Ten Hard Questions for the future of humanity

Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash

Over time we have reached a pinnacle of time that we have started to accept certain thing as normal (moral); and we have stopped questioning them. Contemplating hard what if or why question is necessary for improvement to keep oneself and humanity in the right direction but on contrary, we are stuck with some old narrative(s) and could not find solution to those and as time passes, those narratives are taking complex and ugly forms.

We have a general perspective that any progress in a physical world is progress and rest we don’t care, or it is better to keep them in academics and libraries.

Nowadays any conversation other than physical world tend to generate friction and since we are not talking about those hard questions, we have accepted that what-ever answers arrived at by majority are the right one, these answers have become sacred to us; We are not willing to change or challenge them because it means going against the herd we belong to.

Talking about them means opening a can of worms which we know we will not be able to reach a consensus on; we have become so much unimaginative that we cannot imagine a better future without them; We are stuck with them as though losing them will erode our identity our own basis of rationality.

But we cannot run away from them forever. So, let’s take the first step and ask those questions and contemplate a world where we can go past them. Let’s try to find an answer which is beyond our political, social, spiritual believes; our core values.

Can we dare to do that; Are we willing to listen to the other side of us or will we continue to dwindle while continuing our quest to be progressive only in a material sense?

Happiest countries Finland in the world is 50th in suicide rate per 100,000 people out of 183 countries, why then is pursuit of happiness is the prime goal of most of the individuals or we have arrived at a wrong definition of happiness?

We are spending more and more hours online doing social interactions than having physical conversation; this is causing us to lose our human touch and cognitive abilities, people find it difficult to have real conversation. Do we want to get more unreal and live in an artificial superficial world? why not go on auto pilot and plug your brain into a robot. Is this what we intended to evolve into?

In democracy a thief has the same vote value than PhD; it defy logic in normal circumstances; you do not want a lunatic to be your friend but in an election process he has the same rights to elect another lunatic. Same goes in most of the countries an ordinary person cannot imagine to be running for a president; one is required to have tons of money to support his campaign. Do we want honest, sensible or truthful person to lead us or someone with money, power and influence to use it as a way to get elected?

Inequality — world richest 1% have more than twice than compared to 6.9 Billion people in the world, and the gap is increasing. Irony is instead of people trying to solve the issue at hand; are dreaming how to be in that 1% and one will find enormous amount of material how to grow rich and become a billionaire. Is becoming rich the ultimate human goal and would this be an antidote of all one’s suffering?

One the same lines Iqbal said — I did not see a dog bowing to another dog, but I see all the time human bowing to another humans.

We say religion is old but still quote Aristotle and Plato as greatest philosopher; why the hypocrisy? Problem is we as human specie has not made much progress in answering metaphysics and philosophical question; Since focus has shifted mainly to materialistic world, so bigger questions of life has been ignored like Why are we here? What is our purpose? Am I free or end is predeterminate? What will happen when I die. All these questions are as important as going on Mars but we have stopped contemplating those or put them in an ignore list.

Racism still a problem and may be no body has a solution, and nobody knows how to remove it. Just protesting, raising awareness will not cut it. Focus should be on equality of humans irrespective of where he is born, his race, color, cast. Today we cannot respect or treat a person equally who belongs to our own country because of his physical attributes, then how can we expect to treat or respect someone who live in a different continent; speak different language; wear different clothes. Any idea?

Anything you see around has a purpose, but unfortunately human purpose is not more than be a better animal; that is the modern thought. What animal do build a better home, try to find a better food, raise children and find something to leisure themselves up and humans has considered their goals not much far apart from them. For most of us this is the end goal. Labelling humans as animals is restricting the potential we have; do we know the capabilities we possess? Our purpose should be in correlation to the human spirit and that what should be taught and professed.

We need to revisit the definition of Progress, Now a days it’s generally in a materialistic term and tied to a capitalist goal; Consider a society where progress is considered when it improves human condition, make people life more meaningful; give value to a family structure; decrease injustice; focus on making education, food, health available to all, make corporation and government answerable to common people, increase human dignity, focus on reducing polarization and inequality with in a society. But now a day’s capitalism and corporate greediness is driving all of us in living a meaningless and stressful life, destroying anything in between nature, family and morality.

There is war on our attention, and we are losing it as we are unable to process huge amount of random news we are bombarded with every day and in process have lost focus and unable to determine right vs wrong and have become confused, divided, depressed. Do you think the social identity out there represents your true self or you have been forced to take sides on popular issues? We always have the option to take a middle ground or redefine the issue from rationale perspective rather than getting on the bandwagon of the herd one relates to.

Last and most important question of all is related to “struggle”, Most of us have ideas, thoughts, opinions to make this world a better place but trust me no amount of good intention or passive thinking will make that happen. We should all be bias for struggle and effort, if we want to make a difference and during the course of action keep evaluating our thought process, may be what we have concluded is incorrect but then keep correcting yourself and do not ever stop in your effort to do the right thing.

Future of humanity looks bleak; we have been divided and boxed into so many pieces and we have been disconnected from our own selves. Some of us have become vultures, snatching and hoarding for oneself and some of us have become cattle’s who is not aware of the situation around and busy in grazing the grass in front and some of us have become like monkeys overthinking and confused with amount of deception and lies we have been fed; and what we need to become are humans to save the humanity from its own clutches.