Gratitude 54

I am grateful for our slow progress as the human species.  It is brutally slow, and we often seem to be going backwards.  Humans are confusing and very confused.  We often seem to be going neither forward nor backward, but often we're going sideways, or so it seems.  But I think we are lurching forward: despite the Great Deplorable, president Dump, in the Oval Office; despite the fat little despot running North Korea; despite the macho, shirtless ex-KGB despot running Russia; despite the brutality of failed states in Africa and elsewhere.

Despite climate change from global warming; despite the rise of the ultra right; despite rampant global capitalism; despite how unlivable our cities are becoming as they become more congested and crowded; despite narcissistic Boomers, Gen X-ers and Millennials too stuck in their overpriced home equity, tech toys, careers and their dear little empty lives to care absolute squat about others.

We have, in the last more than one hundred years, in many countries, abolished the death penalty, abolished slavery, child labour, made quality health and medical care universally accessible, as well as universal education and literacy, enshrined equal rights and powers for women, aboriginals, people of colour and queer people, among others; made huge strides in our care for the disabled; are making progress in destigmatizing mental illness;  people are living longer than ever; diseases that used to be death sentences are for the most part curable and treatable; and religious authorities no longer can kill or torture anyone they happen to disagree with, unless you happen to live in Saudi Arabia...or Iran... etc....

We are unfortunately going backwards with workers' rights and social and economic inequality; and even with the work being done on alternative renewable energy there is still in many parts of the world a reliance on fossil fuels that is troubling and we appear to be running out of arable land, though this could also be debated.

We have such communications and computer technologies that have brought the world together while dividing people as individuals.  We are better educated, more sophisticated, healthier and more socially isolated than ever.

We have come a long way.  We have had agriculture and in some form or other civilization for the past twelve thousand years or so, a blip on our five hundred thousand years as a species.  We have had six hundred years since the dawn of the Italian Renaissance that eventually swept Europe.  More than two hundred years since the birth of liberal democracy and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

There will always be change.  We are always going to fall backward as we fumble our way forward.  Sometimes, entire epochs will be dominated by fear and hate.  We could even get plunged into a Third World War, but we are not going to think of that, now, are we?

In the meantime, we do what we can.  We balance the public with the personal.  We practice kindness, yes, to our families and friends, but we extend kindness to strangers, knowing that the more strangers we reach out to, the fewer strangers there will be.  And we maintain the hope that even one small righteous act will be a spark to light the tinder and spread warmth and light into our dark, cold and lonely world.