Change

The test of the human species will be its ability to intentionally change. On a superficial level, technology has spurred mind-spinning changes in a relatively small time of human history. On a deeper level, many a priori assumptions about human behaviors on a community, national or governmental level mire human beings in violence, poverty and endless suffering.

 

Human population is capable of exhausting its accustomed resources for heat, cooking fuel, electricity and synthetic products. The deterioration of the planet from human population has already caused serious climate change. There is no ready cure for this phenomenon which will inevitably cause further deterioration of ecosystems. The feet-dragging denial of some of the world's most influential bodies, like the U.S. Congress, does not bode well for human capacity to change for its own well being.

 

The current sniffing and circling around the mad regime in North Korea is another example of human vulnerability to its own inability to institute remedial change. The human species has created this mad monster through inaction and old-fashioned Cold-War diplomacy. It is now ineffectual in dealing with the madness, like an enabling family with a spoiled lunatic child.  This process also bodes badly for human capability to change on a scale commensurate to its huge population and its effect on the planet.

 

Meanwhile, religions are encouraging unbridled breeding in the poorest human communities. Well-meaning advocates for women's rights take a staunch stand against any form of health-minded dissuasion of female reproduction. Women with HIV, the virus causing a world pandemic which has killed millions, are encouraged and enabled to reproduce. Frankly, this is perhaps one of the most dysfunctional examples of human incapacity to apply science and rationality to human change.

 

As a single humanist, I have abandoned any imaginings of a human species which will somehow adapt for its own good and the good of its home planet. I live with an expectation that human beings will fall subject to a natural correction, not an intentional human one. This is why I live within an individual practice as responsibly as I am able. This is why I encourage others to do the same. Being attached to a vision of a glorious human future seems delusional to me. Taking satisfaction in my own ability to live mindfully and compassionately within my own environment is the best path to my own functional future.