I grew up in a big American city. I recently lived in one of the Ten Point Alpha World Cities, and I'm moving to one of the four Twelve Point ones in the near future. Ever in an urban environment, I've routinely seen of every conceivable type of behavior, all my life, from heroic to abysmal. People will make your heart sing with their unbounded kindness one moment, and they will break it with tragic indifference or mean-spiritedness the next.
Agatha Award winning Jacqueline Winspear wrote for The Naked Truth. Just prior to its demise, she had lamented discourteous behavior (amen, and it was cathartic to commiserate). But she introduced the transgressions as “[giving her] pause to consider – again – what sort of people we’re all becoming.”
Heavens, what is the world coming to?
I understand this thought, I really do. But I disagree. Humans have been both beautiful and awful (sometimes within the span of a single moment) for the full length of our history, and we are hardly the only animals so capable. Elder generations have been critical of and distraught over the wretched behavior of the upcoming generations since the dawn of humanity. People of all kinds everywhere for all time have experienced that jolt of dismay over a disrespectful act, been shocked at the depths of another’s cynicism and how that worldview causes him or her to behave, and seen heartbreaking apathy or cruelty.
The basic nature of our race is not changing. Not even a little bit. Yes, there have been enormous, drastic changes to our world since the Industrial Revolution that have rocketed civilization forward - novel types of changes, and at a shocking pace, I realize. We have experienced mindblowing cutting edge scientific advances. We have amazing new tools for looking at ourselves and measuring who we are and how we and our world is coming along. We have new technology so astounding that they look even to most of us like impossible, improbable magic. I know, things are different. And yet? We are in our deepest nature simply the current issue of who we have always and forever been.
I am definitely not saying that there are no disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people (school shootings, Jeffrey Dahmer). I am saying that there have always been disturbing trends and particularly horrifying people (The Crusades, Caligula). There will be disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people until the Sun gets too hot for Earth to host human life.
We are not becoming an impolite race from having been a polite race. As long as humans exist, we will have rules governing our behavior, and there will be times when we will break them. There will be people who have a chronic habit of breaking them, sometimes in a most colorful manner. As always, most of us will put some kind of a premium on good behavior and develop a set of measures for assessing it. We will hang our heads in despair when we or other people’s intentions or actions fall outside of them. We will celebrate with happy hearts and renewed faith when the usual expectations are exceeded.
It's the same as it ever was. There will always be good guys, good chances, good days, redemption, sweetness, the capacity to move others beyond words and be so moved. There will always be the humdrum, the remarkable, the specular. There will always be grief, disappointment, loss. The vast majority of us love somehow, or understand some kind of love, who at some point grasp how short our time is here and begin making choices which reflect that.
We are animals; magic touchscreens & transcontinental travel changes how we do things and how fast, not who we are. What is the world coming to? Well eventually, indeed, an end. I can't know how long humanity will remain on this planet, but I'd put my money on at least 3 of the whole 3.2 billion years Earth has left to host us.
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