We are the special ones- The species at the top of the chain- We are the humans.

We are Homo sapiens- the wise men

The 2026 Global Peace Index published by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) reveals that global peacefulness has deteriorated for the 12th consecutive year. Active state-based conflicts reached 61 in 2024–2025, the highest number since World War II. The global economic impact of violence rose to 10% of global GDP in 2025.

Conflicts are increasingly interconnected rather than remaining within national borders. To counteract this declining peace, the Institute for for Economics and Peace has suggested building a societal culture based on high human capital and acceptance of rights of others. One of the ways to build human capital is to promote mental well-being.

One of the barriers to mental well-being is increasing individuality among people and reduced focused on community and inter-personal communication. We are more connected to podcasters than our friends, more available to online friends than people at home. To ease inter-personal differences, we must revamp our idea of how we see people.

Who are people?

For Ram Dass, people are like trees-

“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”

Our labels sometimes tend to get the better of us. We see ourselves and others through these labels. I am rich, you are poor. I am black, you are white. I am a girl, you are a boy. We stop seeing people through a spiritual lens- Eventually just 8 billion souls having their gala time on Earth with their share of struggles. Just 8 billion people headed towards death- Very replaceable and very tiny in the grand scheme of things. A larger worldview can at times make our problems seem smaller.

In one of the movies, Leonardo di Caprio is asked by his friend – Do you believe that people are inherently good or are they bad?

To which he replies, people are people.

That’s so profound in understanding that the time we enter Earth school, we are prone to virtue and vice both. This is the very nature of human existence. So people are just people. This helps in cutting down on viewing people in extremes – Either with rose-tinted glasses or with cynicism, and just viewing them as fellow humans with their own baggage of struggles

People are also mirrors and teachers. They enter your life to reflect to you your own unhealed wounds and the inner work required to become whole again. They act as nudges towards your growth. After all, “Aren’t we all walking each other home?”

Another wonderful way of navigating inter-personal differences is to see the inner child in people and understand where they are coming from. Their experiences and struggles shape who they are today. Their likes and dislikes are shaped by what they experienced as children and through their socialization.

Brene Brown, an American academic known for her work on shame and vulnerability has a different idea on when people tend to err. She writes- “All I know is that my life is better when I assume that people are doing their best. It keeps me out of judgment and lets me focus on what is, and not what should or could be”.

While one may always counteract by saying that people know exactly what they are doing, but isn’t this the very catch? People can only meet you at the level they have met themselves. So can you meet people at the level you have met yourself. At the level we have met ourselves, we do act as per our worldview of how the world works.

So how can humans human humanely?

May be by just giving oneself tiny timely reminders that we are a but a tiny speck in grand scheme of things and events in life seem big, though they are infinitesimally small. Once we do this, much of strife can be ignored and we can attain a certain level of peace within ourselves.

Once ‘I’ matters a little less, ‘we’ becomes a possibility.