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The dangerous change from “Me first” to “Only me”

I frequently drive my car on a street that goes from three lanes to two and then to only one. In my opinion, that street, clearly built at a different time and for a different level of traffic, is a laboratory of life, revealing every day a growing hyper-individualistic attitude, almost of extreme surviving, among those who also drive on that road.

In that street -with a daily increase in traffic due the construction of a new neighborhood- only the center lane continues. The right lane turns and the left lane ends and mergers with the center lane.

Every time I drive on that road, I see the same scene. In spite of several signs clearly indicating that a lane turns and the other one ends, and signs posting the speed limit, few drivers respect the speed limit or any of the other signs, because they want “to go first.”

Acting as Ptolemy, that is, assuming the whole world turns around them, these drivers (many of them students at a nearby high school), use the left and the right lanes to go many miles over the speed limit and, at the very last minute, move into the center lane, without paying attention to the presence of other cars.

Again and again, it seems they are saying, “If I want to be first, I do not need to follow the rules. However, you, “loser,” have to obey those rules.”

In the specific case of young students who, because of their youth, dare to be unwise and have the cars to do it, the message seems to add another element, a sarcastic grin saying, “You will never catch me” and “I can do whatever I want without paying the consequences.”

Perhaps I am the only driver on that road that not only pays attention to the signs but also analyzes the behavior and the psychology of the other drivers. I sincerely think the drivers’ behavior reveals a dangerous attitude that, perhaps due to our socio-economic crisis, has mutated from “Me first” to “Only me.”

It seems it is no longer a matter of being the first one. Now the goal is to also stop the others. I am sure that’s precisely what many drivers think and wish, knowing very well they don’t have the means to implement such a wish in real life.

If this attitude of “Me first” and “Only me” is manifested on the road is because the same attitude already exists in other areas where there is competition. And competition now has reached the point where it is not enough to defeat your competitors; you also have to destroy them.

In this time of massive social challenges, nationally and globally, what kind of solutions could be offer and what kind of alternatives developed if we are only thinking “Me first” and “Only me”?

Due to globalization, all the lanes of the whole world are now merging into one. Who then will be the first to pass all the others?

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