Consciously becoming the wise, purposeful cogwheel

Zsolt Hermann
2 min readApr 15, 2020

Hopefully, the 2020s will be remembered as the great turning point in Human history, when we switched from a blind, instinctive development to a fully conscious, proactive one, taking our fate into our own hands.

So far we have been going through recurring, vicious cycles in history, building and destroying civilizations after civilizations, as our inherently self-serving, self-justifying, exploitative and individualistic nature distorted, corrupted everything we tried.

We went through all possible variations of political, economic and social systems — in our times we tried the most promising combination of liberal, parliamentary democracy and free-market capitalism — and we failed each time.

Now as there is nowhere to go forward, we are turning back towards the extremes of Communism, Nazism, dictatorships, authoritarian regimes in order to try to find necessary order, direction, returning to “options/solutions” that lead to the greatest disasters of Human history as if we had amnesia.

The pause provided by the pandemic and lockdowns gives us an opportunity to make a crucial review of the situation. Finally, we can use our unique Human mind that is capable of critical self-assessment. We have to understand that we can’t just invent things as we like in a closed, deterministic, lawful Natural system we exist in.

Instead, we have to study the system to its full depth, understanding all the cause and effect processes, the plan of development, so we could consciously, purposefully identify our own predetermined Human role, purpose in it.

We do not have free choice about our role, purpose in the system. We do not have a free choice about scaling down our lifestyle to natural necessities and available resources since we have to adapt to the general balance, homeostasis of the whole system in order to survive, not to be rejected from the system like foreign bodies.

But we have a free choice about how we reach that balance, fulfilling our purpose. If we are wise we will reach it consciously, by studying the system and its laws, adapting, fine-tuning ourselves proactively.

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Zsolt Hermann

I am a Hungarian-born Orthopedic surgeon presently living in New Zealand, with a profound interest in how mutually integrated living systems work.