The Good Life

"The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Applied psychology is my business and my livelihood. It is also my passion.
Years of working with people and following our advancements in the field of psychology, neuroscience, and social science have left me both concerned and very hopeful.

I am concerned because we have reached the point in our evolution where the single greatest threat to our continued existence is...us.

We have eliminated our natural predators, reduced disease to incredible levels, created vast sources of food. We have however been unable to conquer war, poverty, greed, and hatred.

I am very hopeful because we have, for the first time in human history, the tools to understand who we are and how we operate. Like any client going into therapy, this self knowledge is the key to making the fundamental changes that could save us.

Therapy is a good analogy because therapy is what we need, on a mass scale. Old habits and instincts that served our ancestors well are no longer helping us and, unexamined could lead to our destruction.

On the flip-side, with self knowledge comes an amazing opportunity for growth and the realization of some of human kinds most noble longings for peace, and happiness.

All of my life I have heard people refer to " the human factor."
Whenever we are talking about why systems, goals and ideals can't work we always follow it with "then there's the human factor."

What strikes me the most about this statement is the unspoken acceptance that this "human factor" is inevitable, and unchangeable. Things could work but human nature will just muck it up and there is nothing that we can do about it.

This is an interesting assumption. If I were to go around saying "Well I could have a job and be a nice person but there's my 'personality factor.'" we would never accept it. The obvious answer is of course "work on your personality, change your habits, get some therapy."

We have a decent grasp of individual pathology or mental illness. We have very little understanding of mass pathology, and even less of species specific pathology.
My argument is simply this;
Many of the habits designed to help us in the natural world are no longer helpful in a global civilization. Many of the cultural and spiritual beliefs that served the human race in the past, can no longer serve the human race in the present.

Finally, it is time to go to therapy.
We have mastered physical science to the point of science fiction, but physical sciences can no longer serve us without wisdom to guide them. It is time to use science, social science, to take a hard look at ourselves and reshape both our values and our means of achieving them.

"If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace." -Franklin D. Roosevelt