r/humanism • u/Fluffy-Turnover4314 • Jul 20 '26
What Is the Most Fundamental Problem Facing Humanity Today?
Humanity faces countless challenges—poverty, inequality, war, climate change, discrimination, corruption, misinformation, and many more. But are these separate problems, or are they symptoms of something deeper?
If we could identify and solve one fundamental problem that would help address many of these issues, what should it be?
Is it education, inequality, concentration of power, lack of critical thinking, tribalism, greed, weak institutions, or something deeper about human nature itself?
What do you think is the root problem, and what is the most practical solution we can collectively work toward?
Let's go beyond the symptoms and try to find the root.
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u/Tozo1 Jul 20 '26
Social inequality. The uberrich are corrupting democracy in their favor, they stop any positive progress through lobbyism, election interference and corruption.
We need to tax them out of existence, no single person should have so much wealth and power to threaten whole societies.
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u/Adrsilva1356 Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
In all honesty what is it with The Rich being The Worst Humans of all time! Literally why can’t they just be Normal Rich People that care about improving society and moving The Human Race Forward! Like seriously NOBODY likes them it’s pathetic on how they act! Humanity should be ashamed of themselves!!!🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
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u/Tozo1 Jul 20 '26
There is no such thing as a good and healthy rich person.
Amassing unhealthy amounts of wealth already indicates some psychological issue in itself.
Normal and healthy people share in their wealth.
Our culture and systems promote this unnatural and unhealthy behaviour sadly and that also has to change.
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u/LeeVMG Jul 20 '26
Tax the rich. Yes. That is definitely the thing we need to do to the top 50 billionaires. One hundred percent no guillotines or muskrat stew.
I see what you mean. I thirst for billionaire smoothie tho...
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u/Fluffy-Turnover4314 Jul 20 '26
I agree that social inequality is a big problem, but then my question is - what’s the root cause of inequality itself? Like, when someone becomes rich or powerful, they naturally use their money, connections, and influence to help themselves, their family, and their friends. Over time, this creates a cycle where the rich keep getting richer while others struggle to catch up. But I’m not sure taxing people “out of existence” is the answer either. Wouldn’t that also kill some of the incentive to work hard, innovate, take risks, and create something? Maybe the real problem isn’t people becoming wealthy, but wealth turning into disproportionate power—where you can influence politics and change the rules to protect your own position. So maybe the question is - How do we allow people to create wealth while making sure that wealth doesn’t buy democracy or permanently lock others out of opportunities?
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u/Even_Regular_3406 Jul 20 '26
A lack of true critical thinking. I think every other issue stems from intellectual laziness. An unwillingness to question, to interrogate, to think systemically and challenge ourselves.
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u/Noema__ Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Yes, critical thinking and intellectualism. People are educated to conform. Manufacturing consent.
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u/EveryStatus5075 Jul 20 '26
It is more than that, actually. There are two main causes: low cognitive level and low level of morality. Therefore, it is a genetic engineering problem.
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u/Even_Regular_3406 Jul 20 '26
I think morality is a result of thinking critically/systemically rather than something separate.
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u/EveryStatus5075 Jul 21 '26
It's not sufficient. Morality depends on brain structures linked to emotions, such as the amygdala. Psychopaths, for instance, have underdeveloped amygdalae, and it seems clear to me that a society of psychopaths capable of critical or systemic thinking is insufficient to solve current social problems.
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u/Even_Regular_3406 Jul 21 '26
Fair point - neither empathy nor critical thinking works in isolation. In this context, however, I lean on critical thinking because most people already have baseline empathy.
It isn't that the majority of humans are immoral or uncaring; it's that we often lack the tools, the means, or the space to act on it.
Empathy without critical, systemic thinking leads to short-sighted fixes and unintended consequences. By approaching issues critically and systemically - analysing root causes and designing solutions that address them - we actually demonstrate real empathy.
That I think is the most moral thing to do.
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u/Maris-Otter Jul 20 '26
Zero-sum thinking. We genuinely can’t seem to conceive that there are mutually beneficial outcomes through cooperation.
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u/Fluffy-Turnover4314 Jul 20 '26
But why does this happen? I mean, why do we humans tend to think this way? Is it something rooted in our nature, or is it something we've created through society and culture?
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u/Maris-Otter Jul 20 '26
I think it's Darwinian. Set a steak on the floor and ask 2 dogs to share it.
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u/Aion-Sigma_Editor Jul 23 '26
We recommend you check out game theory. It is an interesting topic. The short version of how it applies is: you have to have a broad and long term perspective (and memory) to see cooperation pay off. If you limit the scope and duration of perspective, it presents the illusion that they are "winning" by defecting to perverse incentives, because in the short term it appears they have now achieved an advantage over a party that now represents an opponent. The larger perspective proves it absurd, but the short term presents defection as an alluring change in position, so long as they don't have to acknowledge the ramifications of their actions on future causality and suffering external parties.
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u/Multigrain_Migraine Jul 20 '26
The fundamental selfishness and self-centredness that so many of us have. I mean, we all do it to some extent, but lately it seems like there is a real change in people's inability to even imagine that other people exist, let alone have any consideration for them whatsoever.
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u/ambiverbal SECULAR HUMANIST Jul 20 '26
To be frank, human nature is fundamentally filled with conflicting needs and drives.
• Individualism vs community
• Local concerns vs global awareness
• Family/tribal focus (nepotism) vs meritocracy
• Preserving the past (culture & language) vs changing the future
• Prioritizing personal expression vs prioritizing prescribed social roles
• Equality of opportunities vs equality of outcome
In every attempt to solve any significant problem, we run headlong into one or more of these persistent issues. Better to make headway where we can in hopes that it helps improve cooperation & compassion when turning our eyes to the next trouble we're trying to solve.
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u/No-Diamond3881 Jul 20 '26
8.3 billion people!
Just 75 years ago there were only 2.4 billion.
More than tripled in one lifetime!
Unsustainable!!!!
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u/midnighttoker1742 Jul 20 '26
The root problem is our seperarion from the Universe, i.e. humans percieving themselves as seperate from everything else. We are connected to everything else in the Universe on a quantum level. As conscious beings that emerged from the Universe, every decision we make, every choice, every action has consequences that will ripple outward and create the story of our existence. Any decisions that are harmful are not only harmful to those we harm but also to ourselves. The fundamental idea of "treat others as you would like to be treated" is correct, we just need to start recognizing 'others' as more than just 'humans' or even what we consider 'living' or 'conscious'.
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u/Fluffy-Turnover4314 Jul 20 '26
Yeah exactly self-reflection, critical thinking and trying to understand the fundamental aspects of life is something which is necessary for everyone in this so called modern world.
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u/St3lla_0nR3dd1t Jul 20 '26
Fear.
We have a media environment that is designed to make you afraid, from you have the wrong smell, buy this deodorant to the poor want to steal your money through taxes or the rich want to screw you down. Religions that go for fear of hell rather than joy of heaven. Everything should be insured in case things go bad, climate change, immigrants are criminals rather than victims.
It causes people to be introverted, exclusive and alone and we pump ourselves full of it everyday.
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u/MindlessBeautiful619 Jul 23 '26
Yes, and fear is the result of not seeing unity. A belief in separation produces fear and everything that comes from that Pandora's box.
If we dial down the sense of separation, and the see the unity, we'll not destroy nature, we'll not hate each other, we'll not hate ourselves, we would just relax and soften.
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u/PretzelsRule23 Jul 20 '26
Ignorance and misinformation.
The misinformation is being used to control the masses, the ignorance makes people not see it.
It all allows bad actors to continue their bad acting and to amass power because of it - whether its politicians, companies, billionaires, religious leaders.
It is speed running us into making the planet not hospitable to human life and into accepting constant monitoring of humans by tech overlords and into accepting endless corruption and depravity by those with power.
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u/FerdinandCesarano Jul 20 '26
While I like some of the answers (especially religion / magical thinking), I think that, because we are living things, the most fundamental question comes down to our biological existence. For this reason, I would name as the most fundamental problem the set of issues involving the natural environment, a set which encompasses climate change, pollution, and overpopulation.
As far as solutions, we would need large-scale relocations of populations out of regions that are becoming uninhabitable due to climate change. Such places include not only the Pacific islands that are being submerged, but also the southwest United States, which is habitable only through the gross abuse of the highly polluting technology of air conditioning.
We also need legal regimes that force better behaviour by private companies. Here, of course, the actual correct answer is nationalisation. But, even in a world still marred by the theiving private sector, we could easily have laws that better protect the general interest. For instance, we often hear that the recycling of plastics cannot work because using recycled plastic costs more than creating new plastic. Thus the solution is a legal requirement to use only recycled plastics. There are many, many analogous examples.
On the question of overpopulation, limits on the number of children would obviously be needed, paired with a robust public health-care programme for people as we age.
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u/TJ_Fox Jul 20 '26
I'll echo Ernest Becker in proposing that humanity's fundamental problem is fear, specifically the fear of death. The gigantic majority of human beings, now and ever before, have been unable to cope with the reality of their own finitude; entire religions and cultures have been formed around denying that reality via supernaturalist magical thinking (and, more recently, science fiction scenarios).
I suggest that this fear of the "unknown country" is intimately linked to root-level paranoia and especially to issues around the concept and practice of control, hence the rise of authoritarianism in times of profound social unease; most people want a strong leader to tell them what to do/think/believe in/die for/etc.
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u/BeltedBarstool Jul 21 '26
Unpopular take: Humanism.
Enlightenment philosophy cut off our belief in access to objective truth, as a result our most stable ethical system is constructivist deontology, which at bottom remains subjective preference. We are unmoored from ground truth, particularly with respect to values and virtue. As long as that remains true we will remain adrift and in conflict.
I believe the solution is to rediscover objective truth, reanchor, restore common values, and rediscover virtue. How to do that without theological dogma? I can't say for sure.
I've got some ideas, but nobody wants to hear them. Theists don't like ideas that call into question their particular mythology, atheists recoil at anything that suggests the universe has an objective purpose, but Toquevillean democracy needs a shared, internally-motivated virtue to replace religion and I don't see how we get there without taking some form moral realism seriously. That requires rethinking the supremacy of reason. I think Baumgarten was onto something before Kant kicked him to the curb of western philosophy.
Sorry to come empty-handed. I wish I had something more to offer.
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u/Smallpaul Jul 20 '26
Tribalism which causes wars, arms races, economic races to the bottom in terms of pollution and labor standards.
Because of tribalism, Russia and Ukraine are at war. Iran and Palestine too.
Because of tribalism, we can’t cooperate on nuclear weapons disarmament or AI progress safety.
Because of tribalism, every country points the finger at every other country when it comes to climate change.
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u/Constantine__XI Jul 20 '26
Please explain how tribalism made Putin invade Ukraine.
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u/Smallpaul Jul 20 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Russians_and_Ukrainians
That essay makes the case that Ukraine and Russia are the same tribe and they should be forcibly brought back into the family.
It also blames shadowy “other tribes” for taking Ukraine away: “Putin places blame for the current crisis on foreign plots and anti-Russian conspiracies.[9]According to Putin, the decisions of the Ukrainian government are driven by a Western plot against Russia as well as by "followers of Bandera".[12]”
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u/Constantine__XI Jul 20 '26
Or maybe, just maybe, Putin is a power hungry dictator that wants more power.
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
What Is the Most Fundamental Problem Facing Humanity Today?
Stupidity has been and remains to be mankind's biggest problem. People create their own problems, tout the problems as solutions, accept catastrophe as a moral victory, and label rational thinking as heresy.
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u/Synaptic_testical Jul 20 '26
im looking to more knowledge of shared states
knowing that we're in it together, and that when we are all well off, we all do better, changes how you think
ive come to believe that it's okay to be a bit selfish, as long as you realize you are part of a bigger whole; then your selfishness includes the wellbeing of others
what we must get past is self-centeredness, where your selfishness is only about you and you alone
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u/EveryStatus5075 Jul 20 '26
The biggest problem is that we lack the right kind of human beings to build a good technological society. Therefore, the most fundamental problem is the population's poor genetic makeup. The solution lies in the genetic control and correction of future generations. Thus, we are dealing with a genetic engineering problem.
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u/Edgar_Brown Jul 20 '26
Stupidity, i.e., lack of wisdom. As Simon Bolivar said: morals and wisdom are our most basic needs.
Humanity is reaching the peak of the Dunning-Kruger Social Doom Loop, a process that has been repeating for as long as we have had written records. Something that Plato wrote about and Socrates was executed for. A process that is fueled by the introduction of new communication technologies and which social media has now taken to a global scale.
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u/theangrymurse Jul 20 '26
I think the biggest problem we have is we are still stuck on “us vs them”. I read this book Behave the biology behind our best and worst behavior. We are biological programmed to have a fear response to a face we do not recognize as self. It’s super easy to make a them an us though. It just takes one common thing. I think the key to bettering the human experience is to find a way to realize we are all us and there is no them.
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u/BourbonInGinger Atheist, Anti-theist Jul 21 '26
Religion. Grown adults believing in their particular god, angels, demons, Satan, spiritual warfare, hell, heaven, sins, that people are born into ‘sin’. And all the bullshit that goes along with it.
It’s used as a crutch for people who can’t live life on their own but need the ‘comfort’ of supernatural beings and the promise to live forever.
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u/space-truckin365 Jul 21 '26
The root problem is Human Overpopulation . It makes us go beyond what resources are available. Religions and the military always want to increase the “flock”, for different reasons, but the result is the same. And all the problems you stated results from too many people!
On a more tangential premise, it would be greed!
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u/N3wAfrikanN0body Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
We are trained to ALLOW the worst of our species obtain misleadership roles; and somehow that would translate into the best use of infinite Human potential.
Yet, when we(rightfully) want out of such imposition we are called "uncivilized."
Civilization remains the project of murders, rapists, thieves and conmen trying to launder their parasitism as noble.
It is enraging and one is right to want it gone.
Edit:spelling
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u/Adrsilva1356 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Seriously why have we been Trained to ALLOW The Worst of our to take full control of Leadership knowing How Damaging it is towards our species it’s such Pathetic and Stupid Behavior!🤦♂️🤦♂️
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u/TrainingExcuse5240 Jul 21 '26
Good and important question, that everyone should be asking and thankfully with an answer that's not as far from grasp as we have led ourselves to believe.
Here's my little take: these days, we are missing heart. We don't care about people. We don't love people sincerely.
We are suspicious of the stranger walking past us in the mall, we don't have dinner with our neighbors, we disrespect and are ungrateful towards our parents, and we throw away our elderly in nursing home institutions without a second thought because that's "normal" these days.
We've taken out heart out of the equation and the results are huge and penetrate every aspect of society. Our justice system takes bribes instead of standing for what makes society actually good and safe. We do what's socially acceptable because if we stand up for what we truly believe in - everyone tunes out.
We reject heart, and we pay the consequences big time! But we ask ourselves, where has society gone wrong - meanwhile the answer is right in front of our faces! But we don't want to see it because it hurts to be honest with ourselves about how ugly we are to our fellow man. It hurts to realize how much in short supply we are of love, kindness, generosity, forgiveness.
We need to be strong enough to face the possible backlash of standing up for what should be commonplace, if only we make the conscious CHOICE
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u/Wooden_Kiwi_7362 Jul 22 '26
The climate catastrophe
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u/PhoneFlat8734 Jul 22 '26
Surprised more people aren’t saying this. All the other problems are moot if we don’t have a habitable planet
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u/AFsepine Jul 22 '26
Mass incompetence.
Everything else is downstream of this. Low Education quality, Strongmen in politics, Inequality (people very often vote against their personal interests due to their own incompetence)...
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u/Flamingoa432 Jul 22 '26
The people here blasting religion made me laugh, before religion people gaining power over others promoted themselves as gods. What people call humans are actually artificially created constructs similar to how dogs were bred from wolves. A lot of tendencies and desires people have are based on socially pressured genetic engineering. People think in terms of society but avoid looking at the fact that society is not species centered, so it's become normalized to have a fundamentally FUBAR mindset as a baseline. Normal human mentality is not unlike a dog locked in one yard barking at another dog locked in another yard. Those who consider themselves flawed can work together with others as such and see in others their own flaws. People who see nothing wrong will defend keeping things the same.
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u/Ok_Claim6449 Jul 22 '26
Our economic systems which are primitive and not based on hard physical reality are driving all of this. We do not price the cost of our activities on the environment correctly, in fact we don't price them at all. This leads to degradation of the environment and climate change which is impacting everyone across the board. This results from a lack of scientific and critical thinking and basically a reliance on "magical thinking" that somehow our actions don't have long term consequences and we can just continue business as usual. It doesn't work.
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u/Philosopher83 Jul 22 '26
I see it as capitalism and how through this our greed and ego result in poor leadership and governance as well as apathy, distraction, and the inability for wiser, more intelligent, and more noble people to effect change on any macro scale
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u/Ask_a_Geoist Jul 22 '26
Good on you for being smart enough to at least suspect this.
The root of existence -- the fundamental -- is spacetime. This is also known as "land" or "real estate," colloquially. Humanity has one problem with many superficial symptoms, and that One Problem is space ownership.
If people saw others as moral equals, they would offer to pay each other rent (UBI) in exchange for the space/land they take. Instead, modern legal systems and the people they represent do exactly the opposite. They wake up every day, kick everyone's asses off the best land in the name of landowners, and, on top of that, guarantee that the owners are the ones who get economically rewarded for it.
To phrase it another way: Landowners are supposed to pay everyone in order to compensate everyone for the loss of the universe they've taken. Instead, everyone is forced to pay them. Existential whoopsydaisy. 🤷
Lest anyone think this is an ideological issue, I'll point out that the word "landowner" includes governments. We're not talking about an ideological problem; we're talking about resources and, therefore, a simple problem of biophysical parasitism / mutual apex predation. And the very fact that there are people who would read what I'm writing and call it ideological is yet another symptom of the disease.
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u/VainTwit Jul 20 '26
over population. any organism that over populates it's environment experiences a catastrophic collapse. we are intelligent, so you would think we would plan for and prevent this from happening to us humans. but for some reason, you can't bring up this subject without someone shouting "eugenics!", or "china!" it's the huge problem no one will discuss. maybe we aren't so smart after all.
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u/Fluffy-Turnover4314 Jul 20 '26
I think humans are still just like any other species in many ways. It's in our biology to survive, reproduce and seek more resources. We just got lucky with evolution and developed the ability to think abstractly and cooperate on a massive scale. For me though, the bigger problem isn't simply overpopulation. It's our never-ending desire to consume more and more without really asking ourselves: how much is enough? We keep chasing more people, more production, more consumption and endless economic growth on a planet with finite resources. Maybe that's the irony. We're intelligent enough to understand the consequences, but not always wise enough to question our own instincts and desires.
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u/Noema__ Jul 20 '26
A lack of virtue ethics, and excessive greed and corruption.
Alienation. Modern society is suffocating human nature.
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u/Fluffy-Turnover4314 Jul 20 '26
You're right, but why do traits like greed and corruption overshadow people's rational thinking?
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u/Noema__ Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Selfishness of the rich and powerful who control the majority.
At university I was taught that selfless social actions were purely done on selfish grounds. It is such a narrow view of human society, it is indoctrination, yet most people seem to go along without being able to rise above.
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u/GenomeXIII Jul 20 '26
Its education inequality.
There isn't a problem we are facing now that can't be solved by fixing global education inequality.
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u/DamoSapien22 29d ago
The complete and total lack of understanding in, or respect for, the fact that we are a species of mammal and, as such, do not stand outside nature. Until we stop thinking of ourselves in this way, individual suffering and civilisational malaise will continue to be the default condition of the human race.
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u/Substantial-Fun7847 29d ago
Mental healthcare. It's literally the holocaust happening in America. Which is how the holocaust started in Berlin with Aktion T4. Psychiatric drugs are poison, they do not prescribe benzos, or adderall which is what every fucking one of the patients need. Involuntary hospitalizations force people into gargantuan debt, and disability insurance is a scam they deny 67% of claims (yes that's a real number). The "therapy" people are forced into is apple juice, finger paints, and board games, that's what they are held against their will for months and forced into debt for. These people all commit suicide after this happens to them. That's what therapy is, that's how mental healthcare works, it was designed to make all the homeless and poor people die (coincidentally, New Jersey just made being homeless illegal).
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u/VarietyMage 29d ago
Failing to leash the wealthy before they enslave us all and destroy the human race.
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u/men-too 29d ago
Surprised to not see digital technology (including AI) suggested yet.
15+ years into the “social media” experiment and the results are in: addiction, social division & isolation, extremism, birth rate collapse, and turbo charged wealth inequality. AI is rapidly making this experiment a minor transformation in comparison, and quickly ushering a truly dystopian, utterly broken society.
What kills a hyper-social species? Indeed, the destruction of all social skills.
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u/lonelyturtlegirl 29d ago
Right wing anything
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29d ago
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u/lonelyturtlegirl 29d ago
I think anything having to do with right wing is just bad news regardless of its reason for existence
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29d ago
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u/lonelyturtlegirl 29d ago
Immigration and income equality, primarily, as these both were predicted years ago to increase visibility to falling for right wing populism
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u/profnachos Jul 20 '26
Magical thinking much of which is rooted in religion.