While at the kids science museum yesterday, I noticed an interesting "challenge" whist observing the other visitors. Finns want to help Ukraine and Ukrainian citizens fleeing the war are able to enter into all of the public and many private services for free using their passport, which is great. But, Finns on average also have quite a strong dislike for Russians, which hasn't been helped by the current situation in Ukraine, or along the eastern border.
The problem?
Well, there are many, but the one I am pointing toward here is;
can you tell the difference between Russian and Ukrainian languages?
Me either.
After a little research, I discovered that they are quite different, despite there being a lot of overlap, but for the untrained ear, it is going to be extremely hard to tell the difference between the two. What I noticed was a lot of dirty looks, replaced by questioning and confused looks, where it dawned on them that indeed, they couldn't tell the difference. Were they hating on a Russian, or a Ukrainian?
Awkward.
Regardless of where we are from, what we look like and even what we believe, the uncomfortable truth is that we are far more alike than different across pretty much every measure that matters - but if you subscribe to the politics of society, it would appear we are incredibly different.
I do wonder what happens under a species-level existential crisis and whether we would come together, or fall apart. I suspect that it will depend on whether the source of the threat is external or internal - but bar a meteorite, I'd say the chances are far higher that we will wipe ourselves from existence, before anything else took us off the table.
I also wonder what we could accomplish as a species if we were able to unite to encourage the best of ourselves and discover how advanced we can get. Are the diseases, resource or energy problems we face unsurmountable, or are they only problems because we don't use our capacity and potential as a species well?
I was looking at the exhibits on display at the museum and was pretty amazed at all of the things that we as a species have done, even at the level for kids to understand. Yet, this has all been performed through constant upheaval and the challenges that a great amount of the resources we have available, goes toward protecting ourselves from each other. In many cases, it is because of this constant sense of threat from people much like us that we have built and innovated a lot of these areas of science as it is.
However, this doesn't mean that we need violence and war to innovate, it just indicates that the "need" of survival is a major catalyst for us to perform well. It seems that unless we have the sense that we are under attack, we will happily get lazy and do nothing of consequence. Challenge drives us, but the easiest challenge to identify is the one against an enemy - so we pick the low hanging fruit. And because of this, it becomes a race to the bottom, where to not take part is to be destroyed, to take part and be successful is to destroy others.
I wonder if it is possible to simulate how fast we could get from our inception as a species to this point today, if all people had lived to their full potential. Homo Sapiens are about 300,000 years old - if each person was able to live fully to their potential, what would that mean in terms of progress speed and to this point today, where we have advanced? Even in the last hundred years, what would be the difference of fully-potentialed human lives devoid of all of the species infighting that goes on constantly.
I suspect, quite different.
I also suspect that given the conditions of reaching full potential, the potential of a person 100 years ago would be quite different than a person today, meaning that there would be a quickening of advancement in the conditions of us, so that we would evolve ourselves to get up to speed much earlier in life and, be able to accomplish much more. And I also suspect that our full potential as humans would incorporate enough "down time" and entertainment too, so it wouldn't all be work.
Given perfect life conditions - what is your best?
We will never know of course as despite the "imagine" scenario, we are victims of ourselves and plagued by our own flawed design, so that while we each try to improve, we are always forcing each other through a dance of two steps forward and one back. We might want to reach a higher consciousness, but we don't want others to get there first.
Be your best!
Just not better than me.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]