Adam Blatner

A friend wondered, “Why haven’t humans done a better job of taking care of themselves and the environment?”

I responded, after a friendly greeting: “Fair question: Why have humans not done a better job? Answer: Species wise, homo not-so-sapiens is, as a species, fairly immature, emerging through several species levels over 1,000,000 years to be its own species only about 100,000 years ago. (Compared to, say Dinosaurs, who dominated animal life for over a hundred million years, humans are still pretty new.) Even as a maturing human species who has existed for only around 100,000 years, anything approaching near civilized humanity—“neolithic”— has only been happening  for 10,000, and pre-history refers to the time before any writing began to record historical events less than 5,000 years ago. The idea of accuracy in historical writing—rather than propaganda flattering and supporting the ruling class—only emerged less than 2500 years ago.

At this rate, my hunch is that our species may take another several thousand years before it can do a fair-to-good job of taking care of themselves and their environment, if they haven’t extinguished themselves before that. We haven’t done a better job because we didn’t know the facts, the issues, or how to address them wisely. It’s all quite new!”

My friend replied. “If rats are not responsible for their actions, should humans, who seem to be acting only because of their innate nature and cultural environment, also be excused for their actions? Actually, it is comforting for me to have an excuse for past actions that I regret.”

I replied: “You open up an interesting question about different meanings of the term responsible. Earlier you asked why humans are so foolish, and I noted the general immaturity of the species—which is mainly a tautology—we’re foolish because we are indeed relatively foolish compared to our future potential. Part of that potential is to learn the skills of love, faith, and responsibility. That we haven’t learned it is no excuse for recognizing here and now that we have more learning to do. Responsibility in the here-and-now is ongoing. Accountability involves the relationships with others in the social system regarding the standards of responsibility.”

“Then again, here’s another excuse for past actions: You didn’t know all you need to know. Now here’s your responsibility toward those actions: Did you learn what you needed to learn so that you don’t repeat those mistakes? If you haven’t learned, if you have just felt regret but haven’t really gone after finding out exactly what you did wrong, why, and how not to do it again, you haven’t taken responsibility. Ideally, guilt in small to moderate doses should drive that investigation.

Alas, most adults just ask for "forgiveness," never really taking the responsibility to call their own shallow consciousness into question. They may be forgiven their folly, but not forgiven their copping-out from truly making amends and correcting their mistake. This happens 84.3% of the time, conservatively. Interesting question about mistakes, excuses, forgiveness, accountability, different issues involved.”