At the beginning of this year I wrote this piece, advocating a bit more humility in 2022. I was humble enough to know it would not make any difference, but it was worth a try!
It still applies, however. 2022 was still a year of people telling us what they think and, most particularly, pile-ons on people who dared to think anything different. As human beings, we would do well to reflect that what we know and what we believe are ultimately the product of our own experiences - if we had other experiences, we would have different knowledge and different beliefs. It is a basic fact of human psychology that we almost never learn from others' experiences.
In fact, if we wish to acquire knowledge, we have to be more social. Yet public "debate" focuses solely on freedoms and entitlements (i.e. for individuals), and social media appears increasingly to drive us the other way too (making us less social). When is the last time you heard a genuine public appeal towards collective responsibility, and what we should all be contributing for a better world, a better society and a better community? Have you ever noticed how many social media accounts (on whatever forum) are all about "My goals" (or "your goals", but not "our [collective] goals [as a society]")? On one occasion I even saw - widely shared - the notion that we should only do things in the interests of our own happiness; or even that we should only do things that helps us towards our own goals and absolutely nothing that does not (that latter bit was specified and even emphasised). A lot of people seem to be on a lot of "journeys" - and good luck to them, having objectives is essential for any individual's well-being - but those "journeys" are almost invariably alone. From language learning journeys to fitness journeys, ultimately the push is for us to "journey" in our own selfish interests - never mind society as a whole, eh? (Feel free to point, in the comments, to social media accounts which call for collective action in collective interests - they are heavily outnumbered and need all the support they can get.)
The thing is (and I don't like to admit this as an introvert), life is a team sport. Humans are what they are because they are social animals; they have come to dominate the planet because of their ability to cooperate with each other. The major challenges with which we are now confronted - in health, the environment, energy and so on - will need to be confronted through collective action using collective knowledge.
The constant appeal towards our own individual needs (and "goals") may be well intentioned, but could it actually be making us more self-absorbed, more ignorant and ultimately more lonely? Happiness largely comes from time spent together (or, at least, "goals" attained as a team); knowledge comes from cooperation; stability comes from genuine belonging (i.e. to a group of people). Pushing people towards an exclusive focus on their own journeys and their own goals (and even their own entitlements) is actually making us all sicker - creating a mental health pandemic by creating individuals focused on their own lonely quest for "resilience" rather than on creating a society focused on collective well-being which requires less of this "resilience" in the first place.
Unfortunately, in times of economic difficulty, self-absorption is the natural human response; after all, we have to focus on our own families and friends first. We are trying to avoid conceding goals rather than to score them. This is the natural response - but not really the right one. Again, it will be collective action, not individual journeys (and certainly not demanding action of others while taking none ourselves because we are too busy with social media pile-ons), which gets us out of the difficulty.
The very fact that each and every one of us knows much less than we think we do is the reason we need to think and act collectively, and the reason that humility should always be the premise of everything we think and do. In 2023, let's resolve maybe to live in a world of less social media and more social action - and let's forget about "goals", other than collective ones.
Happy New Year.
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