A Civilization Still in Its Infancy

A Civilization Still in Its Infancy

We like to think of ourselves as an advanced civilization. And in many ways, we are. Our technology is extraordinary. Our medicine, our science, the speed at which we exchange information. All of it would have looked like science fiction not long ago.

But when I look at how we treat one another, and how we treat life itself, it’s hard not to feel that we’re still very young.

Emotional maturity doesn’t grow at the same pace as intelligence. You can be brilliant and still not understand the consequences of your actions. Humanity feels a bit like that right now, capable of incredible things, yet strangely clumsy with what it touches.

We’ve learned how to build, how to scale, how to accelerate. We’ve learned how to organize life, optimize it, even manipulate it. What we haven’t fully learned yet is how to respect it. How to slow down enough to recognize how fragile it actually is.

So we end up hurting ourselves.

Not always on purpose. Often without even noticing. We create systems that exhaust us, cultures that reward excess, and divisions that teach us to see each other as problems instead of reflections. And then we act surprised when anxiety rises, when loneliness spreads, when violence shows up in new forms.

This is what immaturity looks like. Not stupidity, not evil, but repetition without understanding.

The strange thing is that we’re no longer unaware. We know what violence does. We know what inequality creates. We know what isolation does to the mind and the body. We have the data, the history, the lived experience.

At this point, it’s hard to say we don’t know better.

Which raises a quieter, more uncomfortable question: if we understand the damage, why do we keep doing it?

I think part of the answer is that we’ve forgotten something very simple. Something so obvious it doesn’t get talked about much anymore. Life has value on its own. Not because it produces something. Not because it’s efficient, useful, or impressive. Simply because it exists.

When that truth fades, care becomes conditional. Compassion becomes selective and hurting one another becomes easier than it should ever be.

What still amazes me is how long it’s taken us to return to that recognition. To really see each other again. To treat life as something precious, not abstract. To “hug” again. Not just physically, but in the way we relate, in the way we speak, in the way we decide what matters.

For a species capable of empathy, we’ve taken our time.

Maybe this is what infancy looks like at a civilizational scale. Not a lack of intelligence, but a slow, sometimes painful learning process. A phase where we’re still discovering that harming life anywhere ends up harming life everywhere.

The hopeful part is that infancy implies growth. It means we’re not done.

If humanity is still young, then maturity won’t come from more control or more speed. It will come from remembering. From quietly returning to the understanding that life is fragile, shared, and worthy of care before it proves anything at all.

And if we can remember that, really remember it, maybe we’ll finally stop hurting ourselves.

—Rick