We have to make “love of others” our priority above the instinctive “self-love”

An opinion from the Internet about Humanity:

“You know we actually agree, that as a group of people, as Humanity we need to act differently than we’re currently acting.

I believe our original motivation is the love of the group, while you believe that our primary motivation is the love of ourselves.”

I also think we do agree. Our purpose — and the solution for all the problems — is to reach the state many wisdoms, religions, teachings symbolically describe as “love your neighbor as yourself”.

The problem is — as this principle itself acknowledges — that we are born inclined to love ourselves first. And especially since we evolved into a fully integrated, interdependent world this “inherent self-love” makes us inevitably causing harm, as whatever we take excessively, we take it from others.

You are right that “love of others, serving the collective” is also programmed in us, but at this stage — at least for the majority of the people — it is suppressed, overridden by our tendency to “love ourselves at the expense of others”.

This is why we cannot form sustainable, working, true, positive, constructive interconnections, cooperation, without which there is no chance of solving collective, global problems.

The pandemic has proved it the most sharply. Each individual, nation is only for their own, even for medication we compete, and want to “cure” ourselves at the expense of others, the whole pandemic and the race for the vaccine has become political and of course, a profit-generating exercise.

This is the reason we are on track to exterminate ourselves as you are predicting. And this is why the only solution is to relearn how to make being collective, social creatures our primary focus, above and against the egotistic tendencies.