A recent report revealed that executions worldwide rose dramatically last year. At least 2,707 executions were carried out globally in 2025 — a staggering 78% increase from the 1,518 recorded in 2024. According to Amnesty, it was the highest recorded figure since 1981.
Even the previous year had already seen a dramatic rise, with executions in 2024 increasing by 32% compared to 2023 and reaching the highest level since 2015.
And these are only the officially known numbers. Thousands more executions are believed to occur in countries like China, where the true figures remain state secrets.
For many people, the immediate reaction is horror. Or complacency, as many have become emotionally numb. But how can humanity still be killing each other in the name of justice? How can supposedly civilized societies still believe death can solve death?
But perhaps the deeper question is this:
What does this actually reflect about humanity itself?
Because maybe rising executions, growing violence, increasing polarization, endless wars, anxiety epidemics, burnout, depression, and ecological destruction are not isolated problems at all.
Maybe they are symptoms.
Symptoms of a species living under immense psychological and systemic pressure.
What if humanity itself is traumatized?
Not only individuals. Not only children growing up in broken homes. Not only soldiers returning from war. But humanity as a whole.
Because when we look at the world honestly, what do we actually see?
We see almost endless stress. We see fear. We see competition. We see violence. We see loneliness. We see anxiety. We see depression. We see nations threatening each other. We see people working themselves into exhaustion simply to survive while AI take more and more jobs. We see children growing up in systems that often value economic performance more than emotional wellbeing.
And perhaps most importantly:
We see humanity repeatedly recreating the same destructive patterns over and over again.
That is often what trauma does.
Trauma Creates Trauma
A traumatized person may become reactive, fearful, defensive, aggressive, withdrawn, numb, addicted, or emotionally disconnected.
A traumatized society may do the same.
And when enough traumatized individuals are gathered inside a system built around fear, competition, scarcity, and survival pressure, the trauma becomes normalized.
Eventually, people stop even questioning it.
Stress becomes normal.
Debt becomes normal.
War becomes normal.
Loneliness becomes normal.
Burnout becomes normal.
Anxiety becomes normal.
Even ecological destruction becomes normal.
Humanity begins adapting to sickness instead of questioning the system producing it.
The Monetary Environment
Of course, human suffering did not begin with money itself. Fear, tribalism, violence, and domination existed long before modern economics.
But the global monetary system has become the environment through which much of modern human life is organized.
And environments shape behavior.
Today, almost everything necessary for survival is connected to money:
- food
- housing
- healthcare
- education
- safety
- dignity
- retirement
- stability
This creates a constant psychological pressure.
Not because people are evil.
But because survival itself becomes tied to economic performance.
The result is a civilization where millions wake up every morning already stressed before the day has even begun.
Bills.
Debt.
Rent.
Inflation.
Fear of losing work.
Fear of not succeeding.
Fear of falling behind.
And underneath all of this is a deeper message absorbed by the nervous system:
“You are only safe if you can compete.”
That is not peace.
That is survival conditioning.
Symptoms Everywhere
Then we act surprised when humanity behaves irrationally.
We wonder why addiction rises. Why anxiety rises. Why violence rises. Why depression spreads. Why people become polarized and angry. Why loneliness becomes epidemic. Why also suicide — the ultimate form of self-punishment and despair — continues to haunt humanity on a massive scale.
But perhaps many of these are not isolated failures.
Maybe they are symptoms.
Because when people are placed inside systems that continuously generate insecurity, comparison, pressure, fear, inequality, and disconnection, then psychological consequences are inevitable. It’s not just rouge individuals.
It’s systemic.
A civilization under chronic stress will eventually begin behaving like a traumatized organism.
Reactive. Fearful. Short-term logic. Self-destructive.
Punishing the Symptoms
One of the strangest things humanity does is focus almost entirely on the symptoms while rarely addressing the deeper causes.
We build enormous industries around managing the consequences:
- prisons
- wars
- security systems
- stress medications
- addiction treatment
- endless crisis management
But much less attention is given to asking:
Why is humanity becoming so psychologically distressed in the first place?
Why do so many systems appear to generate the very suffering they later attempt to manage?
And perhaps most importantly:
Can a civilization organized around fear ever become truly peaceful?
A Civilization in Transition
Maybe what we are witnessing now is not only collapse.
Maybe it is exposure.
The old systems are becoming increasingly visible.
The stress.
The inequality.
The ecological destruction.
The mental exhaustion.
The endless competition.
The wars.
The polarization.
Humanity is beginning to see what kind of nervous system this civilization has created.
And perhaps this is why the upheaval itself appears to be intensifying.
Because when old systems begin losing their psychological grip, they often react defensively.
The old ego-driven structures of humanity — systems built around fear, domination, endless competition, accumulation, punishment, and survival anxiety — are fighting to preserve themselves.
And a traumatized system about to die rarely exits peacefully.
It fights desperately to survive.
Perhaps this is partly what we are witnessing now:
more polarization,
more fear,
more instability,
more authoritarian tendencies,
more despair,
more executions,
and even rising suicide.
Not because humanity is becoming irredeemably evil.
But because the contradictions and insanity of the self-destructive system are becoming increasingly visible.
People are beginning to sense that something is fundamentally wrong.
And there really does appear to be an awakening happening.
Not necessarily a perfect or unified awakening.
But an awakening of awareness.
People everywhere are beginning to question things that once seemed unquestionable.
The economic system.
Endless growth.
Ownership.
Work culture.
War.
Mental health.
Meaning.
Human purpose itself.
We see it everywhere.
And once something becomes visible, it can eventually become changeable.
That does not mean transformation will be automatic.
Transitions are often chaotic.
Trauma does not disappear overnight.
But awareness matters.
Because the moment humanity begins asking deeper questions, a different future becomes imaginable.
Not merely:
“How do we punish harmful behavior?”
But: “How do we change the conditions that continuously generate harm?”
That is a very different kind of civilization.
Healing Humanity
Perhaps humanity does not need more domination.
Perhaps it needs healing.
Perhaps we need systems that reduce fear instead of amplifying it.
Systems that reduce desperation instead of monetizing it.
Systems that encourage cooperation instead of endless competition.
Systems that recognize human wellbeing and planetary wellbeing as connected.
Because maybe peace is not something forced onto humanity, like a Mexican standoff.
Maybe peace emerges naturally when the conditions generating chronic fear finally begin to disappear.
And perhaps the greatest sign of civilization will not be technological advancement alone.
But humanity finally healing enough to stop recreating its trauma through the systems it builds.
Perhaps that is the real question now.
Not whether humanity is capable of more punishment.
Not whether we can build more prisons, stronger weapons, harsher laws, bigger surveillance systems, or more sophisticated ways of managing collapse.
But whether humanity is finally ready to heal the conditions continuously recreating the trauma in the first place.
Because maybe the real awakening is not technological.
Maybe it is psychological.
The realization that the systems shaping human behavior are not fixed laws of nature.
They are human creations.
And what humanity creates, humanity can redesign.
A Different Future
That is precisely the shock Benjamin Michaels experiences in Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity when he wakes up one hundred years into the future and discovers that humanity has already redesigned civilization itself.
The monetary system is gone.
Ownership has been rethought.
Competition is no longer the primary organizing force of society.
And for the first time in his life, Ben encounters a civilization attempting not merely to punish the symptoms of humanity’s trauma… but to heal the cause. If you would like to experience the journey of Ben for yourself, you can get the book below.