1. Objective reality and society

In a time when our safety and survival are pretty much guaranteed, why then are people more depressed than ever, struggling for survival harder than their forefathers? Why is inequality the greatest problem of our generation, when we live in a world where the human is supreme to all living creatures? Why are groups of people mistreated while others live in luxury? Why does education seek to take every child and turn them into cookie cutter graduates despite their inherent differences in ability?

To understand the downsides, we must first understand the ‘norm’ that society has held us to. These norms, as shown in the aforementioned upside, have the purpose of improving the base welfare for our race. However, when that norm becomes gospel, the problems only emerge in the long run. It always starts with cracks in the system, then slowly blossoms into issues that demand attention, not unlike the women’s and the LGBTQ movement witnessed in the past century. What worked for the ordinary citizen a hundred years ago does not work for us now, and the changes that take place are a result of humanity maturing as a species and moving forward.

Take our wealth inequality crisis of today. Not unlike when humans first started in the wild, our means of survival in the modern world, the lifeline known as money, is today likened to survival itself. While humans have managed to secure resources for food and lodging, the problems lie in the distribution itself to those who actually need it. What went wrong?

The solution was economics, or so we thought. Economics itself was supposed to be the science of goods and services being traded to ensure that society goes on smoothly, and yet it has failed us. Could it be that the way that wealth is distributed under neoclassical economic principles has shown us that money, like heat, is by nature prone to gradients and inequalities? After all, hot is to cold as cold is to hot, just as riches are to poverty just as poverty is to riches.

2. Subjective reality and the mind

When the rules of society have set a certain way of life as the norm as a result of past circumstances (the 9-5 is an industrial era concept), there will always be outliers who will not fit in. In the past, these outliers were literally tortured and burnt at the stake, but nowadays they are revered as those who dare to live, embodying our dreams of what we wish we can do. But if what worked last time got us here, and still (kind of) works, then what reason have we to change?

The aforementioned.

When we look at what IS, the human mind is unable to process it without relating it to something else. Just as hot is to cold as cold is to hot, excess is to starvation just as starvation is to excess. More is always better, but the sorry state of our climate tells a different story, and we as a species definitely have all our basic needs covered. A better question then arises: ‘is one side truly better than the other?’

When we worship one end of the scale and demonize the other polarity, the result is always a tendency to progress in a manner that favors the cultivation of one condition and the reduction of the other. Just look at working south-east Asians during the afternoon and you will understand what I mean. The other side of this premise is that those who advocate for the other polarity face an insurmountable wall of opposition because they go against the rules that society favor. Think about the activists who protest climate change in a country whose policies are right-winged, or being a gay person in a homophobic culture.

Such is the way of a civilization that gives far too much credit to the ways of old, where ONLY ONE side of the polarity is favored and the other hated. The result is that the outlying individual will never quite fit in, and will always work with a degree of unease in the heart, no matter how much they pretend to fit in.