Are We Humans Becoming Meaner?

Over time, I have accumulated a lot of friendships all over the world. People have come and gone. Sometimes it’s a disaster and sometimes it’s fantastic. One thing I have noticed however is that the fastest way to accumulate wealth is to meet and work well with people who are willing to put you in a position for you to accumulate such wealth. Hence the premise of LinkedIn. People get put in such positions everyday regardless of whether they are “mean” or not. So, becoming meaner isn’t the point I want to make. Regardless of how mean we are as a society, the question is, is it taking us in the right direction? So let me set the context.

We all know that printing money causes inflation, allegedly. Here is the example given. If there are 4 cans of coke and only $100 to be spent on that coke, then each coke will cost $25. If $100 more is printed, it means that we can buy those cans of coke for $50 each. This is the example everyone understands and agrees on. But what if that $100 was used to make 4 more cans of coke? Would the price not then drop to $12.50. In the case of the drop, what happened? Clearly it was the decision not the action that had the impact. One variable can change everything. These are nuances.

We are fixed in our positions. No compromise. Nice for what? But I know that one variable can change everything.

We are in the most prosperous time in all human civilization. The advancement of civilization has ushered in a better quality of life for us on the planet, allegedly. Because of this it’s sad to show these tables.

Some of the most prosperous economies are vanishing before our very eyes. We may be under a slow burn to disaster. In 2022, the total fertility rate in the European Union was?1.46 live births per woman, which is one of the lowest in the world.?The fertility rate for North America in 2024 is 1.755 births per woman. If it takes 2 people to make a child to maintain the same number of people it’s simple math to see you need 2 or more children per 2 parents. Lest we forget that children are the future

The evidence is that the most prosperous places in the world are having massive decreases in population. So, if it is to be said that we as humans are moving forward, why are the more prosperous societies predicted to die off? The New York times published an article, “Is South Korea Disappearing,” the Japan Times wrote, “Why half of Japan's cities are at risk of disappearing in 100 years,” the Financial Times wrote, “Has Europe already reached its demographic tipping point?” Those articles speak to a few of the warning signs trickling in that show that somehow, somewhere, something went wrong.

I can acknowledge the animosity my article can inspire with someone asking themselves, “who is to blame?” But before we blame anyone, it’s important to remember this is a collective issue and you are part of the collective.

Are humans getting meaner? If you are becoming mean enough to forget to make babies then I think it’s gone a bit too far. I’m in no way saying let’s create a utopia. It’s just that somewhere, we seem to keep taking a wrong turn after the point of success as a collective. After a certain prosperity threshold, we seem to forget to multiply.

Let me introduce the one factor that tips the scales. The Harvad Study of Adult Development. In a google search it reads below:

Harvard's 85-year study on happiness, which began in 1938, found that?strong, supportive relationships are the most important predictor of happiness, life satisfaction, and well-being.?The study's researchers collected health records and asked participants about their lives every two years.?They found that people with strong relationships were happier, healthier, and lived longer than those with weak or troubled relationships.?The study also found that social fitness, or the ability to build and maintain strong relationships, was more important to a long and happy life than genes, social class, or IQ.

With the above I would like to welcome Harvard to the sophisticated African culture of Ubuntu. It took them 85 years of study and they are helping the western world catch up to Africa. The majority of Sub-Saharan Africans are Bantu people with 400 different versions/variants of the Bantu Language being spoken. The Ubuntu philosophy states that, “I am because we are.” A google search will produce the outcome, “Ubuntu is a non-Western African philosophy that?emphasizes the interconnectedness of people with their communities and physical worlds.” With Africa forecasted as the next source of prosperity in the coming decades, its fair to say, our ancestors hit the nail right on the head.

There is a big difference between material well being and actual psychological wellbeing. The most important wellbeing is the psychological wellbeing. You see a neuroscientist explained it to me best. Hormones like dopamine regulate your joy and positive motivation. They do not recognise the difference between Gucci and Louis. You wouldn’t buy them if they did not reflect something to other people. Neurochemistry thrives from meaningful human connections. Real wealth is the sanctity of mind, with money being the means to attain it.

Sanctity of mind is in relation to other people. In my language’s version of the Ubuntu philosophy, we say, “munhu munhu pane vanhu.” Sometimes to thank someone we say “, uri munhu pane vanhu.” The first means, “a person is a person amongst people,” the next is “you are a person amongst people.” Even the accumulation of money depends on what you can do for other people.

Circling back, are human beings becoming meaner? Who cares? Honestly why so sensitive? Serious people do serious things by being seriously mean for other people. No one must smile while getting the job done if necessary. And since I mean business, I’m not smiling till pay day.

Besides, remember the example in the beginning on printing money. It’s not the printing of it that’s the problem. It’s really what the energy is driven too. The energy driven towards prosperity to me seems to be causing those in pursuit of that prosperity to live in the moment and ensure that their society will not be there tomorrow. This criticism is mean. Hard, productive conversations are mean.

What’s even sadder is that in the late 1800’s these outcomes are known. To this point the greatest writer of all time, Fydor Dostoyevsky wrote:

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!

There will never be a reality where people are not mean. A utopia will never exist. From my point of view, some of our societies took a wrong turn somewhere. Maybe its ok to be mean for the right reasons. Maybe its ok to be mean enough to go fight to defend your country and family. Maybe it’s ok to be mean enough to want to outshine everyone in a particular discipline and it benefits everyone. To the last point I would add, rather have the person who is mean inside the tent pissing out of it than outside the tent pissing in it.

Being mean is not the reason why people don’t find happiness. Choosing the wrong things to be mean about and people to be mean for and at is making things fall apart. I would urge some of the wealthy countries to introduce four valentines’ days a year and get back to making babies. All is to say, we have room to save each other, and we need each other. The only way to make each other the happiest we can be is to invest in strong and healthy relationships. Maybe the world needs to come to Africa, and we teach them a thing or two about where happiness is found. I would know because my name literally means Happiness.

I write for an audience of one. I simply hope that it is you.

Kind Regards

Mupharo