Thanks for your post, S (and I hope that **** hasn’t really chased you off, Tiny Buddha is generally a good and kind community). I feel like my faith in humanity has taken a bit of a hit recently, and I recognise some of the things you talk about.

What helps me at times like these is the thought that, basically, we are bonobos. We’re upstart monkeys, nearly paralysed by the fear and rage we’ve inherited from our evolutionary history of scarecity, tribal warfare and brutal oppression. It’s no surprise we’re bad at this stuff. We’ve never been better. In fact, we used to be considerably worse, even as little as 20 years ago.

So if you look around at the kindness and compassion and justice we do achieve, sometimes, I think you can take some heart. I think the long arm of history is still pointing to justice. And yes, it’s been a long time. It may take the rest of our collective existence to get there. But when you say “it is taking too long” or “we should be better than this”, you are trying to force history into your personal timeframe, and no good can come of that.

We are stupid monkeys, scared of the world, scared of each other, scared of the future. Many of us cover that fear in anger. We cling desperately to ideas and notions that give us some sense of certainty, and we don’t see or don’t care how they are bigoted and harmful to others. We suck. But we are trying, each of us in our own way and on our own level, to live right and do right.

I think it’s a big help when you can find others who are somewhere roughly on your level, so you can help each other find the way. I hope you can find those people. I hope you can find the courage, more and more, to meet people and look for the good in them, so you can encourage it. All my best wishes.