People versus insects.

Some days are harder than others to tolerate the increasingly ignorant masses. It's not always that people don't have the capacity for intelligence or compassion; it is simply that as a society most people have become so complacent in their laziness that they choose not to think or act like a rational, intelligent, caring species should. As I was waking up this morning my mind looked back over the previous days’ events and I saw the general populous comparing in intelligence to a species we see as inferior to us, ants.

Simply my comparison came down to how both humans and ants scurry around on their own little missions without a care for or about their comrade. But it gets worse, if we were to continue to compare the two species humans would lose out in the end because we don’t seem to think of anyone but ourselves, where an ant colony’s goal is for the survival of the whole at the cost of the individual.

Now I’m not saying that we should all go out and sacrifice ourselves for each other, because let’s face it, most of humanity doesn’t have even a fraction of the integrity that an act like this would take, even in a scenario where it might be appropriate. What I am saying is that we need to leave our little cocoons of selfishness and laziness and start thinking about others. Where does this leave the individual you might ask (or the “what about me” mentality), when you consider that if we all were to start caring about their neighbors we would have more people than just ourselves looking out for us it would seem to be more to all of our benefits. Doesn’t it make more sense that we would be better off as a race if we didn’t just “look out for number one”?

This is by no means a new philosophy, if you look back to how people helped each other before we became such an “enlightened” society, you would realize that this premise from the past was the foundation for the society we have now but is being quickly eroded by attitudes of self centeredness. Before insurances, government aid and charities it was the church and communities that helped each other through tough times. If it had been the same then as it is now, I have a hard time imagining that we would be as technically advanced as we are. However I don’t think we needed to trade compassion and relationship with each other to gain technology, essentially we can have it all if we only stop thinking of ourselves as more important than anyone else!

Dr Martin Luther King Jr. once said "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Although we are technologically, medically and scientifically advanced, the masses are also becoming more sincerely ignorant and conscientiously stupid in their thoughts (or lack thereof) and actions (or inactions).


Bob