The 5 essential insights
„I am increasingly convinced that the only way for us to change what we do is to change how we think of ourselves. How we act is a reflection of who we believe we are“
Francois Chollet
How can aggression between groups and individuals as discussed above be avoided? How can we learn to enjoy giving and helping others? I expect that this can be achieved by a deep cultural change. We have to learn to see ourselves with different eyes. This will lead to a different way we look at others and a change in behavior.
I have listed the envisioned changes in our self perception below in the „5 essential insights“:
- Understand and accept who you truly are. You have evolved to dominate and replicate in a competitive society. This means this conditions have shaped your mind over time and your mind implements inevitably also noncooperative strategies. We have to accept and even embrace this.We only have one past, one history and it cannot be changed anymore. If we reject our history we reject ourselves. This means that our past is a cultural heritage we should honor and not try to forget or delete. We should even learn to have fun from it. But we have to become highly aware of how our history has shaped our mind and what the dangers and contradictions are.
- Learn to forgive others. It’s impossible to be „good by nature“ in a competitive system. Therefore you are not less evil than anybody else. You are not morally superior to anybody else. This means „bad people“ cannot exist for fundamental reasons. They are phantoms of imagination. If you don‘t get along with somebody, you have to find out what you could do to improve the relationship.
- Learn to forgive yourself. You are, for the same reasons, also not more evil than anybody else (even if you have acted evil in the past). Even if you have a sad past you are still perfectly capable to live in a cooperative society.
- Understand how you are deeply connected to the people around you. We will look at this important point soon in great detail in the next chapters. The result is that doing evil is actually self damaging and giving to others is rewarding. We have to understand why it makes us happy to help others and why we suffer if we inflict pain to others.
- You are not better or fitter than anybody else (nor are your children). Not genetically and not regarding your culture. The world does not need your „superior“ children nor your „superior“ cultural strategies. All children are equally valuable. We will study also this point soon in detail.
We will study the „5 insights“ in more detail in the following chapters.
Please note that the 5 insights are not something you can read once and understand. To internalize them fully takes a few years and takes some effort.