The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity

Host: The sky above the city was a bruised violet, its clouds smoldering like the end of a long, exhausted fire. The rain had stopped, but the streets still shimmered — every puddle reflecting the dull ache of neon signs and traffic lights bleeding into the night.

Inside an abandoned library, dust hung in the air like faint memory smoke. The shelves, half-empty, half-forgotten, carried the ghosts of ideas that once mattered.

Jack sat at a wooden table, his coat damp, his hands tracing the edges of an old book. Across from him, Jeeny leaned forward, elbows on the table, her dark hair falling in quiet waves. Between them, a small candle burned, the flame shivering against the darkness — the last remnant of belief in a room full of lost pages.

Jeeny: “Michael Crichton said, ‘The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their “beliefs.”’”

Host: Her voice echoed faintly in the vast room, brushing against the forgotten spines of philosophy and faith.

Jack: “He wasn’t wrong. People don’t die for truth — they die to belong. Even their wars are just desperate rituals to prove they’re not alone.”

Jeeny: “You make it sound pathetic. Maybe it’s not about belonging — maybe it’s about meaning. When people fight for belief, they’re fighting for something invisible that gives the visible world a reason to exist.”

Jack: “Meaning?” He laughed softly, bitterly. “You can dress it up however you want. Call it God, ideology, justice. Underneath, it’s all the same — conformity with better marketing. Every time someone says ‘I believe,’ what they really mean is ‘I want to be right.’”

Jeeny: “And what’s wrong with wanting to be right?”

Jack: “Nothing — until you start killing for it.”

Host: The wind slipped through a broken window, stirring a few loose papers that rustled like whispers of dead scholars. The flame of the candle trembled.

Jeeny: “So what do you think awareness is, then? Knowing the truth?”

Jack: “No. Awareness is knowing you might be wrong — and still refusing to fight over it.”

Jeeny: “That sounds like apathy.”

Jack: “It’s survival.”

Host: Jeeny leaned back, her eyes dark and alive.

Jeeny: “Maybe you’re confusing faith with fanaticism. There’s a difference. Faith is personal — it breathes. It questions. It doubts. But when you take that private flame and turn it into a flag — that’s when it kills.”

Jack: “Exactly. Which proves Crichton’s point. We’re not guided by awareness. Awareness is lonely. Conformity feels warm. It’s easier to burn someone else than admit your candle’s too small.”

Host: The candle hissed — a bead of wax rolling down like a tear.

Jeeny: “Still… I’d rather live in a world with believers than one full of cynics. Without belief, people stop building, stop dreaming. Look around you — everything in this room was built by belief. These books, these words — they were people’s attempts to name the unnameable.”

Jack: “And look where that got them. Wars, inquisitions, crusades, revolutions. You think belief built civilization? No. Fear did. Fear of death, of meaninglessness, of being forgotten. Belief is just the pretty word we use for organized fear.”

Jeeny: “You sound like someone who’s been burned by belief.”

Jack: “I was. Once. Believed in a system. A country. A cause. Turns out, belief makes good soldiers and poor thinkers.”

Host: A distant rumble of thunder rolled outside, faint and lingering. The city pulsed below like a wounded organism — alive, but uncertain why.

Jeeny’s gaze softened.

Jeeny: “You know, Jack… when I was little, my grandmother used to say that people pray not to change the world, but to remember they still care about it.”

Jack: “And did she ever ask what happens when prayer becomes law?”

Jeeny: “She lived through a war. She didn’t need to.”

Host: Silence. The kind that filled the air like slow smoke. The candle flickered again.

Jack: “Crichton was right — we’re the only species that kills over what it imagines. A lion doesn’t slaughter because another lion worships a different sun. Humans do. Because imagination gives them the arrogance to mistake metaphor for fact.”

Jeeny: “But imagination also gives them art, poetry, love. The same power that kills is the one that creates. You can’t have one without the other.”

Jack: “That’s the curse — and the irony. The same brain that writes sonnets writes scriptures. The same heart that builds temples builds bombs.”

Host: The rain began again, softly tapping against the roof. The candlelight danced in rhythm, casting Jeeny’s shadow long across the cracked wall.

Jeeny: “Then maybe awareness isn’t the opposite of conformity. Maybe it’s the ability to hold belief without needing others to hold it too.”

Jack: “You think that’s possible? A belief that doesn’t demand converts?”

Jeeny: “It has to be. Otherwise, everything burns.”

Jack: “But people need to belong, Jeeny. That’s what Crichton meant. Awareness isolates us. Conformity connects — even if it kills. You take away their flags, their faiths, their certainties, and you’ll have chaos. Humans can’t survive the silence of not knowing who they are.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that silence is the beginning of peace.”

Jack: “Or the end of humanity.”

Host: The sound of the city outside had dulled — as if even the world paused to listen. The candle burned lower, the wax pooling on the table like the slow loss of conviction.

Jeeny: “You ever think maybe belief itself isn’t the problem — it’s the hierarchy built around it? The institutions that weaponize it?”

Jack: “Sure. But institutions are just mirrors. They reflect what we already are. Every religion, every ideology — it’s just humanity trying to see its reflection and not flinch.”

Jeeny: “So you’d rather we stop looking altogether?”

Jack: “No. I just wish we’d stop mistaking the reflection for God.”

Host: Jeeny rose from her seat and walked toward the window. The city lights flickered on her face — gold, blue, red, in turns. She pressed her hand against the cold glass, as if touching something alive yet unreachable.

Jeeny: “Maybe awareness isn’t about knowing the truth. Maybe it’s about feeling the truth — and still choosing kindness over certainty.”

Jack: “Kindness won’t stop a bullet.”

Jeeny: “No. But neither will belief.”

Host: Jack’s gaze softened. The candle finally guttered out, leaving them in the twilight of the city’s glow.

Jack: “So what do we fight for, then?”

Jeeny: “Not for beliefs. For the space to have them — and still let others breathe.”

Host: The camera panned wide — the broken library, the storm-lit city, two figures in shadow by the window.

The world outside kept moving — unaware, perhaps conforming, perhaps dreaming — while inside, two voices tried to define what it meant to be human: the urge to belong, the fear to think alone.

The rain thickened once more, drumming softly on the glass.

Jack turned toward Jeeny, his voice a whisper.

Jack: “Maybe that’s what awareness really is — knowing belief is dangerous, and still believing in something anyway.”

Jeeny smiled faintly, her eyes luminous in the half-dark.

Jeeny: “As long as that something is mercy, not certainty.”

Host: Outside, a church bell rang. Somewhere, a mosque answered. And between the two — the wind moved freely, carrying no flag, no creed, no command.

The flame had died, but the room still glowed with the soft shimmer of realization:

Humans will always fight for what they believe —
but perhaps one day, they’ll learn to fight without hate.

And that, maybe, would be the first true act of awareness.