One reason why 2015 will be the year of collective

responsibility: because we make it so.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.
This powerful aphorism is attributed to the Elders of the Hopi Tribe, a
Native American community in Arizona who call themselves the
peaceful people. The quote is powerful because it directly and
succinctly points to a common and ancient flaw in the human psyche:
the deferring of responsibility. As we enter into a New Year, many
of us making resolutions we already know we wont keep, it is worth
considering this ancient flaw.
To understand the roots of this psychological weakness, lets look back
to our ancestors. Human beings created the idea of a god outside of
ourselves to fulfil a purpose. That purpose was to allay our collective
fears about factors outside of our control, mainly death and the causes
of death. One such factor outside of our control was the weather, which
in earlier times (with no central heating or lab-grown burgers IMAGE)
had a far greater impact on our ability to stay warm, to get nourished,
and to survive. One of the earliest gods we know about from recorded
history was called Teshub: the Hurrian god of the sky and of storms.
Teshub was apparently conceived when another god Kumarbi bit off
and swallowed his father Anu's genitals. Divine meatballs, you might
say. Teshub was worshipped as it was believed that if the people won
his favour through sacrifice and ceremony, then the weather would be
more favourable to the people.
And so we humans carried on creating gods outside of ourselves. In
total, since the invention of writing by the Sumerians 6,000 years ago,
historians have catalogued approximately 2,870 gods. And in the last 2
millenia, we got particularly good at creating the idea of a Messiah, a
divine figure that will come and save us at some point in the future.
There is a prophecy of a Messiah in every major religion of the world
today.
What does this all signify about the human mind? Well, first it shows
that life can be tough, especially because it is so short. Human beings
seem to be unique in our acute consciousness of our own mortality
(although some animals seem to mourn their dead:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19317067).