Humanity’s Struggle in the 21st Century

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I want to talk to you today about something you might not have thought of. Or maybe you have, and it’ll help to hear it from a friend. 

Your struggle, and humanity’s, or our civilization’s.

Life is a brutal, bitter struggle these days. It’s OK to admit it. There’s going to be the kind of annoying white-dude pundit who won’t want to. They’re wrong. The statistics—if we need to into those—are startling. Half of parents in America feel numb and overwhelmed. But so do half of young people. Does that mean half of families, period, feel in such deep distress?

Life is a brutal, bitter struggle. So many crises, all at once. A cost of living crisis, white collar jobs going up in smoke (we’re going to talk about that topic more), generations in downward mobility, a planet on fire, mega-inequality. In the midst of all this, we’re “thrown, as Heidegger said, caught, trapped, in motion, living, barely breathing, struggling.

I want to tell you a secret.

Your struggle is also humanity’s struggle.

But this idea is hard to express. So let me try.

Humanity’s Childhood and Civilization 

Humanity was born in strife and tears. Think about how we evolved, not biologically, but morally, emotionally, socially. 

At first, came our infantile needs. We huddled in our caves, and from there, hunkered in our huts of thatch and mud. Feed me. Protect me from the night. Keep me safe. The needs of an infant. Humanity was then just a baby, but one alone in this universe—an orphan.

And so we learned to meet these infantile needs in basic ways. Through the invention and discovery of agriculture. By coming together and forming primitive forms of social organization, little towns and villages.

As we grew, we mastered meeting our infantile needs. And then came the time of adolescence.

Agriculture created a surplus. Villages became cities. Cities roared with industry. 

In this age, our adolescent needs came to the fore. Think of a teenager. What are adolescent needs? Esteem. Status. Power. 

Humanity had learned to meet its infantile needs, and was now learning to master its adolescent needs. In these new glittering places called cities, furious races for status began, the rich preening with baubles and jewels. Social organization became a game of power, who could have more and more, versus sheer subsistence. The axis of status went from being a hunter winning the most meat, or a shaman healing the sick, to forms of esteem based on higher and higher levels of consumption. 

And so this age gave rise, too, to terrible ills, which we’re now familiar with. War, violence, greed, and so forth.

These are humanity’s two ages. Childhood, and adolescence. And in each of them, we grappled with different stages of needs, which correspond to that of a human being. Infantile needs, basic ones, safety, nourishment, hunger, protection. Adolescent ones, status, esteem, and power. Infantile narcissism, juvenile narcissism. What lies beyond those?

Beyond Humanity’s Childhood

So where are we now?

Now we are asked to make a quantum leap. 

Beyond humanity’s childhood, and beyond its adolescence.

Now we’re asked to grow into adult needs, and capabilities.

What are those? Think of the difference between an adolescent, and an adult. The adult is capable of sacrifice, grace, truth, self-admonishment. Healthy levels of guilt and shame impel the higher virtues of giving, seeing, knowing, belonging. Above all, the adult—the fully mature human being—is capable, at his or her highest, of more and more powerful forms of love.

This is what we see and admire in Kamala and Tim, by the way, and I’ll come back to them.

Now. All of that’s very abstract. Let me bring it back down to earth.

What’s standing in the way of this evolution? This pathway before our civilization, still untaken? Why aren’t we getting there, towards humanity’s adulthood? Why do we seem trapped in an eternal adolescence?

Think of our paradigms for a moment.

They’re adolescent paradigms. Which trap us in adolescence. What do I mean by that?

Let’s think of capitalism, or at least this version of it, the predatory one. What’s it about? To what end does it guide us? It tells us that we’re to attain worth and esteem through hyper consumption, and if we can’t do that, then we’re nobody and nothing at all. The levels at which we can consume determine our social hierarchies. Power comes from being able to consume more than others, and that’s turned toxic, because today, of course, the ultra-rich are consuming democracy itself.

Remember those adolescent needs? Esteem, status, power. Now think of capitalism as it is. It traps us in adolescent ways of being. Esteem and status are things that aren’t inherent, in the sense of universal dignity. We have to “earn” them, and so on and on we go, in this by now vicious cycle of consumption without being able to make ends meet as people, societies, or a civilization, debt levels soaring through the roof, financial, ecological, planetary, social.

Think of the way that society’s oriented, or even politics. This version of democracy. It too is adolescent. It’s become, too often, a race to pander to people’s worst fantasies and fears, demagogues seducing masses with illusions about evil scapegoats stealing their women, wives, children, soil, blood. An adolescent way, reminiscent of the way cliques and hierarchies form. Lord of the Flies.

I often say our paradigms are failing. And here I want you to see why, in the deepest way.

They are paradigms designed to meet our adolescent needs. See how much status I have. See how much you should fear me. You must value me for my consumption levels. I am someone to be esteemed. 

And so we’re trapped in adolescence.

We’re not making the leap to adulthood because our paradigms aren’t built for it. And that’s understandable, in a way. For humanity, just having plenty—even an illusion of it—was a river that seemed impossible to cross not so long ago. Along came the Industrial Revolution, science, innovation, and so forth, and our adolescent needs exploded to the fore.

But now we’re stuck.

What Got Us Here Won’t Get Us There

There’s an old adage in management. What got you here won’t get you there. 

Let me bring all this back down to earth now, and keep that in mind.

Here we are, trapped amidst all these crises, barely breathing, struggling. For what? To what end?

We often think: it’s to make ends meet. To give my kids a better life. To retire, for my next career move, just to get a job. For someone to respect me, so that I feel worthy. On and on it goes. None of this is wrong, but I think there’s something deeper happening.

Humanity’s struggle is mirrored in each of our struggles.

Your struggle is the universal struggle before us. To mature past adolescence, and reach adulthood. I don’t mean that you’re still a kid, or even that you’re a narcissist. Rather, let me try and distill that.

Here we are, struggling. Stressed. Distressed. Things seem impossible these days, for so many people. Just everyday life is an exercise in weariness, futility, despair.

This is because our paradigms are failing. They are out of steam. They’re breaking down. For example: the more we pursue our adolescent needs, the less capable our societies and economies seem now of meeting our infantile, or basic ones. They don’t protect us, shield us, nourish us, keep us safe. Yet there we are, battling it out for esteem, status, and power, trying to play by the rules, which serve us little if at all anymore.

Our civilization, our kind, now faces its greatest test. And its greatest struggle. To meet our infantile needs took agriculture and villages. To meet our adolescent needs took cities, industry, and complex social organization.

But how are we to meet our adult needs? As a civilization? As a kind? 

You see, if we can’t, or don’t, or turn away from this challenge, what happens? We remain stuck in this permanent adolescence. But the longer we do that, the more it doesn’t work. The angrier and more jaded and more traumatized we get. Because our kind isn’t meant to stay stuck forever. No kind is. We are meant to grow and become.

Staying stuck in this permanent adolescence isn’t an option. Its price gets higher by the day, from planetary ruin to ecological disaster to mega inequality to broken social contracts and on and on. What scholars call “polycrisis” is a reflection of the price of eternal adolescence rising by the day.

This struggle is what we are all feeling. We’re stuck, because humanity is. Our civilization is. Our kind is. Our paradigms are trapping us.

And before us is the challenge of finding a way out.

A new way forward, if you like, which is how Kamala and Tim put it.

The Struggle For A Mature Civilization

Now. What are the capacities, again, of adulthood? An adult civilization, kind, humanity, would have different values, priorities, organization—everything. It’d be centered around a much more forgiving aspect. Narcissism wouldn’t be its guiding axis. We’d be parents, not eternal children, whether to the planet, to our forebears, of life itself. We’d tend the garden back to flourishing again, instead of rip off the flowers for garlands to dazzle each other with.

We’d plant seeds in the soil, after we nourished it back to life. Our economies and social contracts therefore would be quite radically different. Higher levels of investment. Lower levels of consumption. Less inequality. All of that, of course, is kind of what Kamala’s “care economy” begins to point to. It’s a baby step forward, but a crucial one, because we need to break the old failed paradigms. Of course, in many respects, our civilization isn’t one in which many have even their most basic needs met still.

In our lives, this struggle feels immense, daunting, and insoluble. I’m not saying that you should become a more virtuous person, and hey presto, everything’s solved. Far from it, don’t mistake me. 

I’m saying that this phase of history is about this struggle. Humanity’s struggle to grow beyond adolescence, and into adulthood. And each of us reflects, and is reflected in, that struggle. Our bewilderment at how it all went wrong so fast. Our sense of destabilization. The way life feels out of control. This is because we are in a time of profound transformation, which isn’t quite happening yet. We’re stuck, and in that in-between place, lies this struggle to mature.

Each of us is called in a different way, I think, to help humanity meet this struggle. Whatever our jobs or careers are. Teachers, lawyers, doctors, doesn’t matter. We’re all called, now, to grow in this way, and help our organizations, whether cities, towns, countries, companies, evolve in this way, too. When we do that, we become leaders, and if we take up that mantle of leadership, we see from the example of Kamala and Tim just how hungry people are for this kind of deep change, not just in “policies,” but in paradigms, values, approaches, ways of being.

So it’s not that you can make this transformation happen all by yourself. Don’t bear that burden. Know that this is a time of humanity’s greatest struggle, and greatest test. As our paradigms fail, who will create new ones? New orientations, ways, avenues, so that we can become unstuck from adolescence, and mature into adulthood? That’s our challenge, and that’s what we’re called to do, by history, time, dust, and being.

Your struggle is this struggle. Not in the trivial sense that “you have to do this.” You don’t. In the larger sense that we’re trapped in this mismatch, between paradigms that meet adolescent need, but are unable to help take us further. We are a kind struggling to grow into adulthood, and in that place lies this age of strife and discord.

This is the meaning of this age. Yet every step we take closer to new paradigms liberates us. Paradigms based on genuine maturity, love, justice, truth, peace, nonviolence in the deep sense. In which we become closer to the grief and love of existence, the way parents are to children. Now is the time we liberate ourselves from adolescence—or the future rewinds before our eyes, and everything we know continues to shatter.

That’s a lot to chew on. I don’t know if it made sense. I hope it did. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. And I wanted to share it with you.

Lots of love from me (and Snowy.) Hang in there, if you’re struggling. Think about what it really means, which is what I’ve tried to shed light on. It means so much more than most of us think. And that is why we must give it our all, and not for one moment back down. In times like these, every day, and every ounce of effort, is more crucial than we yet know. 

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