Can we take the development of humanity in our hands?
And for this, is the priority the individual or society as a whole?
Suppose a person has the physical ability to beat all the other people in the world one-on-one. Would that make him the richest and most respected and most powerful?
Not really, and this is what we see in billionaires and powerful people and families, their position is due to an inheritance that involves associations and contacts and ways of acquiring a position within those associations within a “legal” –or not- framework that allow them to accumulate resources and “power.” Physically, they are not usually “powerful” – even though lately some have been spending their time doing gym work.
The latter is not a “gratuitous” comment, we are all influenced by the environment and in the end the environment makes us imitate what we see – even or especially those we “deceive” and “control” – in order to feel “good” , no one feels good about being shamed and rejected by those around them, and someone who set out to obtain everything with literal “blows” would not only encounter resistance through the “association” of several against him – on average, even the strongest succumbs at least in a 10 vs 1 – plus there is the possession of weapons, and ultimately the public shaming and exclusion from ways of associating with others would leave him even unable to feed himself.
As evidenced by the recorded statements of the legendary “violent heroes” of all stories – many declared that they did not gain “much” from what they had done, but our excitement about the “stories” makes us forget this, and also naturally, we do not usually care about them themselves, we care about the pleasure their presence or experiences give us.
Of course, there were global eras of great effort with the sword in armies to hold territory and great effort in land and daily survival activities. Today, there are regions and people who continue to live in some way that kind of effort, even when they do not have “direct contact” equivalent to the warrior with their “king” and finally, their way of life is no longer considered “normal” by the “average” of the population.
It’s like bringing an inhabitant of those times to observe our way of life: probably a Roman or Norse warrior or a medieval servant… etc., would marvel at the fact that you can go to a place, sit for eight hours and do more or less “the same” and get what you need, although perhaps some would wonder about the objective more than daily payment and loot – What are we going to conquer? What kingdom do we defend? What is the higher will or king that we follow and what does he represents? They would most likely stifle a laugh upon hearing someone speak of that way of life as a “feat” and a “sacrifice,” and there is a whole culture of inevitable “complaints,” almost in the same terms in which the poets spoke of the “legions”- in their time of “leisure” and “rest”, which has always existed.
The same would happen with those who revolutionised the entertainment game: Shakespeare or his contemporaries or the first developers of popular music would probably be surprised by the concept of royalties, they would squint in wonder at learning that there are people who can live, along with another two generations, from royalties from a single book or a few songs. Perhaps they would also suppress laughing out loud at hearing some of those authors or their offspring complain about the lack of recognition or compensation or talk about the “exhaustive” way in which they have had to “produce”…
Probably, someone from the times when those who passed the threshold of 30 and reached 60 or 70 would look strangely at not taking advantage of their experience, and would be more surprised to see that it is now possible to reach an advanced age without accumulating experiences and surviving illnesses by behaving the same way you did when you were 15. A medieval king would immediately feel that his position and what he receives is so abundant due to the number of people in his “kingdom” and the attitudes they inherited…and perhaps he would suppress a laugh at listening to the narrative of billionaires and their offspring today…
The examples could continue but to experience an environment you would have to reproduce it and be inside it, and that is why it is not gratuitous to say “repressing a laugh”: they would have to repress their reaction because the qualities and experience do not matter, if the environment excludes you, you will not be able to survive or access what the environment generates-it doesn’t matter if you can physically surpass or even surpass many of those around you in poise or capacity.
Furthermore, if someone from those “other eras” or the “pioneers” is inserted into a “current” environment, except in very rare exceptions, in a very short time he will absorb the values of it—he will begin to “complain” about the same and aspire to the same…etc. – it is said that this happens all the time when someone is “born”.
We see that the association, even minimal, is more “powerful” than any individual trait – fortunately, in general, we do not yet know how to “use” it completely, and we will only learn when we are “ready”.
Without remedy: The collective subjugates the individual with the mere fact of “existing.”
The individual seems to always be the same: a collection of needs or desires that seek to be fulfilled, and who grow and become more pressing and feel more “deserving” over time, but what shapes those desires is the environment in which they are – and it is the latter that determines development.
Therefore the “error” of those who put the well-being of the individual before the environment and of those who put the well-being of the environment before that of the individual, is in the fact that we still cannot see that the environment and the individual are manifestations of one and the same thing.
The environment is not only the sum of individuals and their wills facing each other and trying to “cancel” each other, the individual is not only an isolated and limited will.
And their well-being and development are equivalent.
Only if we build an environment that instils this discovery in each individual, can we take development into our hands. If not, there will be “shocks” regularly, which will “guide” us to this conclusion and necessity.
Snakeeskin 