Written by Tia
Welcome to the Museum of the Evolution of the Homo sapiens. I, your storyteller from the land of the Humans, humbly invite all members of Alienopolis to today’s session, A Tour Through 100 Years of the Modern Human. Take your seats and fasten your seatbelts, for there lies a long tale ahead.
100 years ago, this world was recovering from the wounds of a great war. Men trying to rebuild families and governments, and women marching on their feet to make their voices heard.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Scream. Scream. Scream.
Monarchies collapsed, their legacies under the sand. Because no kingdom stands forever. In this world, everything has an expiration date. I don’t say that; history does.
After much politics and powerplay, a new era of catastrophe arose—a second great war. Civilians tortured, soldiers martyred, children lost, populations starved and wiped off. This was 1945. Banks, billionaires, politicians—all bankrupt and financially exhausted. They decided that keeping colonies, maintaining the songs of imperialism, oppression, and profit-making, was getting heavy on their pockets.
So they began to leave the lands they looted. And gave themselves a new sense of entitlement in return. Regarding the fight for Freedom and its monetary opportunities perhaps….
This entitlement made men and their parties divide lands, distribute area, gain political power in the name of democracy, and build institutions for ‘world peace’. All of it meant for the satisfaction of the whims of ‘The Entitled’.
The Entitled masked their greed with intelligent-sounding speeches of hope, progress, change, and equality.
The warring ideologies quickly grew hands and held nukes, enough to destroy the whole world at the press of a button.
Money became weaponised.
Justice was commercialised.
Because The Entitled—who were once colonisers—were greedy for growth and money. I mean, who would want to give up on their old habits, right?
This, in turn, gave rise to an economic system. Capitalism. The Rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That was the base of this system.
Organisations, statistics, systems, jobs, companies, expectations, values, people—all began to define Capitalism as the mark of ‘success and progress’.
You would ask, ‘Was there anything at all that kept everyone together?’
Well, yes and no.
You see, humanity does not extinguish itself so quickly. But if you live inside a system driven by greed disguised as progress, how much can you expect?
Yes, I will not deny that there have been momentary sparks of true kindness, bravery, and love. But more often than not, the virtue of kindness, helping one another, comes along with ‘Terms and Conditions apply’. The bravest of souls, the softest, the most giving, and the most observant of life are remembered and respected after their deaths. I do not even know how or when we humans decided that we are mere passersby to one another, every relationship bound by a condition of service and loyalty.
Constructs, norms, segregations, divisions, and factions are what our world is made of. It has only gotten harder to love freely in this place—to know a love which is not tied by doubts and assumptions. The Entitled’s Capitalism has only been successful in growing the divide.
For instance, this system has made womankind believe that the only way a woman has access to freedom is through money. I believed it too.
Until someone wise told me that money should never have been my primary concern. What I truly deserved as a girl and a woman is safety, within and outside my family, without being oppressed. Desiring what I truly deserve and seeing it become a reality feels like a dream I will never get ahold of. Because this world is made for only one kind of the entire human population of 8 billion. The man-kind.
Here, everyone is in a rat race—the rich for making more money and a name, the poor for survival. Some classes exist between these two extremes. The main goal of these classes is a sense of stability, i.e., for as long as one can continue to be a working person, to be able to feed their family and children.
The working class. The middle class. Such distinctions might be ironically funny, as one might learn that the world has enough to feed and keep 8 billion humans, equitably. Yet the legacies of colonialism and capitalism deny such equity. And the imbalances are hurting Mother Nature on an unprecedented level.
As a matter of fact, the denial has reached such grave heights that today, in 2025, 2.1 million humans inside a mere 365 square kilometres of land, are being starved, tortured, and killed. All because The Entitled, with their politics and power, decided that they are not deserving of existing.
Guess what .The culprits aren’t hiding behind their actions. They openly declare their motives and deeds. Humanity is living in an era of witnessing genocide being live-streamed on devices. Devices made for efficiency, fast connectedness—a mark of human advancement.
And as much as the reality is presented to our eyes, some of us are stuck in our need for comfort and space, some of us want to disconnect because it doesn’t bother us, and some of us are stuck in our inability to effectively help because we do not have access to the highest seats of power. No matter the pain and empathy felt, this writer herself is confined to the boundaries of pen and paper. Words won’t fill the starving bellies and quenching thirsts of 2 million bodies, and perhaps more, who too deserve dignity and the right to life.
I do not know what lies ahead, because when a world is crafted out of greed, for profit, it is easy to be convinced by illusions. They keep us safe, restrained, enslaved. This world is run by a million illusions that seem to be falling apart, chunk by chunk. But this storyteller cannot tell if history will repeat itself in the realities of tomorrow.
My dear fortune tellers of Alienopolis, this brings you to the present day. And I now leave it to you to chalk down your thoughts on humanity, and perhaps give us a hint of the fate that lies ahead for this species….
