A Fork in the Road

Eats Park City, accessed 8/21/2018

At the rate our environment is going, I'd say that the most humans can do is to either focus on cleaning the environment, and figuring out how to reverse human-caused climate change on this planet, or prepare to die as a species and a society. The former would mean removing those anti-social personalities and ideas from positions of consequence with minimal loss of life and infrastructure, and then instituting conscientious and intentional changes in our institutions and policymaking organs at the national and international scale to produce outcomes that will keep humanity alive and somewhat well, We may in this way be able to buy ourselves some time until we figure out how to effectively heal the planet through our actions. This means egalitarian outcomes, so most people can raise healthier and more adaptive and kind children. From this crop of healthier adults can come the future innovators and sustainers of our world; all levels of skill welcome. The only thing we cannot accept are the anti-social and ignorant ones, who pose a danger to others and themselves. We can help those parents and children to live full and happy lives; we just can't accept their influence in our world anymore and expect to survive.

The latter option is our species dying off. This can be achieved by not doing anything positive or proactive to help our world. This means permitting notions of laissez-faire capitalism to continue in policy. This means the exclusion of citizens from voting for demographic, social, and political reasons. This means perpetuating the system of feudalism under an individual or group of individuals not connected with the production processes. This means the maintenance of the status quo as we are currently operating, or the execution of worse policies and programs in our societies by our governments.

I honestly do not know which way the universe is likely to go. I can see an opportunity for us to avoid the worst, and have the best chances of surviving and doing well. I would like to help those societies who are able and aware enough to change. I cannot help those who can't or won't change from the unhealthy, nor am I going to mourn their loss among us. If you won't respond to clear messages from the natural environment around you, or you're too committed to an idea or ideal that is not feasible or healthy in reality, or you don't even have a sense of what real is, or you are too unkind to change and help others when it is inconvenient but necessary, there is nothing I or anyone can do for you. At a certain point, you just have to do a right thing because it is right, not because you receive an immediate pay-off from it. Otherwise, I don't think you should be accepted, or allowed to move freely and without supervision in public society. I wish karma would shorten its feedback loops so we could learn better and faster. But unless you're receptive to those lessons; unless you're paying attention and are actually being kind to others, you will not live as well or for as long as a group or individual. You'll miss things, you'll make mistakes, and you'll make worse mistakes more frequently over time. 

As for the rest of us, we only need to stay relatively better than the conservative phenotype, and do absolutely better at policy and program making at all levels and scales. We can cooperate across all groups of humans, or at least, learn how to do so. They will be stuck with their own inbreeding group of "pure bloods", becoming less and less relevant, and more and more insane as time goes on. We can live with these demons, and conquer them without a single life being lost, if they'll permit it to be so. We just can't accept them on the same terms as we have in the past. We have to be rid of anti-social thoughts and behavior, and replace them with kindness, compassion, and accurate perceptions of reality around us. That's all it will take, over a long period of time, with key choices needing to be made well along the way. I hope that we can be as based in evidence and kindness as humans can be. Remember, a correction from reality, or a friend honestly trying to help, can improve you if you take it well. Ignorance isn't the sin, it's the persistence of it when accurately and kindly corrected that's problematic. Faster changes, more effective, and creatively adaptive solutions will win. It requires a lack of attachment to any one particular thing besides the truth, the honest truth, and the entire complexity of the truth. When truth is challenged by quality evidence, or an appeal to kindness, yield to the evidence and kindness, and not the existing "truth" that isn't the truth, or kind. It's not difficult, just really really mandatory for our individual and shared well-being. Blame the rules, not the discoverer of the rules.