What Is Wrong With People (And What To Do About It)

I have a confession.

I do not understand humanity.

Maybe it is how I was raised. Maybe it is my still-undiagnosed autistic mind. Maybe it is just the way my brain insists on reducing things to simple patterns. But I keep looking at us and thinking: why are we making this so hard?

Look around.

We have fields that can grow enough food, and yet we are experts at letting it rot. We have empty homes and people sleeping outside them. We are building tools, including AI, that can multiply human ability like nothing before.

Shouldn't this be the century when the total amount of unnecessary human suffering starts decreasing?

Instead, the loudest conversations are still about war, doom, scarcity, oppression. It is like watching someone invent a cure and then fighting over who holds the syringe while the patient is dying.

I keep asking the same question, and it makes people uncomfortable.

Why can we not share?

Not in some naive, fairy-tale way. In a practical way. In the way you would do it with an apple tree.

If your backyard has an apple tree and it produces more apples than you can eat, and you know you will not sell them, what is normal?
You pick some, you store some for winter, you maybe make a pie. But what if what is left is enough to feed three more families? You do not build a fence, hire guards, and throw the apples into the trash while your neighbor starves, just to prove a point.

In California, in a friend's backyard, there is a fig tree, not like the one that made Christ angry, but this one gives so much, and the fruits are so tasty. From time to time I imagine eating those figs again. That fig tree gives so much, and in California shops figs are crazy expensive, so what do my friends do? They share. They send those figs to friends and neighbours. Isn't that normal?
I mean, who are we humans to block access to things that are produced by other beings, calling them possessions? If God made that tree to give, why are we blocking that giving?

But that is what we do. We create fences, walls, borders, regulations, laws... For whom and what for? "You need to pay a fine if you raise more than this number of chickens." "You cannot grow this and that." "You must do this and that." What for?

We would rather destroy value than let someone have it "for free." We would rather punish the unlucky than admit the system is clumsy. We would rather keep a person desperate than risk the idea that dignity should not be earned by suffering.

We would rather throw food away than give it to those who have not "earned it" or "deserve it." We would rather starve them to death than simply give them food.

I am not sure how many plan to enter their so-called heaven. Seriously, when God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, did he say, "You can eat from all fruits," or did he say, "To eat from any fruit first you need to deserve it, earn it, and pay me"?

This is not just a problem "up there" with the powerful. It is also "down here" with all of us. Every time we laugh at someone failing, every time we refuse to listen, every time we treat cooperation like weakness, we train the world to be colder.

And yes, I know the usual reply: people are selfish, competition is nature.

But nature also includes wolves that share food with their pack. Nature includes ants that build cities. Nature includes humans who run into burning buildings for strangers. We are not trapped. We are trained.

Did you know that unemployment is artificially kept because some economic theory claims that zero unemployment would not be good for the economy?

If we learned to cooperate, optimize, and work together, there would be less unemployment and less need to listen to economic theories from relic times. There would be poverty, because automating things would not mean starving everyone but amplifying everyone's ability to suffer less.

It is that simple. In the 21st century we are on the verge of having superpowerful AI, and everyone is talking about losing jobs, constant wars, destruction, information poisoning, doom, scarcity, oppression...

So, I am asking you: what is wrong with people?

So, if you also feel that itch of confusion, try one small rebellion against the training.

Share a resource. Share an idea. Share attention.

If you see a good solution, amplify it. If you see a person trying, encourage them. If you have more than you need, give a piece away before it spoils. Not to be a saint, but to be sane.

And if your religion talks about compassion, take it seriously. Not as decoration, but as a daily instruction.

I still do not understand us, but I know this: cooperation is not a dream. It is a skill.

And skills are there to be practiced.