10-We Are One Group

We Are One Group

If humanity as a whole cannot overcome that barrier and instead continues to view one another as members of threatening, competing tribes, then life will continue to be Hell for a great many people. And our brief 200,000 year experiment of learning how to survive as a species could end in our extinction, which it has for 99% of the 3 billion species that existed on Earth before us.

People love to talk about the sorry state of the world, but then do nothing to improve it. The only way to achieve safety, dignity and fairness for everyone is for a great many people to live lives of fairness over the coming generations. If enough people commit to living lives of fairness, and insist that fairness be the standard of good behavior for their groups and their society, then humanity can make it to our long-sought-after promised-land of inner peace, well-being, safety, dignity and fairness for everyone. That will not happen quickly or easily, but it can happen.

Human history has always been about the powerful benefitting at the expense of the less powerful. The powerful have always resisted sharing their power and its benefits. Certainly their resistance will continue to be the main obstacle to achieving universal safety, dignity and fairness. However, throughout history, when the less powerful have demanded more power from the powerful, the powerful have gradually conceded it; so we are optimistic.    

We are optimistic also because there is something in human nature that compels most of us to get up every day and do the best we can for our families, for our group, and for ourselves. Responding to that impulse day-in and day-out through history has resulted in slow but steady improvement to the human condition. That process should continue to serve us well going forward.     

Our instincts to do the right thing, to trust one another and to cooperate are why humans survived to dominate Earth today. Those instinctual human values are well-tested. They work. You should continue to bet your life on them.