There is something wrong with the world today. But it isn't what most people think. The symptoms are abundantly apparent though: Nazis and Antifascists are fighting pitched battles in the streets. Police are gunning down civilians on live TV. Leaders are threatening one another with nuclear fire and fury. In general, there is a growing sense of utter pandemonium.
What is causing all of this? To be as brief as possible: human megalomania. Everyone wants to be a superhero. Everyone wants to save the day. But in trying to be a hero, each of us really only succeeds in becoming a one person freak show: a circus act that does far more harm than good.
Humanity has of course been here before. In the 1930s, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler promised each and every German that they were one of the "Übermenchen", which roughly translates to "superhumans", and that the world ultimately belonged to them, and them alone. Tens of millions of able-bodied Germans were convinced to put on crisp, starched uniforms, and with inflated egos, march off to gruesome and ignoble deaths across all of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Many of them wound up in unmarked graves, where they will remain eternally interred, forgotten by history as a penalty for allowing themselves to be swayed by grandiose delusions.
Meanwhile, their campaign to demonstrate their inherent superiority miserably failed. Why? Because the world had no need for "superhumans". It did not need heroes then, nor does it now, nor will it ever. All this world really needs are good, decent, honest, normal human beings, and enough of them that sanity will prevail. It needs people who are willing to admit to being human, and to having flaws. People with both humility and self-reflection. But above all, it needs people who aren't constantly trying to score points, because they realize that no one whose opinion matters is keeping score, and that they ultimately deserve no praise, nor brownie points, for those acts of kindness that human beings are quite simply required by divine law to do.
That is what this world needs. And to the extent that it receives such people, there will be peace and harmony among us. For to quote an ancient prophet: "All who exalt themselves shall be humbled, while those who humble themselves shall be exalted."
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