The Matter With Humanity

What’s the matter with humans?

The Abrahamic faiths answer with a story that human beings were created and quite soon began to perceive that more was better. That’s the gist of the second creation narrative (Genesis 2). Historically, the creation myth came to be used to understand the dynamics and repercussions of “the Fall.”

It seems to me that the issues around “Adam’s fall” in the Hebrew scriptures is rarely a major concern. Very little of the Law, the Prophets, or the Wisdom literature pays attention to the underlying condition of humanity. Instead, they focus a great deal on decisions, actions, behavior. Those three things are measured by the standard assumed to be the immutable nature of God.

Psalm 1 is a perfect example. “Blessed are those who walk not in the way of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seats of the scornful. But their delight is in the Law of the Lord, and on God’s Law they meditate day and night.” The psalmist proceeds to say that the righteous are comparable to a tree planted by a stream of water, whose leaves don’t wither, that bears fruit season after season. Everything they do prospers. In contrast are the wicked. “They are like chaff which the wind blows away.” Analysis: the wicked shall not stand upright, but the righteous shall flourish.

Gautama saw things through a different lens. There is in Buddhism no comparable story to that in Genesis. Rather, the condition of humanity is pervasive suffering. Addressing suffering in both mind and behavior becomes the project of a lifetime.

Vedantic Hinduism, the fount out of which Buddhism sprang, deals with karma, but that’s not quite the same framework as is occupied by sin and redemption. It does, however, suggest that one needs to pay attention to one’s actions and their results. What goes around comes around.

Shinto, the traditional religious practice of Japan, is interesting. It is positive, optimistic, and non-defensive. Practitioners focus on purity of heart. Purification ceremonies at shrines all over the country are places where washing, both as an outward and an inward ritual, emphasizes the connection between purity and health both spiritual and physical.

One doesn’t find generally in animist and indigenous religions an emphasis on sin. Divinities are not to be messed with and are dangerous when angered. The world of spirits is taken seriously. Yet it is rare to find examples of a category of damnation. In cultures dependent on nature, emphasis seems to be placed on doing whatever is pleasing to the spirits of nature. The presumed result will be survival and possibly even thriving.

When there is an overemphasis on defective human nature, a great amount of neurosis results. What is neurosis? I had a professor who once defined neurosis as the inability to adapt to whatever is given. That inability, I would say, generally manifests in excessive concern with conditions, whether physical, psychological, or spiritual, leading to anxiety. Neurosis is not the same as psychosis, which is a serious breakdown of consciousness which, if not addressed, can lead to the disintegration of personality.

I’m bringing all this up because it seems to me that right now in the world we are seeing a ton of neurosis being played out in politics and again in war. What is impeding sanity? A lot of things. But let’s start with a huge amount of unconsciousness on the part of powerful people running the world and those who project their own unconscious desires onto those people.

Being liberal, progressive, and broadminded does not provide immunity to being neurotic, obsessive, and blind to reality. Being generous and loving does not necessarily mean that we are enlightened—fully conscious. That’s not to say that openness is useless or that the desire for a world less riven by hatred and violence is stupid.

But. Those who have a clue about what consciousness is and thus about what reality is have an opportunity (I want to say “duty,” or maybe “vocation”) to shed some light on what’s going on for the sake, frankly, of the survival of homo sapiens.

If we are to be of much use in shedding that light, I believe it’s imperative that we have a vision of the future. And if that vision is just a warmed-over version of the “peaceable kingdom” in which lambs and lions lie down together and everyone lives happy lives without conflict, it is likely to go the way of all previous versions of that vision. It won’t last long.

Such a vision arose and was widely endorsed by the generation that made it through the Second World War, determined that the world had to change if humankind were to survive. They gave birth to the United Nations and later to NATO. A rules-based order for international relations was thus put in place. Despite many attritions and some major threats, that order has lasted—until now. It has not gone away completely, but it is being actively and recklessly undermined by leaders who apparently have no understanding of its function, and who are endorsed and financed through a growing and powerful class of multi-billionaires determined to rule and run the world on their own terms. If they have their way, the “peaceable kingdom” will be trumped by oligarchs and the masses reduced to automatons making the populace in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World look liberated.

I was reading a very thoughtful essay this week by a friend whom I respect highly. His theme was the pervasiveness of unconsciousness. His brilliant analysis I take little exception to. My problem was and is that being correct, even confessing your own complicity with much that threatens the earth and its inhabitants, is not going to convince many who can’t relate to your language. It clearly will be lost on those who themselves are unconscious of what is happening on earth and why.

I don’t want to be yet another voice of white, educated Privilege telling the world what to do. I am, however, committed to being a voice and I hope one that will resonate with people enough to spur them to think. That’s a step on the road to consciousness.

How, then, might we imagine a future that will be compelling to enough people on the planet that they might become conscious of both a life worth working for and their own power to bring it about?

I think the question is already being answered. The Buddhist monks who trekked from a temple in Fort Worth, Texas, 1500 miles to Washington, DC, were not protesting. They were making a powerful statement, a visible witness in person and across social media, to the truth that peace begins within each one of us and can spread to our families, communities, and beyond. Theirs is the message of Jill Jackson and Sy Miller’s song, “Let There Be Peace on Earth (and let it begin with me).” Jackson recovered from a failed suicide attempt and experienced the profound love of God thereafter. Out of that personal experience the song was born, shared with youth on a retreat, who then took it back to their schools, churches, and communities, whence it spread through the world.

Although I don’t watch TikTok regularly, occasionally some video posted there will cross my desktop. Don’t underestimate the power of such platforms. I no longer use FaceBook for lots of reasons; but if you do, use it to post messages that contribute to opening minds and hearts. Arguments, no matter how sophisticated, rarely lead to peace. Human stories move hearts. Have a Substack? Same thing. Cross-post to other platforms. Share with friends. The bottom line is, be all you can be, do all you can do to embody and express sanity and wholeness. If we waited to find out whether it would make a difference, we’d never do anything.

We are the only gospel the careless world will read. If we, no matter how smart or clever, capitulate to hatred, blaming, and shaming, all the money we give, all the words we say or write, all the marches we join won’t amount to two cents.

Lately I’ve been attending a seminar called, “Five Sunday Mornings with Calvin and Hobbs, the Parables of Jesus, and Andrea Gibson.” I barely knew the name Andrea Gibson. If you want inspiration, find them on YouTube and listen. Before they died in 2025 after a four-year journey with ovarian cancer, they became widely known by thousands as a stellar performance poet. I listen to Andrea’s cookie-crisp, knife-edge sharp language, sparkling with metaphors born not only of Suffering but out of its ironic pal Healing, and my flesh is all goosebumps, my breath held in wonder. Here’s a taste of what I mean, from “MAGA Hat in the Chemo Room:”

“When anyone in this room leaves this world, part of me does too. I feel it in every cell of me now that I'm not a me. I'm one eyelash in the eye of humanity, holding on for dear dear life trying to get the eyelashes beside me to look in the right direction before we are all wiped off the face of this planet that desperately wants us to live of natural causes like kindness, like caring, like knowing these bodies are clothes we are all growing out of so quickly until one day we will be only souls. Who can see we always wanted the exact same wish to come true. I know we will know that when we leave this world. The planet is just so desperate for us to know it now too.”[1]

There is a whole lot that’s the matter with humanity. I could say that our foundational narrative in the myth of Eden was spot on, that the problem with us is that we just can’t hold off eating forbidden fruit because the fruit we have in our mouths isn’t quite enough and the promise of something greater makes us always reach for more. I could say that the upshot of our overreach is a fall not downward into damnation but upward into consciousness, although I suspect that if the fall were only that, more of us would be awake if not enlightened.

But I think quite possibly the matter with us is that we don’t really believe in ourselves. The bad test grades, the propensity to depression, the sense of self-doubt, the mantle of shame, the fear that we don’t measure up, the voices in our heads that tell us we just can’t trust our own goodness: these enervate us. I might be wrong, yet still I wonder if those humans who stay close to nature; believe in the fundamental worth of simple rituals; honor the world of Spirit and spirits; practice simple virtues like thrift and generosity; exercise courage when threatened and trust when fortunes dwindle—I wonder if they aren’t after all the best humanity can become. In Andrea’s words, “I know we will know it when we leave this world. The planet is just so desperate for us to know it now too."

[1] Copied from Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/p/DMGUjb_Oiou/, accessed 16 March 2026.