Noble and justified as the pursuit of logic and science may be, my why for doing so has been a question I try to ask myself now and again to keep me grounded.
Unfortunately, I’ve recently become aware I’ve been brainwashed.
There are three insidiously subtle lies I realize millennials (myself included) have been taught by their parent ”baby boomer” generation:
- “I can be anything when I grow up if I put my mind to it.”
- “People are stupid.”
- ”It’s up to me to fix it.”
“I can be anything when I grow up if I put my mind to it.”
Nope. That’s a lie.
Not having the right genetics means you’ll never be a professional athlete. Not being charismatic means you’ll never be a successful politician. Not having the right educational opportunities means you’ll never contribute to science in a meaningful way. On and on the list goes…
Nature and nurture matter. Effort is commendable and should be respected, but it’s not enough.
“People are stupid.”
Nope. That’s a lie.
The media reports on outliers for money, usually with a flavor of alarmism or fear-mongering. Many millennials (and baby boomers) have been absolutely inundated with news about the foolish, corrupt, dangerous, or downright evil things their fellow humans are doing. Over time, this subconsciously generates misanthropy, which is the general dislike of our fellow humans.
This problem has been made worse by increasingly advanced technologies allowing us to spend most of our time indoors, secluded from others. Seclusion fosters tribalism, which is the ancient “us versus them” mentality underpinning all human conflict.
The media doesn’t know anything, because it’s not financially motivated to know anything. Stop automatically believing what you see on the news!
The reality is people are brilliant. We have specialities of every imaginable flavor, we’ve developed magnificent tools and ideologies to alter our world, and we’ve built an entire civilization. Western culture in particular believes it’s the individual contributions that have driven the most change. That’s also a lie. None of those individuals could have done what they did without the countless silent contemporary and historical contributors enabling them.
”It’s up to me to fix it.”
Nope. That’s a lie.
The other two lies naturally foster a conceit I’d more accurately label “unintentional arrogance.” If you are brought up believing you are capable of anything, then mix that ideological lie with a constant barrage of news stories about the world being in a terrible state, you will quite naturally want to do something.
Here’s the reality: The world is doing fine. War, poverty, disease, etc. are less impactful, per capita, then they have ever been in human history. I don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to do anything. Yes, there are still many problems to solve, but the levels of outrage are unjustifiable.
Today, the world has become what I’d call “a crisis-hopping outrage culture,” largely because of the above lies. Again, you don’t need to do anything about it. I don’t need to do anything about it. What we can do, indeed what I feel is healthy to do and far too rare in the modern world, is first look at ourselves before looking at others. If you can center yourself in the truth behind the lies written out above, you’ve already done enough.