We're all just trying to get through today. Sure, you may be one of those courageous enough to declare that "every day is a gift", but on your 30th birthday you will have opened 10,950 gifts (give or take for leap years), and you are bound to be covered in paper cuts.
Man has been called the "noble savage", the creature that transcended its animal instincts to form societies in which domesticity trumps wilderness, and violence is generally frowned upon.
Already we have run into a problem. We are animals, who for hundreds of thousands of years have had to kill or be killed, and we obviously got pretty good at it, because we're still here, and doing relatively well for ourselves at that.
We've grown noble, developed language, and can barter for goods and services rather than kill, rape, and steal. Personally, I'm a big fan of this development, but the problem still remains- we have animal inclinations deeply embedded in our DNA that we must control lest we be outcast from the new, non-tribal, civil society.
We avoid these actions by communicating- matching consent constitutes consensual sex, circumventing the evolutionary necessity to rape in order to procreate. Setting a value for an object you are willing to part with, and parting with that object when presented with that value provides a quid pro quo mode of action for exchange that is fairer and more civil than theft. Killing exists in a societal gray area, for a number of reasons, in which most agree that it should not generally occur, and a smaller, unknown quantity agree there are occasionally extenuating circumstances that constitute an allowable suspension of the rule, such as prevention of more killing.
These are extreme examples, simplified as much as can maintain the point. These three actions, once imperative to survival, have been transcended via the recent ability to establish the wants, needs, and desires of others in the abstract, communicate them, and fulfill them via civil means.
This is all contingent, however, on maintaining the integrity of the abstract process. Each time an idea is miscommunicated, glib hyperbole is accepted uncritically, or a lie is told, the general confidence in the ability of civil discourse to prevent the occurrence of such primal actions is undermined, quite literally. Language is the foundation of a civil society, and if that foundation weakens enough, the society it is built on will crumble, and animal instinct will be the ruling paradigm for humankind once again.
We can already see it happening. With the advent of "Fake News" presenting ideological agendas as fact, and "alternative facts" altogether undermining the possibility of there being any sort of absolute truth to ground ourselves in, we see violent riots erupting in the streets, people in power maintaining their position despite transgressing the savage boundaries of rape, murder, and theft, and others falling prey to the gaping maw of the ideologically militarized masses, some notable victims of whom never crossed the savage boundary, but nevertheless served as a sign to those who would dare to get close.
There is a solution to all of this. Say what you think, clearly, completely, and honestly. When you are done, listen. Agree on that which you agree, and address what you don't. Be ready to be wrong, because in this young world almost everyone usually is.

Above all, adhere to these 3 dictums:

- Emotion makes life rich and worth living, but reason allows you to live, not just survive.

- Emotion, ROOTED IN LOVE, points you in the right direction, but reason is what gets you there.

- Stable progress in the right direction must needs be slow, but slow progress in the right direction is better than any movement in the wrong direction.

\m/ Peace, Love, Rock & Roll \m/

Buck