I owe a debt to humanity

I owe a debt to humanity.

If I stripped away every piece of support I receive from the past and present of humanity, I would basically be a monkey jumping around in the trees. Maybe even less than that.

If I didn’t owe the past and present taxpayers of society, there would be no security and no modern infrastructure. If I didn’t owe knowledgeable and talented people, I would not have nice, convenient things like electricity, heat, and a safe house. If I didn’t owe farmers, I wouldn’t have easy access to a balanced diet. If I didn’t owe scientists, I would not have medicine. If I didn’t owe teachers, I wouldn’t know how to do anything other than what I experience by myself. If I didn’t owe past humans, I would have to do everything from scratch, learning by myself from just dirt and trees. And if I didn’t owe my parents, I wouldn’t have survived those fragile and weak early years.

So, if you think you don’t owe humanity, you are basically a bipedal monkey jumping around the jungle. I would really like people to understand this, to look at the people in the past and around them today and recognize that foundation. But what do we do with that realization? We can never truly pay back the ancestors, taxpayers, or scientists who came before us. Instead, we must pay it forward. We build on what we were given to support the continuous chain of human progress.

We should enjoy the luxuries created by humanity, but we must also take responsibility for its present and future.

I have seen so many people act entitled to every luxury without having a single thought of contributing in return. I don’t like the idea of people who think they built everything by themselves and owe nothing to anyone. That simply isn’t true, it would only be true if they were solitary hunter-gatherers, and maybe not even then.

Basically, it is unimaginable to live without owing anything to anyone. The attitude of consuming everything created by society while viewing yourself as entirely self-made ignores the vast network of human effort that makes our lives possible. True maturity isn’t just about independence; it is about recognizing our deep interdependence. When you realize how much you have been given, the only natural response is to find a way to give something back.