The protests around the US that George Floyd’s killing have prompted are showing our true colors.
They display our negative connection to each other.
If we fail to improve our connections, we will end up enduring much worse blows than attacks on our small businesses by rioters and looters.
What will it take to improve our connections?
First, it will require acknowledging that we think negatively of each other, i.e., that our selfish human nature dictates our view of ourselves on a pedestal over others in various ways, and prioritizes self-benefit over benefiting others.
Therefore, according to human nature, which enjoys viewing others in a worse state than ourselves, we have no real desire for a solution to the social lacerations that become revealed.
Our egoistic nature is like a motor that never stops running within us, making us compare ourselves, our possessions and our success, to others.
It seeks how to justify us as being in a better place than others, and if it finds that others are at a higher level in one way or another, then it becomes restless, needing to do something to bridge that gap.
On one hand, the ego’s modus operandi leads us to self-improvement, for instance, by making us learn from others’ expertise and developing ourselves accordingly.
But on the other hand, the ego also often leads to destruction, when it becomes venomous jealousy that puts down others and tries to eliminate them in order to make ourselves feel at rest.
The ego’s latter destructive quality increasingly tears away at our social fabric, and will continue doing so until we rise above it in a common effort to positively connect to each other.
Therefore, there is a deeper purpose to the protests currently underway in the US, in the way nature gradually unravels itself to us: it flares up the negative attitudes that constantly dwell between us.
We will need to recognize just how negatively we relate to each other as a stepping stone toward positively connecting above our negative thoughts and attitudes.
The protests help guide us to realize our wicked nature.
When we become aware that we are egoists out to justify ourselves as better off than others, then we can start directing ourselves at self-transformation—to positively connect above our conflicting egos, and establish qualities of love, care, support and encouragement as more prevalent values than the negativity that instinctively surfaces to bring each other down.
While reaching a positive connection with ties of love and mutual consideration between us might seem like a utopian fantasy, it is indeed doable if we prioritize its importance throughout society, adjusting our educational and cultural influences to guide our improving social connection.
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