Individualism??
I read an article online a couple of weeks ago, about finding the reason in one word for all of these horrible problems humanity faces today: discrimination, income inequality, extreme poverty and hunger.?? ??
To do that, the author looked into a few university studies, philosophy books, political history reports and also religious leaders' statements. The journalist concluded the article with less than a dozen of these words. I wasn't surprised to find power, money, control, and supremacy on the top part of the list. However, at the end, one really took my attention: individualism. ?
I know that it’s a big problem in our society, but it definitely surprised me see it compared with all the other reasons. Then, I started recalling a few experiences that I had with this issue. One example that sprung to my mind was when I offered my help to a few organizations assisting children in need. I don’t have money, so instead I proposed to them some ideas of using my books to generate funds. I also intend to donate my royalties. The majority didn’t bother to answer me back, but the ones that did, sent me a link to go to their donation webpage. They will send me a t-shirt as a token.
Definitely, it was their way or the highway. Looks like individualism is the main reason that we have more than 1,000 kid’s organizations around the world. Each one working alone, doing individual efforts, instead of collaborating and actually reaching more kids. Well, I don’t want to believe that there is another hiding agenda for that. I was so frustrated that my wife proposed me to opening a non-profit to do it our way. Of course, then we realized that adding one more individual organization wasn’t the right solution.
Anyway, the difficulty is very complex, not considering that the topic here was helping others, right? Could you image what the result might be if we talked about sharing natural resources, financial capital, food or religious beliefs?
Finally, I want to add a comment about the picture that I chose for this post. First of all, I think it's great!! Capturing this moment of that baby's innocence is priceless. But the photo also shows us that the individualism or selfishness mentality, and all other dark human characteristics we've discussed are not originally in our DNA. We learn them along the way. ?