The scary thing about the world is that there are no super villains or evil wizards. That would be too easy.
In most tales of world-saving heroism, there's one obvious end-game. There might be hordes of evil, but they follow one particular leader, and when he finally falls, the evil is stopped if not undone, and the world can begin repairing whatever damage has already occurred. But in reality, most of us are villains, and so few of us are heroes. Yet we like to think ourselves heroes because these stories of ultimate evil-doers have given us the comforting illusion that as long as we're not the Big Bad, we're doing alright. So we look for the Big Bad--we look for the one place to point fingers.
And, sure, there are people worse than us. Most of us aren't mass murderers, serial rapists, drug lords, pimps, or warmongers. But the truth is, most of us could be doing better. We too often choose confrontation over cooperation. We attack people when we should show compassion, but kindness does not depend on who it is given to, but who is giving it.
Even in our tales of heroism, in violence too many are willing to fall and too few reluctant to win. Yet punishment is polarizing; it takes those we oppose and makes them oppose us. I like to say that if you treat an asshole like an asshole, he will undoubtedly remain an asshole, but if you treat him like a good person, then you might be able to convince him to become one, even if for a moment. Tell people not what they're doing wrong, but tell them they can do better. It is important to be careful to not simply tell them what to do, because this could just as easily contrast with what they are doing and force them into defensivity, but to instead help them to make that choice on their own. Indeed, the best victories are those when you convince your opponent that he has won, and this is all the more so when it is true.
Yet because we cannot find a Big Bad to blame all our problems on, we make them up. We villainize politicians, religious leaders, corporate executives, or whoever else we can find. I'm not saying that none of these people are at fault, but to simply point the finger distracts us from our own responsibilities. If it's someone else's fault, what are we to do, except maybe war against them?
And when we war against those we blame, I find we so often only see the problem, but no solution. Perhaps we expect them to fix the problems for us, but Einstein was quite right in saying "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." (Admittedly, there seems to be a lack of evidence of who said this quote, but it still holds its truth regardless of author.) And so we create Big Bads not just to keep the blame from ourselves, but to give us the illusion of an end game. If we bring down these Big Bads, then the problems will be gone, right? The evil energies of this world will dissipate with their fall from power, and all of us will do nothing but good for each other from then on. And so constantly we only treat symptoms, but never the disease. We identify things we dislike and attack them instead of trying to understand them and find out what caused them.
I realized many years ago after seeing so many fingers pointed at so many people and organizations that practically no one was without a finger pointed at them, and this was because we were all to blame for the state of our society, and this is made all the worse by the fact that we all blame someone else. Responsibility is diffused infinitely, and nothing ever gets done.
The solution, I believe, is simple. Be better. Each of us. Help those who we don't feel deserve it. Help those who don't even need it, just because things are improved by cooperation. Quit pointing fingers, but improve yourself, and help others do the same.
It sounds overly optimistic, but the world demonstrates innumerable times that for great things to happen, it only takes small things working together. Even the weapon of choice of many of our gods and heroes of myth, used to strike down so many Big Bads, is lightning. Considered on it's own it is immense and powerful. But lightning in nature is just a cascade of subatomic particles being exchanged by tiny ice crystals bumping into each other. Even the smallest things can wield the power of gods if enough of them work together.
Particles form atoms, atoms form molecules, molecules form DNA which, using only four base codes, writes within a single cell all the information necessary for all the mechanisms that make up our physiology--a physiology made of tiny cells working together instead of a single macroscopic machine in much the same way that the pixels on a screen or ink on a page forms shapes that alone have no meaning, but in cooperation with the firing of billions of neurons in our eyes and minds we connect them with other neurons that have learned that the shapes are letters, and that the letters form words, which combine into sentences and paragraphs, which we connect with other neurons that have learned innumerable other things until we amplify the power of these other tiny things into grand ideas.
Indeed, through the effects of our human mind, communication becomes one of the greatest forces available in this universe. Without looking for the moon, try to determine its location by picking up a small object and dropping it, watching how the moon's gravity effects it. Can you determine where the moon is from this? Almost certainly not. The effects of its gravity is unnoticeable in this context. Even as it shifts the tides, its effects are too slight to be seen by the naked eye over a short fall. Even its light barely effects our planet, except in that it helps living things see at night.
But the moon did effect the object you dropped in an even greater way than yet considered--it inspired the demonstration on a whole. Our familiarity with it, inspired by its visual presence in the sky, lent it nicely to illustrating the power of communication. A relatively small amount of sunlight reflecting off of it inspired a cascade of cellular exchanges within myself, which led me to write this, and hopefully inspire at least a few readers to move objects. The moons gravitational force may be insignificant when acting upon a falling object, but through a construct of communication, it moved objects beyond its own power.
And when multitudes communicate, even greater things can happen. Consider the ant: Alone, although it's lauded for its ability to lift many times its own weight, it is largely unimpressive, intellectually all the more so than physically. It's capacity for learning is largely nonexistent, and most evidence to the contrary can be explained by it reacting to environmental cues. However, the ant colony displays feats of problem solving that have impressed scientists and even inspired computer algorithms.
One instance of the abilities of an ant colony I find particularly interesting is their ability to find the shortest path to food. When a number of ants set out to find food, the one who takes the shortest path will reach the food first. She will then, returning along her own path, reach the colony with the food first, and her chemical trail to the food will be reinforced. The next ant that looks for a trail to food will then most likely choose hers, reinforcing it further, and so on, until it becomes obvious to the rest of the ants that one path is much more appealing than the others.
Now, the ants don't have to understand this mechanism or even be aware that they are choosing the shortest path. Instead, they only need to choose the strongest amongst the chemical trails, and the problem solves itself through communication. One thing that's particularly interesting to me is that the ants don't even store the information in their own experience--they don't necessarily learn anything--but the colony learns through storing the information in the environment, and the problem is solved despite the individual ant as much as it is because it.
So the next time we have to choose between even an insignificant good or an insignificant evil, we need to remember that if we all make a simple choice towards good more often, the effects will be remarkable. We don't need to be a white wizard or caped crusader to save the world. If we keep pointing fingers and waring against each other, we isolate ourselves, limit our own power, and punish ourselves whether or not we succeed in punishing our opponents. Yet if we cooperate and communicate, we become greater by becoming part of something greater. We escape our individual limitations, and we excel while helping others to do the same.
