Stop Looking Down

Ok, so recently I’ve noticed that people are in it all for themselves. This past week, we chose our soccer captains, and as I looked around, everyone… and I mean EVERY SINGLE PERSON around me voted for themselves. Every. Single. One. I was shocked, but honestly not really… cause this is how our society runs these days.

Why is it that in our minds, we are the center of the universe? We constantly look down to people as our inferiors, as if from birth we enter a competition to be better than the person next to us. 

And not only toward other people, but a variety of other species as well. A homework question assigned to us this week regarding “The Death of a Moth” asked us why the author would talk about something as “insignificant as a moth's death?” Just from this question, it is obvious that moths aren’t considered anywhere near as important as human beings. WHY is this so? WHY do we give ourselves a greater title over this species? Because they’re "so small" (Woolf)? Not like us (which they are, read the piece for more info on that)? Don’t have a direct influence on us? Because if these are what our reasonings have come to, we MUST put them to rest.

Firsts of all, to all of you who think moths don’t benefit us… you’re 100,000% wrong, Moths actually pollinate our plants, hence, give us food. 

My point in providing this information, I want to prove how the things that we may think are insignificant to our lives are actually beneficial; yet, we fail to understand or even try to acknowledge that. Instead, we simply kill animals for our own benefits, cause apparently what they already do is not good enough for us. And now I come upon my second point—relating this back to our interactions with each other. We treat others as dumb or incompetent compared to ourselves, and how we deserve more than them. In reality, no matter how much we may think we know about others, we truly don’t know each one of their life stories, so we cannot automatically place ourselves on a higher hierarchy. We need to care about others just as we do for ourselves and to put them over own basic needs and desires, because in the end, the only thing that matters is the relationships you’ve with others and the impact you’ve created—not that you were the smartest in your class or the most popular kid in school. The only thing these “accomplishments” do is make you feel better about YOURSELF… but it is unfair to take your successes and degrade someone else for it. 

So, to end what I’m trying to say, I’m going to repeat my main point once more—it is ESSENTIAL that we look at others the same way we view ourselves. This way, inferiority and superiority will be nonexistent, and hopefully it will make society become less judgmental, because no one deserves to be looked upon with disapproval.

Going back to the soccer captain phenomenon… to all the people that voted for themselves, I ask you: what truly constituents an extraordinary captain? First, a true captain would definitely not vote for themselves when it comes to it, because if you were truly meant to be a captain, your own vote is "useless" (Woolf), and your teammates are the ultimate decision makers… you know… the people who AREN’T inferior to you and have just as much a chance to become captain.