What Most Worries You About the Future?
I'll bet the fears many of us have across the political spectrum are quite similar.
We are out of balance. Imagine, millions of years ago, when we needed to fend off wild animals like lions, tigers, panthers, and whatever other beast of the day was on the hunt for our less-technologically advanced ancestors, humanoids were forced to join forces. We didn’t have time for the minutiae of the nonsense that so upsets and divides modern humans. We used to come together to solve problems too big for any one of us to handle. Today, many seem too focused on creating physical and psychological comfort without regard for anyone else. We are selfish. The selfish used to get eaten by wild animals.
Once, I saw a movie — I forgot the name — in which hunters from tens of thousands of years ago were sitting around a fire talking. Suddenly, one of them was snatched away by the paw of a sabertoothed tiger. This is a worry today that most of us don’t have. Today’s sabertoothed tiger is an errant human lighting up a store with an AR-15, and then the lunatics who practically cheer at the tragedy because it is an exercise in our “2nd Amendment” rights. The viciousness of an earlier time in human development was natural. It was linked to survival.
The problems that inflict us today are often not a matter of survival but excess. How many boneheads causing problems in life are doing so because of greed? Because of obsession with self. Because of a warped sense that their every single whim and wish should be fulfilled and eff everyone else. How much grief has been caused by the “pronoun craze?” How much hate and pain has been caused by the evolutionary misfits who hate with all their being men and women wanting to live their lives aligned with their inner, hidden-from-view voice?
I read an article this morning in the New York Times. This is a big event because, since the election, I have avoided all major media. The information that seeps into my consciousness throughout my day is what has been shaping my thoughts and opinions. The article’s author posed the following questions: What poses the greatest threat for you in the future? What worries you the most?
If we are talking about now, today, tomorrow, and next week, then what worries me is how I can protect my family from the unexpected in life. How can I make sure we are ready for “anything?” In the bigger picture, my greatest worry is the rapidly changing climate. Most humans just aren’t focused enough. Too many are so caught up in their above-mentioned bullshit to stop and take a look at what is happening to this planet. This sentence usually results in comments that “the excess of individuals is irrelevant to the battle with climate change.”
They often write to me while idling in line at the McDonald’s drive-thru that climate change can only be defeated if governments and corporations take the lead. Yeah, I agree. But “governments and corporations” are beings from another planet; they are us, and so if we were all more devoted to solving this problem, then maybe governments and corporations would be, too. Climate change has yet to become the tigers, panthers, and lions, and we aren’t yet sitting in the dark around a fire, feeling like prey.
It is said that cats of prey can see at night because their eyes are closer together, and we can spot ripe fruit in the trees because our eyes are set further apart. It makes sense to me. There are so many of these cool, small evolutionary tidbits that made us who we are and other animals who they are. At one time, a long time ago, we were much more similar to them than we were different from them. I am not so impressed with humans nowadays. The willingness to reject logic and knowledge based on experience that characterizes Trump supporters — you know who you are — is behavior so counter to what progressed us to where we are today.
Imagine how a MAGA cultist would behave around the above-mentioned fire where the sabertoothed tiger snatched away our little friend?
“Hey, guys, Eddie just got eaten by a tiger. Don’t go out there into the dark without some fire.”
“Oh, that’s BS, man, you don’t know that Eddie got eaten. I’m going wherever I want, and I won’t take fire. Watch. Nothing will happen.” You know the rest of the story. Our ancestral dopey got eaten.
If we write down on a piece of paper all of the things that a Trumpist fears in the future and do the same for a Trump hater, I am sure we will be surprised, once we begin to delving into the details of these “fears and concerns,” just how unnecessary all of the hatred is.
The next time you feel angry at your political opponents, pause to think about how they might feel threatened. When people want to close the southern border, for example, it’s usually not because they want to harm migrants, but because they want to protect against the perceived threat of crime and job loss.
Unless they see you as naïve, your political opponents probably view you as a predator. To help them understand your true motivation, consider explaining how your beliefs relate to your fears and your desire to protect yourself, your family, your community. You might start a political conversation by asking, “What worries you most about the future?” or “What makes you feel threatened (We’ve Misunderstood Human Nature)?”
In 2025, I would like to live by these words, but I admit that Trumpists make me want to vomit. I know it will be challenging to convince them that the pile of bones over there is Eddie and he was eaten by a sabertoothed tiger. If we have a better understanding, though, of what motivates the disbelief that Eddie was a late-night snack for a hungry cat, then maybe in a calmer, more understanding state, we can find some common ground while also maintaining some points of disagreement.
We are much more alike each other than we are different. There should be no reason we can’t get to where we understand that we have again become prey.
And it is time for us to help each other survive this threat.