As the industrialised world has blurred everything into a mass product, service, opinion and standardised almost all, we have become almost hysterically fearful of different.
Yet the thing that propelled us, from the hunter/gatherers on the plains of East Africa to settling all over this planet, and all that has happened in that 70,000-year journey as a human race, was the curiosity that drove us to be different and create new things.
Now we have settled for compliance, acceptance of one voice of the myth makers, no matter how wrong it sounds and no matter how much deep down it conflicts with our values. We accept war, racism, poverty, absurdly grotesque wealth inequality, industrialised agriculture causing unimaginable suffering to animals, the destruction of our environment and countless other seemingly obvious wrong doings.
Fear of different has paralysed the human race.
Has this 70,000-year journey been all to just do as we are told, to become a drone and trudge like zombies to our graves, just being a cog in their machine, removed and replaced with another when we are no longer fit for purpose?
The only way to break this paralysis is for all of us as individuals to do our bit, to question, to be curious and to strive to find new and different solutions to continue the evolution.
Different will keep this human race alive, not compliance. Break free, leave fear behind and be different.
We can all make a difference, none of us are too small. As the Dalai Lama said ‘if you think you are too small to make a difference try sleeping with a mosquito’.
Philip Dodson 