How We Treat Each Other:
From Me To Us
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
– Albert Einstein
Whether we realize it or not, most of us have been conditioned to believe that life is all about the individual —
ourselves — and this idea permeates much of our societies and how we behave. From our earliest moments, life is
structured as a competition — a way to rank individuals so they can be compared to each other: we compete with each
other in school and between schools for the best test scores, grades, and in school sports and activities. We then
compete against each other to get into the best colleges, and thereafter to get into the best graduate programs, and
thereafter the best jobs, and then for the best promotions, and the best places to live. Even ignoring the absurdity of
competition in itself, we hardly stop to reflect that when one of us gets into the college we want, someone else
doesn't. When one of us gets the job we want, everyone else has to keep looking. We are so preoccupied with what we can
gain for ourselves we've forgotten how much we depend on each other for our success. In fact, our competition with each
other has made it such that differences in wealth — the fancy clothing we wear, the cars we drive, the houses we buy —
rather than being indicators of shameful levels of inequality, are status symbols: something to proudly display for all
to see. The reality is, however, that these differences in equality only demonstrate how naive we are as a species,
because the unequal distribution of resources doesn't just hold back those who end up with less — in the long run it
holds back everyone.
Imagine if you were tasked to create a single piece of human technology — for simplicity, let's start with a simple
metal fork. Of course, most people probably have a general sense of what shape it should be, but how would you actually
create it? Do you have any idea how to extract metal ore from rocks? Do you know which metals to look for and where to
look for them? Do you know what precise combinations of metals and nonmetals (e.g. carbon) create the right kind of
alloy that won't rust? Do you know how to actually forge metal into the shape of a fork and make sure it's smooth?
Though relatively simple, a fork still requires a great deal of knowledge to create from start to finish, from geology
to metallurgy to blacksmithing — knowledge we've been accumulating and refining over thousands of years. Now imagine if
you had to do this yourself for everything you possess: your spoons, your plates, your pencils, your clothing, your bed,
your cellphone, your car, your house… you could spend your entire life and only build a handful of items, and virtually
none at the same quality as you have today. As individuals we can only do so much, we can only know so much, but
together we are able to fill our lives to the brim with technology — and most of it is a lot more complicated than a
fork. How is this possible? It is not merely because we have more people to build things, because even with billions of
people if everyone still had to make their own fork and spoon and plate and bed and cellphone, we'd still be nowhere
close to where we are today. Nor is the answer simply "mass production", because mass production still requires
significant human involvement at the very least in the development of the technology, but far more often than not also
in the actual manufacturing process. The real answer is synergy: effectively working together to produce something
greater than the sum of what we could do independently.
Commonly expressed in the phrase, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts", synergy is closely related to the
concept of emergence in which —
when you have things working together in just the right way — you get something new and
unique that none of the individual components has or can do. Consider, for example, the human brain: it is made up of
various cells (neurons, glia, etc.) which themselves are ultimately composed of biomolecules such as proteins and
nucleic acids, which themselves are composed of various atoms. Atoms are microscopic, lifeless chemical elements, and
yet when these atoms work together in just the right way, they produce your mind — something completely new and unique
that none of the individual components has. The same thing happens when you have a group of individuals who work
together in just the right way — you get towns and cities, and when enough towns and cities work together you get
civilizations which can produce wonders that far exceed the abilities of any individual or city, and that's how we are
able to fill our lives to the brim with technology. We go through life as if it's all about ourselves — we focus on what
we want to do as individuals — but in doing so we fail to appreciate that the true source of our strength and the source
of all our accomplishments isn't the individual, but the collective. This is not to say that individuals do not matter
or that life should only be about the collective, but simply that even if you only care about yourself, you nevertheless
benefit the most when everyone else is set up to succeed just as much as you are.
It's especially tragic then that so many people seem to act only in the interest of themselves or those close to them rather than in the
interest of everyone, because doing so ultimately hurts them just as much as everyone else in the long run. This is
because although there is some synergy in our societies today, it's only a small fraction of the synergy that we could
have because synergy is not just an on-off switch — it's not a matter of if we work together, it's a matter of how well
we work together. There are degrees of synergy — degrees in the effectiveness of collaboration — and when some people in
a society are healthy and happy while others struggle to make ends meet, our synergy is only partially realized. And
this is the world we are in today: a world where the primary focus is the individual, where selfish interests like money
and power inherently create inequalities between people, and where most people are effectively slaves to their wages for
the vast majority of their lives. It's a world full of greed, envy, distrust, manipulation, and so much suffering; where
people cooperate only because they're paid to cooperate; where most companies only promote social welfare when
there's profit in it; and where societies function not because everyone wants to do their job, but because they have to
in order to survive. What's worse, these issues I've highlighted thus far are just the beginning of our problems: Equally troubling is how we continue ignore our climate scientists and
devastate the environment through our reckless use of fossil fuels.
We are polluting, overfishing, and acidifying our
oceans and destroying precious rainforest in exchange for farmland that ultimately saps the land of its fertility and
often leads to further damage to our marine resources. We all felt the impact of COVID-19, which as of this writing (August 2021) has killed approximately 4.3 million people since it began a little more than a year and a half ago. Now consider that air pollution kills nearly the same number of people every year and takes an average of 3 years off our lives. We continue to generate disgusting amounts of trash and I see no major drive to create a standard
for packages and containers to facilitate recycling, or major efforts to educate people on the benefits of composting.
Our education systems continue to be based on archaic learning models, focusing on test-taking and cramming technical
knowledge which quickly becomes obsolete while spectacularly failing to provide us actually useful life skills such as
critical reading & thinking, communicating effectively, dealing with emotions and stress, or forming and nourishing
healthy relationships, to name a few. Our healthcare systems in many parts of the world are embarrassingly broken, and
on top of all this, our governments are supposed to take the lead and make sure all these problems we face get fixed —
but most are so poorly designed that real change is slow, if it happens at all. Our leaders continue to debate
pointless issues like how to increase taxes or how to combat inflation when money doesn't even need to exist in the
first place. Our election systems are structured in such a way that people who clearly have no interest in anyone but
themselves can be elected, even as presidents and prime ministers. Worldwide, the divide between political parties only
seems to be deepening and the threats to our democracies increasing, if we're fortunate enough to live in a democracy at
all.
Is this the kind of world we want to live in?
[If you're wondering how we got to where we are today, it's complicated — but you may find this article on Modernization
enlightening, especially the section on Work and the Family which explains the rise of industrialization, individualism,
and the labor economy.]