You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Humans have this horrendous habit of taking pleasure in watching others fail. We love tearing others down and feeling satisfied at watching them fall. It’s like we feel so insecure about ourselves that our only recourse is to bring misery as our only output.

Case in point—the Internet has been our greatest experiment in anonymous commentary (or commentary through an avatar of ourselves) and we’ve seen what that brings. It didn’t even take social media to bring that out in us because this was happening in the early days of message boards.

However, the level of malice normally reserved for the virtual world is becoming commonplace in public spaces.

It’s become such an accepted part of who we are that we now give advice on how to “block out the noise” or “rise above” or “accept the haters.”

Then we have the audacity to turn around and complain that our communities, and our countries, are in such disarray.

They will continue to be this way until we set a new standard. A standard in which we work towards building each other up, challenging each other to do better, encouraging when we’re down, being honest when it’s required and celebrating our successes.

If we can do that, then we won’t have to talk about building a better society because we will have created one.