The Age of Inhumanity

Why We’re Living Through an Epidemic of Selfishness and Greed

Image Credit: fran_kie/Shutterstock

We live in a time that’s losing many things. But I want to talk about one in particular — something true and vital, something essential and grand, vast and beautiful, about what is to be here, in just these brief moments, together, breathing, alive — and perhaps, in what little way we can be said to be, free.

We live in an age of inhumanity now. And that is because we don’t know, anymore, really, what it is, to respect even our own humanity. In fact, the way we’ve been taught to think about it is exactly and precisely backwards. Do you think I go too far? I’ve been talking a little bit about it. But I want to outline it to you a little more precisely.

The economy teaches us to dehumanize ourselves. It numbers us, counts us, values us only according to the sum total of our productivity. The moment we are unprofitable — bang! — we’re fired, let go, disposed, discarded. CEOs make orders of magnitude more than the workers who hold up their corporations. Corporations profiteer, exacerbating a cost of living crisis through greedflation. Only the strong survive. The weak? Who knows? They live however they can. Hey, it’s each man for himself. Why should I care how anyone else lives or dies — if they can’t pull their weight. Pull their weight? But we are not slaves. Ah, you see?

Society teaches us to dehumanize ourselves. It’s been reduced to a kind of arena for a perpetual game of mortal existential combat. Win, triumph, conquer, succeed. Cunning, cruelty, ruthlessness. Vanquish your adversary. Earn more than your peers. Outdo your rivals. Be prettier and stronger than your friends. Gain the upper hand. Over everyone, all the time, every day, forever. That’s all you’re here to do, my son, my daughter. Life — just a vicious contest. Shed a tear for no one. But a human being who cannot shed a tear for anyone is not human anymore, are they? And a human being who can must be something more than a winning contestant in a game-show — or a triumphant gladiator in an arena — mustn’t they?

Technology teaches us how to dehumanize ourselves. Not just the little ourselves — “I” — the big one: each other. It objectifies us, sorts us, ranks us, filters us. And we’ve become addicted to the very tools which do it, clicking a hundred times a day, anxious for the dopamine rush, eager for the thrill. What’s really happening here? We are static electricity in the algorithms of our own dehumanization. We race to the bottom, and don’t know it. I have the most fans, friends, likes. I am the biggest and best. But no one is anything at all this way. Do you see the truth of a person in the algorithm? Can you? Tap, tap, tap, go the addicts.

I could go on. The point is this. How else would we have gotten to this dark and troubled time in human history — unless we were too busy dehumanizing everyone, beginning with ourselves, to hold or see or know anyone’s truth, beauty, dignity, possibility? Go ahead and try to go around the link, if you must — but I doubt that you get so quickly to where we are now without people who’ve been taught to systematically, carefully, ruthlessly strip away humanity, beginning with their very own.