Hatred, greed, physical and emotional violence, sorrow, misery, tribalism in all its forms and incessant competition on every level of our society, starting with “keeping up with the Joneses” and ending with international wars and development of nuclear weapons. Pollution and environmental destruction, which are phenomena naturally arising from the system based on competition.

We are not competitive species, not at all. Maybe only for females, and even that to a limited extent and only in the context of reproduction. The notion that we’re competitive arises from illusion, because ego is supremely competitive. It can even become competitive in how kind and caring it is, and wouldn’t even notice! Vanity and constant comparisons to others is the nature of the ego, it is in its core, its very basis for existence. It cannot exist without comparisons, and that’s also what makes it miserable. In reality, we are very chill, easy-going, carefree hairless monkeys with very little to no propensity for violence in abundance of food. Which we actually have. We just can’t decide how to share it amongst ourselves, so some countries are starving and others throw out tons in leftovers each day. We can’t decide who deserves what because we’re obsessed with what we deserve. Nobody deserves anything. Everyone is gonna die. If we could all just accept this simple fact, we would miraculously stop torturing each other and start working together on meeting the basic needs of every human being, rather than advance our position in comparison to others, and the rest would take care of itself. There would be no shortage of scientists and engineers, the best ones love what they do, it’s tremendous fun, so they’d still do it. The human brain is incredibly creative, the mind is confused and it misapplies creativity to things that don’t matter.

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society” - Krishnamurti