Our self-destructive Trait

It struck me the other day about how we as humans aren’t very nice. An alien species looking at the way we treat each other would wonder how we got where we are (or perhaps they would be worse, and if that is the case, we definitely do not want to meet them). We judge people, or dislike them, or even hate then for reasons they have no control over. In school, kids are bullied for being different. If you have a disability, either physical or mental, the best you can hope for is that you will be ignored. At worst you will be made fun of or bullied. Why is this? It’s not you fault if you have a disability. You did nothing wrong to earn this scorn.

Or, if your skin color is different, you are a woman, you belong to another religion, you have a facial deformity, or you are gay, you can expect to be shunned, verbally abused or even physically attacked. What did you do to earn this? Nothing. Yes, a person can change their religion but that can be a tough pill to swallow culturally. And even if they do change religions, they will still be identified as “other”. A person doesn’t choose their sex, skin color, nationality, their body shape, or the way their face is arranged, so why are they abused for it? This hatred of otherness is taught by the parents and the cultural group that people associate with. There is no logical reason for it. It is in fact, detrimental to the existence of the human species. We don’t grow stronger by hating this group or that. We do in fact, grow weaker. It is the main self-destructive trait of humanity.

Even if you are not attacked, you will find doors closed to you, chances for opportunity diminished, not based on merit, but instead based on something that is entirely not your fault. How many Einsteins have been kicked to the gutter? How many great discoveries have been lost because we were too stupid to let the potential discoverers shine? There was a time when left-handedness was considered a sign of the devil. Modern prejudices are no more logical than prejudice against left-handed people.

The world we live in is facing big challenges ahead. If we continue to divide ourselves over stupid things, we aren’t going to make it.

It’s time to grow up.

Comments

Empathy

Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...

Polar Bears and Entropy

Extinction is a normal part of the evolution of life on our planet. You and I and all individual organisms eventually die. That is the way of things. Entropy happens. Entropy is a word from the third law of thermodynamics that basically means: things fall apart. The natural tendency is for things to become less orderly as time goes on: things break down, things erode, things rust, things wear out. Entropy is a measurement of how fast that is happening in any given system. Individual death is a natural outcome of entropy. But an extinction is where all the members of a species are no longer living. Millions of species have gone extinct over the lifetime of our planet. There are natural background extinctions that happen continually. But sometimes there are events that trigger mass extinctions, where vast masses of species go extinct all at once (all at once in geologic terms, which might mean over the course of hundreds of years). There have been 5 mass extinctions over ...

A speculative mind

Search This Blog