Warning: Pseudo-philosophical ideas ahead!
It wasn't long ago when a rather wise person (who I am lucky to call a friend) said the following to me:
"I literally want it (the world) to collapse so that something new and good can erupt from it. Due to this pandemic people are understanding the value of life over money. Humanity has long been dead otherwise. Need to bring that back!"
Ask me immediately after, and I would agree with them. A few hours later, however, two strings of words started bothering me. "humanity has long been dead" and the desire to "bring that back". One doesn't have to be a physicist to realize that these imply temporal implications, suggesting (and assuming) the existence of an era in the past, which resembled an Utopia a bit more than it does today. So began my journey back into time, starting with a second ago: I had a backache from sitting for a long time, so I had to stand up. Were they good times? Do you enjoy backaches? No. My legs hurt now. So we don't need to bring back the humanity from a second ago. quod erat demonstrandum. What about a minute? Pretty much the same I guess, in addition to feeling utterly dehydrated for not having taken any fluids for four hours that I spent writing a report due today. I'm just going to skip the hour, day and week demonstrations for now. How about roughly ten years ago? The Mumbai attacks? Twenty years? 9/11? In between? Well, unemployment, racism, sexism, poverty, mindless wars, riots, famines, disasters. Just Google everything that's been wrong in the 21st century. Well, then let's rewind to the last century, the world wars surely were more fun. No? Okay so how about colonization and imperialism from a century before that? Still not your thing? Add to that a few pandemics, not to mention the cheeky epidemics all-around. Rewind a few thousand years, and you've got crucifixion. Gleaned over a lot of content in the middle, else this would end up becoming the next hit graphic novel.
So humans have been worse going back. Surely trumps the "Humanity has long been dead otherwise" thingy. "Well", you may say, "maybe we've got the definition of humanity wrong". I agree. Being human is, as you correctly surmised, being what we always have been. Why then is being human always considered to be synonymous with honesty, hard-work, honor, courage, respect, loyalty and all those virtues of man that poets have written so much about over the years? It is because, if you ask me, it's a fantasy; so distant to reality that many may never realize the true scale of this distance. Physicists talk about the principle of SUSY, or more lovingly, supersymmetry. The idea says that there must exist a sister boson for every fermion, and vice versa; the building blocks of everything in perfect dual harmony. Much is like that for human features. For honesty, there are lies. For courage, there's cowardice. Like imagine everyone being courageous! There'd be purging everyday. Not that it won't be fun, right? So is this true for every other human emotion.
Hence, when we say that we need our "humanity" back, note that it was never lost. We could expostulate each other as much as we want as to the definition of this word, but to seek what the poets call perfectness and utter harmony is to deviate from the very thing we're trying to preserve. Am I saying wars should continue? Am I saying poverty is good? No. Or maybe I am saying exactly that, being in the ignorant privileged position that I occupy by chance in this world.
If you still want to change the world and bring back humanity, by all means, please do. What you would end up doing though, is decide that it's not your singular responsibility. You tried, failed, and blame others that they didn't do their part. Do not feel bad though, greater people have failed.
What can you do? Let me preach some wise ideas. On second thoughts, let me not, because I am human too, and I am perpetually in the process of figuring stuff out. Truth is, nobody knows what they're doing. It's a continuous struggle to survive. Some do it well, some do it very well, some don't and some appear to do it well. How to know if you are doing well? Just ask yourself if you feel happy. No? You can do better. Yes, just keep doing it till your body withers away, because after that, there really is no connection to this world and all the fancy elitist ideas, or for that matter any ideas, don't matter any more.
PS1: Do not conduct purges, I'm scared of those!
PS2: Here's a wise piece of advice to begin doing good: don't do something to someone that you'd not like being done to you. Trust me I have, and the guilt and regret of it haunts me to this day, in addition to fueling all the other vices that I can boast of possessing. It's just an infinitely slippery slope down a hill. Stay on it. Until something else wipes us all out that is...