persuaded and influenced in so many different ways; ways that we often neither notice, nor understand.
There is so much going on in front of our own face, everyday and all the time. The mind can only process so much information at once, and you can suffer from change blindness and become oblivious to what is happening right in front of you — so much so that you could be blind to changes such as having a conversation with someone, looking away, and then continuing that conversation with a totally different person. You could also easily loose track of seemingly insignificant details, such as the color of a shirt that someone is wearing right next to you.
We will never learn to be totally aware of everything a hundred precent of the time — its in our nature to forget things, otherwise we would go insane trying to process everything at once.
Speaking of the mind, it is a good idea to keep an open mind about everything you learn, and learn everything you can about everything you can, even if it might be something that really doesn’t interest you.
There is a wealth of information out there, and it is up to you to take advantage of it. Ultimately, you will become a better, more conscience, more mindful, more enlightened, more well-informed individual.
Be at peace with yourself, and the world you live in. Take the time to appreciate life — the good and the bad, for every challenge brings greater understanding, and will help you become more aware of your own limits.
Know your abilities as a person, and find new ways to develop them. Overcome obstacles — both mental and physical.
See things as they are, and not as others might want you to see them, but be open about everything — just don’t open yourself to corruption.
It is important for you to realize who you are as a person, and understand where you came from, where you are, and where you want to go.
Be the curator of your own mind, and know it well. Understand yourself, know yourself, and believe in yourself.