If you use UBER and you learn from your iPhone that your car is allegedly there, BUT you cannot identify it on a crowded street and you phone the driver and ask where he/she is and the answer is “I’M HERE”, if you are like me, you go nuts.

When and if I find the car, I go into a tirade with the driver about that answer and try to explain that ‘here’ tells a passenger NOTHING!

One out of many drivers said “By gosh, you are right. Thanks, I will not say that ever again.” Dozens and dozens argue that it is my problem and IF I cannot find them, they will happily collect their $5 cancelation fee and get on with their day.

To be fair Uber mostly drops the cancelation fee when I complain.

I see this ‘little’ annoyance as a macro example of our current world’s biggest problem.

The ‘guy’ behind the Uber wheel is ‘in the driver’s seat’ and in his/her head the center of his/her world is right HERE [wherever that might be] and he/she can not understand how/why the passenger cannot see that bright light???

I have suggested to some of those drivers that they practice thinking like a passenger and they are likely to get along better with everyone, if they succeed. And, in fact, several drivers remember that when they were occasionally passengers, they had similar experiences—BUT when the get behind the wheel they immediately forget and switch gears back.

What does this illuminate and illustrate about the larger world?

That there are about 7 billion souls on earth and every one of them is first and foremost ME.

Perhaps there are 700,000 of those souls who think much about all the others.

Accordingly, WE are the problem. If we do not think or care much about other people, why/how can we think/expect they will/should care much about us.

Some degree of selfishness is essential –even good—in making the world go around. Too much and the world runs the risk of grinding to a halt.

We elected in 2016 perhaps the most selfish person ever to be President.

Perhaps that by itself is pushing us to the brink of a narcissistic national collapse?