You were given this world. What are you giving back?
Everything you see around you is a result of a combination of events that happened until this very moment.
Even your own self. You are who you are because of the specific combination of genes that got passed on to you from generation to generation.
Both the physical as well as mental State of the World made you who you are today. Not only you but everyone.
In other words, the various physical stuff that took some time to evolve in their current form influenced this version of yourself now.
Also, the various events and ideas that happened throughout all the years of our existence which influenced the peoples’ mindset, formed the mindset and character you have right now.
Physical State of the World
The current physical State of the World (SoW) exists as a contribution of many people in the sciences and other fields.
Most of the things exist as a result of the cumulative work of thousands of people throughout the years. Discoveries are being added on top of existing ones and passed from one generation to the next.
In fact, this very article you are reading right now is attributed to the sweat and tears of many people.
- You can understand this article because we have a common language in which I am able to express my thoughts and you to understand them. You take this for granted, but the first humans on earth started by grunting or hooting, gradually evolving in written languages with rules
2. The device you are using right now is a result of many hardware as well as software improvements in computer science; it really started by a simple idea to count things mechanically
3. You are able to pay for the device because of the financial system that has been developed
4. And if you bought it online, you safely paid for it because of cryptography
5. And even before that, think about the transport mediums used for the device to reach your home in just a few days. Think about the evolution of airplanes, ships, and automobiles; and how many incidents happened that helped their improvements
6. What about the electricity needed for all the devices that we use today? Even if energy was not “invented”, its exploration let to the invention of the transistor which is used in most of the electronic devices today
7. What about the Internet? You are able to read this article because of it. All this information you see now on your screen has been sent, from another computer(server) sitting far away from you, in milliseconds!
8. What about the money you spend on your device? You have to give credit to your parents, grandparents, who worked hard, as well as economists for ensuring a healthy economic environment in your country
9. You have time to read up until this point, right? Do you think the time comes for free? The work-life balance you have today has to be attributed to the 8-hour day movement. In addition to that, living in a peaceful independent country is a big thing; there are always wars happening around the globe. Lots of people gave their life for you to be free now
And many more known and unknown billions of inventions happened for you to have the current physical SoW.
If you were born in a different era with a different physical state, your mind would operate in a totally different way, because simply you would have totally different things around you.
Mental State of the World
The current mental State of the World exists as a series of events that happened throughout the years, which formed your behavior, ideas, and values.
An event that influenced someone’s mindset in the past, will, in turn, influence someone else’s down the line. The combination of the billions of events that happened in the history of time formed the current state of your brain (neural connections and information).
Mental influences can be categorized into two groups: micro and macro.
The micro mentality is the influences of the closest people in your life.
For example, if your dad had a severe bike accident when he was younger, he might transfer those fears on to you. He might never let you cycle, influencing your life as well. A single significant event in your dad’s life might have an impact on your mindset. Of course, is not just the event by itself, your influencer’s mindset (the way he reacts on the event) also plays a role. It’s a combination of both.
And this goes recursively. Your dad’s mindset got influenced by his parents’ combination of events and set mindsets as well. And theirs on their parents and so on and so forth.
However, studies have found that influences don’t just stop at the direct people you spend the most time with. It’s far more dispersed and research suggests it includes people you haven’t even met yet!
That’s what we call complex contagion theory. “Evidence for complex contagion models of social contagion from observational data” by Sprague & House empirically showed that complex contagions do, in fact, exist (at least, in the social media data they looked at).
If we were about to draw lines of each other’s influences, it would be like an interconnected complex mesh of lines:
Defined broadly as the transmission of an influence from one individual to another, the concept of contagion occupies an important place in the spread of cultural fads.
The macro mentality is the ideas and values that we accumulated collectively as a world. Those are the ideas that passed from a micro-level to a more global scale level. One example would be our mental evolution towards women’s rights; various events changed the way we view gender equality. For years the norm in our mindsets as a whole was that women are of a lower significance in the society. It took some years to evolve to its current norm.
We’ve created global organizations as a product of these events; WWF aims to protect endangered animals, WHO promotes health matters worldwide, UNICEF works to improve the welfare of children and mothers, UN is for peacekeeping and human rights, World Bank works on reducing poverty, etc.
Another example of our generation’s mindset shift was the industrial revolution and the importance of studies. The influence we had from our parents to get a degree from a University is not by luck. They, in turn, were influenced by their market conditions where someone with a degree had a greater chance to get a better job, and thus a better life.
But, it’s not just the ideas, people and events that form your mentality. Your genetic information also plays a role.
Even though there are no genes that specify personality traits, some genes do control the development of the nervous system, which in turn controls behavior.
Most psychologists agree that the interplay between genetic factors and the environment is what influences a human’s personality.
So, the behavior and the way your brain is wired right now (the way you see the world around you), is really a mixture of your ancestor’s DNA and the people and events that influenced you until this point in time.
Those are the genes that you got from our parents, who got theirs by their parents, and so on, as well as, the influential events that happened to your closest people who got inspired by their closest people’s influential events, which goes back recursively to the years.
But what does all this mean?
Well, your life is precious and is a result of billions of events that led to your existence, and the billions more that will become your future.
Lots of inventions and especially the Internet made possible for ideas to spread faster and on a broader scale. This is playing a huge role influencing yourself. You can express, absorb and form ideas about any subject instantaneously. It’s like your brain is connected with millions of other’s brains, extracting information, processing it, and spurring newly formed ideas back into this network of brains inspiring other brains.
You are extremely lucky to live in this SoW and you have tremendous opportunities and tools to have an impact in this world, and not just on its current state but also on its future one.
So, if you ever thought your actions don’t matter, believe me, they really do (even a tiny bit)!
p.s. If you want to learn more about complex contagions I strongly recommend playing this amazing game.
