Interesting little fact for you, the human brain is a highly evolved bit of organic hardware, over the millennia numerous physiological changes have led us to where we are today, intellectually speaking. It’s only in the last few thousand years that our brains have evolved to the more detached state of intelligence less associated with pure emotional reactions. By this I mean the kind of actions taken under the influences of anger, fear or love.
These emotions are believed to exist in a portion of our brains called the Limbic System, located closer to the central cortex which means that as a species we were emotional before we were logical. This makes sense when you think about it, when we were a more natural part of the animal system emotions such as fear and anger would help us either fend of predators or know when to run and survive. Love is simply a form of chemical attachment which would eventually evolve into the communal sense of attachment that we have today.
Emotions played an important role in getting us to where we are today as a species, but the question I ask is this… do emotions provide more in the way of hope for humanities survival or perhaps spell out the risk of destruction. Most animals on the planet have something in the way of a communal sense of self preservation, in that they understand that to stick together leads to the survival of the group overall. While as human beings have begun to grow into a more intellectual individuality, desiring to “think” differently and use our own intellectual progress for self preservation.
Now don’t get me wrong there are always exceptions to the rule, but I want you to ask this question.. do you think that the human race has any real understanding of the Greater Good? By which I mean the survival of the overall group through sticking together and working towards a common goal? Or are we still stuck in a more animalistic state, whereby the sense of “community” only extends so far as the blood relations and close friends? Have we actually begun to stagnate as a society construct, concerned only with the small victories instead of the bigger picture?
Why do I ask this? Well it’s simple, take a look at any country in the world and you’ll see a thousand issues that while conceivably solvable through the application of a more detached intellectual common sense, are often left ignored by world leaders. This seems difficult to understand at first until you notice something, all of these issues are those that have existed since the dawn of modern civilisation. Big world issues, like homelessness, wars and violence on a global scale.
Modern politics is often fixated on the small victories, caring to look no further than they must for fear of failure and the truth is that these many small victories never quite manage to fill the gaping void created by the bigger issues. Modern media is often happy to point out this simple fact and you can split up most news reports into two simple categories:
1) Small victories = what numerous people I know would berate as pointless news pieces, happy little tidbits fed into circulation that are meant to provide a sensation of success without actually addressing are real issues. Celebrity news is a major part of this section, with quite simply untalented members of society being given attention not really through their own success but rather through the hard work of countless others meant to raise one person to stardom.
2) Examples of bigger issues being “proactively addressed” these are the rolling news items on thins such as the “War on Terror” in America, or the ongoing battle against the “Welfare state” in the UK. They fill your days with doom and gloom while never really giving you an example of a “bigger issue” being solved on any kind of scale. The paranoid idealist in me would like to blame this form of news on corporate intelligence, meant to slam the average joe down in the dirt before they can begin to think too highly of themselves or indeed the rest of humanity. Yet I think that might be perhaps a little too conspiracy theorist of me, and my personal levels of cynicism have yet to evolve to such points where I believe David Cameron to be not only a twonk, but equally one with the level of social understanding that would make him and his opposites in other countries practically geniuses.
The problem is understanding how we managed to get in this state of affairs and what form of logical thinking is most likely to get us out of it. Sadly as the late, great, Carl Sagan said hope is unlikely to reach us from the stars anytime soon. While non-terran intervention would indeed likely sort out most issues both social, theological and technological the terrifying fact is that at this current moment in Human history… we are simply not worth contacting or indeed saving from our own steady spiral of self implosion.
We need to first sort out of own planet before worrying about anywhere else.
So, what is the “Hope for Humanity”? I honestly believe it lies with the founding of education, and the blame for several current issues lies with religion, or at least the people heading those religions. In education we can find so many answers and indeed the truth behind our fears. This isn’t simply state education but a form of social education. So many ex-homophobics/racists/extremists have often admitted that their previous prejudices formed through mis-information. Whereby their own social education was dented by similarly misinformed individuals. It is easy to understand how such narrow view ideologies can form over time, and it brings me straight back to my first point about the human brain.
In the very beginning we were simple, we loved what we knew and either feared or hated anything different from ourselves. Ourselves meaning the tribal mentality formed at the beginning of human evolution. Over time we evolved and the ability to learn new things became readily available, anyone in the modern world is capable of traveling afar, learning about new people or new ideas and then making up their own minds from that information. Sadly too many people are created with a far more narrow minded ideology, being shielded from information by the generations before them. Perhaps even more depressing is the fact that sometimes these people can make it into positions of power, where their ignorance can then influence generations more (here I speak mostly of the horrific events in Russia).
So my advice is this, go out and learn more before you ever decide to make a judgement of others, since this world can surprise you with the simple fact that while everything is different and individual, it can be the same as well.
Keep Watching and Don’t Worry.
GG & Filmland 