Affirmative action, like so many other things in life, might be considered a given in some circles; in many others, however, there’s still talk of “r’verse discrim’nation” and “they took our jobs!” and so forth. In fact, it seems like humans aren’t evolving at the speed we should be sometimes.
Last week, I read a quote—attributed to some comedian or other; I couldn’t find it again today—about how religion is what’s preventing us from evolving any further. Even when considering our technological advances, humans themselves seem to be stuck in a rather reptilian rut—after all, if we were evolving properly, wouldn’t we have, I don’t know, stopped wasting so many resources, solved world hunger, stopped global warming, and made water accessible to all by now?
I’ll agree with the idea that religion itself is holding humans back from our fullest potential, but there are several other things that share the blame. These about sum it up for me…
Organized Religion
When you spend your life in fear of or striving to please an invisible Jewish zombie, you don’t have a lot of time—or incentive—to be better.
NASCAR
If we spend time watching cars rush around in circles, getting excited about a potential crash (or even death), we must have the mental capacity of coconuts.
The Big “Stuff” Obsession
Our obsession with consuming and growing externally really needs to be replaced with an obsession with growing internally.
Continued Misogyny
Undervaluing, controlling, selling, and violating women and girls routinely isn’t going to help us move forward, either; this speaks of our biggest need to grow as well. To consider our own primitiveness, just visit a known human trafficking hub anywhere in the world—including the United States.
Continued Racism
Valuing one skin color over another—always unfounded and stupid, for sure, but even moreso today when color lines blur so regularly—is another mentality issue we humans seem to have. Truly evolved beings wouldn’t do what we do to one another.
School
Had schools been designed to truly encourage critical thinking, higher aspirations, creativity, and progression, we would certainly be in a better place. We might not even be in this great economic crisis we face—and the other problems in this list might not exist anymore, either.
The “Good Enough for Me” Mentality
So many of the things we continue to do, we base on the whole, “It was good enough for me, it’s good enough for them!” mentality. I can’t think of any reasoning more ridiculous. Could you imagine if the women who fought and died to get us the right to vote and own property, if the men who fought and died for us to have rights to safe work conditions, would have thought like this? Shame on us all for this line of thinking.