Refract distorted light

We like to give a reason to things, from point a to point b.
Person did this, so he should be punished or rewarded. But why did they make that decision? What were the motives? Where did they form?
As we keep going back in the chain of events it becomes clear that the complexity of reality doesn't favour simple linear logic.
Where do your choices start and the influence of your surroundings end? As if they are not contingent, part of the same string of reality.
We are the consequence of what happened before.
But don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean "give up, it's all futile", but a call for deep reasoning within ourselves and for a sense of responsibility towards the future.

It's hard to not see ourselves as the drivers of our own stories. But think for a moment of an old person from a rural area, a child, are their ideas their own?
You can see the influence, the dogma they follow, the ideas they have been instructed.
Sitting in our high thrones we can make a case of family, traditions, political landscape, economic possibilities (and much more) influencing the behaviour of an individual.
In doing so we inherently grant ourselves a form of "political immunity". They may be biased, but I'm surely not, I'm an objective observer after all.

Part of the human experience is being subjective. We can see the efforts of human kind in overcoming this "flaw" with the scientific method. But one can't help but notice that for most of human's existence the scientific method was not required.
People firmly believed in ether, in the laws given by God, in what their senses intuitively told them.
Rationality is not built-in into human beings, is not a given, and as we understand this, our sense of responsibility towards protecting it increases, but so our sensitivity for when we fall short of it.

Pinch your arm. Who felt the sensation stronger? We might want to do the right thing, to end world suffering, but nothing can detach ourselves from the fact the we can only truly feel our own pain.

Let me reframe the famous trolley problem. Instead of you being responsible of the lever for saving 1 or 5 people, you're now one of the tied ones, would you push the lever?

No matter your answer, the fact that we know we're somewhat more conscious of ourselves makes a difference in the outcome or at least in the thinking process. We may be tempted to think in utilitarian terms at first, but now the experience, the suffering, plays a greater role.

We are creatures of evolution, seeking the best pattern to adapt and live on, there is no virtue, no divine ideals without our flesh and bones.

Rationality is coming to terms with the fact that whatever humans have evolved into has served us up until a point, but those same traits are now becoming our worst enemies.

As we embrace a future of equality, love, peace, the reason why we haven't achieved this yet is staring at you in the mirror.