Can we humans ever change our nature?

Can we humans ever change our nature.pdf

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Summary

This text explores the enduring debate about whether humanity's inherent nature, marked by negative traits like injustice and greed, can truly change. It acknowledges the prevalence of these behaviors throughout history and across cultures, leading to a cynical view that such actions are simply "who we really are." However, the response counters this by suggesting that while disappointments often arise from people failing to live up to ideals, these ideals themselves remain valid and worthy of pursuit. The author advocates for persistent individual striving towards higher standards, even when facing a challenging and sometimes solitary path, as the key to realizing a more ideal world.

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Question:

Never mind the nice and great spoken and written words. “Everything changes and yet everything stays the same!”!!! We live in world of ‘words’ that don’t mean a thing! Injustice, hatred, greed etc. have and still exist on a massive scale! It is not peculiar to any country or race.

Why not accept this universal human behavior as who we really are, instead of kidding ourselves about how we may be otherwise?

This has been going on from time immemorial and is happening everywhere on the globe today!

Correct me if I am wrong!

Answer:

Indeed we live in a world where many words are spoken, but of which the speakers do not believe or intend to live by.

Many people, at one time or the other, have sought answers to the bigger questions of Life. Some have been fortunate to find answers that resonated within them, and in so doing got fired-up to hope and strive for idealism, as they then think or imagine it should be.

Over the years, we, no doubt, experience disappointments from many quarters that make us question the feasibility of attaining to this high level of idealism on Earth. Also, in our initial enthusiasm, we usually expected things around us to change dramatically, which becomes another source of disappointment. No doubt these disappointments take their toll on our initial belief.

But, if you think about it, the cause of the disappointments are people (sometimes ourselves included), not the ideal principles that we once, and perhaps still, believe in. This is evidenced by the fact that many people still strive to abide by this ideal, to the best of their ability, in their individual lives.

Therefore, the appropriate response to the disappointment expressed in this question should not be to throw away the baby with the bath water - i.e. give up on the notion of an ideal world. Rather, now that we recognize human foibles and weaknesses, it behooves us to strive harder to keep the longed for higher standards burning within us.

Again if we think back to when we started seeking answers to the bigger questions of life, we did so not because we expected others to change, but because we wanted pursue the path pointed out to us. The only difference now is that we know that following that path demands constant vigilance and effort, and can be very lonely. Yet, we cannot give up if we still want to keep that desire burning strongly within us.

That longing, plus our continued effort to strive after the ideal, in our thoughts, words and actions, will, for sure, take us into that world where the longed for ideal conditions do indeed exist.