Human history

The more I learn about human history, the more I think we’ve made little progress as human beings in trying to be more human. Advances in technology may give us more options for reaching this goal, but often technology can turn on us.

We still hate on a grand scale. We still choose war as a solution to fear and difference. We don’t really understand what love is and how to muster the courage to make it fully present in our lives.

For the most part, the media are no help, choosing formula and ratings over real substance, telling us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. We have access to wisdom, but we listen to the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Sometimes we even assassinate the prophets.

We have billions of people whose basic decency is crushed by dictators, autocrats and those who lust for power and wealth. We are numbed into complacency by fear, consumerism, entertainment and false hopes.

The voices of sages and artists are muffled by an unbalanced worship of celebrity. Religion has lost its moral compass and is retreating into fundamentalism.

I ask myself, as an long-standing optimist, how have I come to see the world this way?