Why waking up from short-sightedness is hard

I’m not referring to individually, but culturally.

The people around you have likely been short-sighted too. Society is notoriously short-sighted. Most companies are too.

The struggle is when you wake up from short-sightedness, after you have your epiphany, others aren’t in the same mindset, and jostling them startles them and makes them feel bad. Protection of their ego comes into place and it’s hard to get them to align with the vision.

A simple example that many people have probably been through is when life gets rocky for a period. Maybe work is demanding, a car breaks down, someone is sick, or all of those at the same time. We fall into shortcuts to deal with it all. Perhaps we skip cleaning the bathroom. The laundry doesn’t get done. The dishes are piling up. One day, even after everything is over, one of the family members looks around, and thinks, “When did we start living in a dump?” Seeing the Herculean task to get “back to normal” they try to rally the family, who feel attacked rather than enlivened, even if it was never meant to be that way.

As a society, nearly all our issues boil down to this type of situation. Things have extended far past where they should be in all sorts of ways, anyone who points it out, is attacked.

What is the alternative?

The only one I can think of is to start cleaning the house. Literally, in the scenario I described, and metaphorically in the societal example. Then make sure other people see what you are doing, and hopefully see the value in joining in. Eventually, the behavior becomes the new normal, or “back to normal” if that is the way things were before.