We have the intelligence to build a better future. What we lack is the courage to choose the right priorities.
Whenever I look at humanity, I find one contradiction impossible to ignore:
We can split atoms, map genomes, build machines that learn and send probes beyond the boundaries of our solar system. Yet billions of people still lack clean water, education remains disconnected from practical life, healthcare frequently acts only after people become sick, and nations continue to spend enormous resources preparing to destroy one another.
If an advanced extraterrestrial civilisation were observing Earth, it might not consider us truly advanced. It might see an intelligent species still controlled by primitive priorities, such as power, territorial dominance, short-term profit, political rivalry and constant distraction.
Humanity’s greatest limitation is no longer intelligence. It is our inability or perhaps unwillingness to decide what genuinely deserves our attention.
What should humanity be prioritising?
Science, engineering and the next stage of civilisation
Scientific research should not be treated as a secondary activity that receives attention only when it produces an immediate commercial or military advantage. Science is how civilisation upgrades itself.
We should be investing aggressively in clean and abundant energy, advanced materials, climate technologies, artificial intelligence, transportation, water security and space exploration. We should be trying to understand the fundamental laws of the universe while building the capability to expand beyond Earth.
The world invested approximately 1.92% of global GDP in research and development in 2023. Meanwhile, global military expenditure reached approximately 2.5% of world GDP in 2025.
These figures are not directly comparable because global R&D includes private investment. However, they still expose an uncomfortable truth: humanity can mobilise extraordinary resources when it feels threatened, but struggles to demonstrate the same urgency when pursuing knowledge and long-term progress.
The global space economy reached a record $613 billion in 2024, but only around $132 billion came from government space budgets. Much of our investment in space still requires an immediate commercial, military or geopolitical justification.
I do not consider space exploration a luxury. Earth will not remain humanity’s permanent safe harbour. Climate instability, pandemics, asteroid impacts, resource limitations and other unknown threats make expansion beyond Earth a long-term survival requirement.
The question is not whether humanity should explore and colonise space. The question is why we are moving so slowly when our survival may eventually depend on it.
Medicine that protects health, not merely manages illness
Medical science has achieved extraordinary results. However, the economic system surrounding healthcare often earns more from treating illness than from preventing it.
Noncommunicable diseases—including heart disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory illnesses—caused at least 43 million deaths in 2021. That represented approximately 75% of all non-pandemic-related deaths worldwide.
Despite this, prevention accounted for only around 3% of total health expenditure across OECD countries in 2023.
This is a distorted priority.
Healthcare should focus on preventing people from becoming patients through better nutrition, early detection, cleaner environments, mental-health support and affordable personalised treatment. The success of a health system should not be measured merely by the number of hospitals, medicines sold or procedures performed. It should also be measured by how many people remain healthy enough not to require them.
Medical advancement also becomes meaningless when basic living conditions remain neglected. As recently as 2024, 2.1 billion people lacked safely managed drinking water, while 3.4 billion lacked safely managed sanitation.
A civilisation capable of planning missions to Mars should not accept that billions of people still lack safe water and sanitation on Earth.
Education designed for life, not merely examinations
Education should develop curiosity, scientific thinking, ethics, problem-solving ability and practical competence. Instead, much of the world continues to measure intelligence through memorisation, examinations and qualifications that may have little connection with real life.
The World Economic Forum estimates that 39% of workers’ core skills may change by 2030. In the same survey, 63% of employers identified skill gaps as a major barrier to transformation.
Technology is evolving rapidly, while our educational systems continue preparing many students for a world that is disappearing.
Students should learn how machines work, how evidence is evaluated, how societies function, how resources are managed and how decisions affect the larger human system. They should learn how to build, repair, analyse, question and create—not merely reproduce textbook answers.
Education should prepare individuals for life. It should not operate like a sorting mechanism that rewards examination performance while ignoring imagination, craftsmanship, emotional intelligence and original thinking.
Science should not be imprisoned by political borders
The laws of physics do not change at national borders. A medical discovery does not become less valuable because it originated in another country. Climate change, pandemics, asteroid risks and energy shortages cannot be solved effectively through isolated national efforts.
UNESCO member states adopted the Recommendation on Open Science in 2021. Yet scientific knowledge is still restricted by geopolitical rivalries, technological monopolies, expensive access systems and unequal research capabilities.
Intellectual property has a legitimate role in rewarding innovation. However, knowledge essential to human survival cannot remain indefinitely locked behind political or commercial walls.
Instead of operating as competing scientific islands, countries should establish shared missions for clean energy, disease prevention, space exploration, climate resilience and planetary defence. Scientists should compete over the quality of ideas—not be prevented from cooperating because politicians are fighting over influence.
We must study our past without political filters
Humanity also needs to understand its past properly.
Thousands of manuscripts, inscriptions, archaeological sites and ancient texts remain untranslated, damaged or inadequately studied. They may contain valuable insights into philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, ecology, governance and human behaviour.
I reject both extremes: blindly declaring that ancient civilisations possessed every modern technology, and automatically dismissing their knowledge merely because it does not fit established historical narratives.
The correct approach is investigation supported by evidence.
The Vesuvius Challenge has demonstrated what is possible. Researchers are using X-ray imaging, computer vision and machine learning to read Roman scrolls carbonised during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE—without physically opening and destroying them.
Similar interdisciplinary missions should study ancient Indian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Chinese and other civilisational records. Modern technology can help us recover forgotten knowledge, but only if intellectual establishments are willing to examine the past with curiosity instead of arrogance or ideological prejudice.
What are we prioritising instead?
This is where polite neutrality becomes dishonest.
Humanity is not simply “failing to cooperate.” Powerful nations are actively using their economic, military and political strength to dictate the choices of others.
Power is being rewarded more than progress
Powerful nations and corporations compete for minerals, energy, land, technology and strategic routes. Smaller countries frequently bear the environmental and social costs of supplying resources to wealthier consumers.
The UN Environment Programme reports that global extraction of natural resources has tripled during the past five decades. High-income countries consume six times more materials and generate ten times the climate impact of low-income countries.
This is not equal development. It is an unequal system in which those consuming the most frequently avoid the worst consequences.
Powerful countries often speak about cooperation, sovereignty and international rules. Yet those principles are applied selectively. The same government that demands respect for its own strategic interests may attempt to control the decisions of another country through sanctions, market restrictions, diplomatic pressure or threats to its economy.
That is not a genuinely rules-based international order. It is an order in which the most powerful attempt to write the rules and reserve the right to change them.
Terrorism is condemned selectively
An even more dangerous hypocrisy exists around terrorism.
Some states shelter, finance, train or politically support terrorist organisations and armed proxies to weaken rival nations. The perpetrators may not wear the uniform of the sponsoring country, but they can receive safe havens, weapons, intelligence, funding and diplomatic protection from state institutions.
This allows governments to wage war while pretending that the violence is entirely the work of “non-state actors.”
State-sponsored terrorism is not merely political rhetoric. Formal systems for designating State Sponsors of Terrorism exist because governments supporting violent organisations is a recognised reality.
Yet the international response often depends on alliances rather than principles. A terrorist organisation targeting one country may be treated as a global threat, while another attacking an inconvenient rival is described using softer expressions such as militants, rebels, resistance groups or strategic assets.
Terrorism does not become acceptable because it serves someone’s geopolitical interest.
When a state supports violent organisations against another sovereign nation, it is not an unfortunate regional complication. It is the calculated use of terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy—and it should be described accordingly.
Pretending that every side carries equal responsibility is not balance. It is avoidance.
Entertainment has become an attention economy
Entertainment is necessary. Human beings need stories, music, sport, humour and opportunities to relax. The problem begins when entertainment stops being recreation and becomes the centre of civilisation.
The typical internet user now spends approximately 18 hours and 36 minutes every week on social media, including social networks and video platforms.
Not all of this time is wasted. People learn, communicate and build communities online. However, these platforms are primarily designed to capture attention. The easiest content to consume usually defeats anything demanding patience, reflection or intellectual effort.
We have created a society in which entertainers, influencers and manufactured controversies often receive more attention, recognition and financial reward than scientists, engineers, teachers, researchers and creators solving genuine problems.
A civilisation eventually becomes shaped by whatever it repeatedly rewards and admires.
Entertainment should help us relax from the work of building civilisation. It should not replace that work.
Commerce is drifting away from creation
Markets are necessary. They allocate capital, reward useful ideas and connect producers with customers. However, markets lose their purpose when financial movement becomes more important than physical creation.
A factory, laboratory, power system or research institution can take years to develop. A trading position can change within seconds. When financial incentives overwhelmingly favour quick valuations and short-term returns, manufacturing, infrastructure and patient research receive less attention.
Global foreign direct investment reached $1.6 trillion in 2025, but UN Trade and Development described the recovery as fragile and uneven.
Finance should support creation. Markets should help society manufacture better products, develop useful technologies, generate meaningful employment and solve real problems.
An economy cannot remain healthy indefinitely by trading expectations while weakening the systems that actually create value.
Politics, conflict and economic blackmail are consuming the resources progress needs
Some defence expenditure is unavoidable. Every nation has a legitimate responsibility to protect its people, territory and sovereignty.
However, modern conflict is not fought only with soldiers, missiles or military aircraft. Powerful nations increasingly use their economic strength as a weapon—imposing arbitrary tariffs, threatening market access and disrupting trade to force other sovereign countries to accept their political or strategic demands.
When tariffs are imposed according to political convenience rather than transparent trade principles, they cease to be legitimate economic measures. If a powerful country threatens another nation with severe economic damage unless it changes its policies, purchases, alliances or trade relationships, it is not negotiation. It is economic blackmail.
Calling it a “reciprocal tariff,” “protective measure” or “trade correction” does not change its real nature. Cooperation obtained through the threat of economic punishment is not cooperation—it is submission under pressure.
Such arm-twisting places developing and less powerful countries in an unfair position. They are forced to choose between protecting their sovereign decisions and protecting employment, exports and economic stability. Meanwhile, the same countries imposing these pressures continue to speak about free trade, national sovereignty and a rules-based international order.
Rules cannot be considered global when powerful nations can rewrite them whenever those rules no longer serve their interests.
The European Union itself created an Anti-Coercion Instrument because trade and investment restrictions can be used to interfere with the sovereign choices of other countries. Economic coercion is therefore not an imaginary accusation invented by weaker nations—it is a formally recognised geopolitical weapon.
At the same time, global military expenditure reached $2.887 trillion in 2025, marking the eleventh consecutive annual increase.
Beyond official defence budgets, enormous resources are consumed through proxy wars, intelligence operations, sanctions, arbitrary tariffs, influence campaigns and attempts to control the strategic choices of other nations.
Whenever a country wants a new missile, military aircraft, surveillance system or economic weapon, budgets, supply chains and political urgency appear. Yet safe water, preventive healthcare, scientific research and educational reform are repeatedly delayed by committees and claims of insufficient funding.
The shortage is not always of money. It is of priority—and of respect for the sovereignty of nations.
Every country speaks about peace, cooperation and sustainable development. Yet its political, military and economic actions often tell a completely different story.
Declarations are not cooperation. Coercion is not diplomacy. Economic blackmail should not be disguised as trade policy.
Humanity needs a better hierarchy of priorities
In industry, no organisation can improve if most of its resources are permanently consumed by breakdowns, firefighting and internal competition. It must stabilise its basic operations, prevent recurring failures, develop its people and invest in long-term capability.
Civilisation is no different.
Our first responsibility should be to provide basic health, water, nutrition, sanitation and safety. The next should be to educate people to think, question and solve problems. Beyond that, we should accelerate science, strengthen manufacturing, share critical knowledge, explore space and properly understand the history that shaped us.
Entertainment should entertain.
Markets should finance creation.
Healthcare should preserve health.
Education should prepare people for life.
Politics should organise cooperation, not domination.
Science should expand the boundaries of civilisation.
Humanity does not lack intelligence, money or technology. What it lacks is a commonly accepted hierarchy of purpose and the courage to challenge those who benefit from the present disorder. The future will not be determined only by what humanity is capable of inventing. It will be determined by what we choose to reward, fund and admire.
A civilisation does not become advanced merely because its weapons are more precise, its screens are smarter or its markets are larger. It becomes advanced when it finally understands what deserves its attention.
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