10 important 'elephants in the room' that society needs to immediately address and solve

Several challenges people face in society

It's true that humans have come a long way from our primitive beginnings. We have developed countless creations that make our lives easier. However, it's important to realize the society we live in has accumulated a lot of problems over the years. While many issues are bought up and debated, there are many others that are blindly ignored. Such underlying issues stand a great chance of becoming bigger problems as time goes by. u/shankar86 asked the community, "What is the biggest 'elephant in the room' that society needs to address?" Here are 10 of the most thought-provoking answers that people had to offer.

1. A lack of community

We've built a society that's completely lacking in community and it's making us miserable. u/underfykesofa. I hate to admit this but I’m part of the problem, I have no clue who my neighbors are and have no desire to meet them. I avoid social situations all the time, I think we all have an underlying issue that we’re not addressing. I’m not happy, I’m at my best when I’m social but avoid it for some reason, it’s so stupid. u/Relative_Cold_4756.

2. Need to separate money and politics

We need to get money out of politics. u/Shiftymennoknight. The thing is, I can't think of a good way to do that. Every time I hear an argument or possible solution to that (or think one up myself), I'm immediately thinking of how it would be possible to subvert that system and twist it around into an oligarchy or plutocracy of a different flavor. It keeps coming back to the paradox that the people who seek political power are, almost inevitably, the exact people who should not have it. u/SolDarkHunter

3. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics

Bacteria's growing resistance to antibiotics. u/Good_Put_6409. A large part of the issue is that all of the financial incentives are working against us: there is quite literally no money in developing a new broad-spectrum antibiotic, since it will only be used in catastrophic cases where nothing else works. Meanwhile, places with poorly regulated agriculture/medicine will use "the good drugs" on everything, since it is cheaper/easier to do that. u/octonus

4. Internet affecting communication

The internet has ruined our ability to meaningfully communicate since it has devolved into a data farm for a handful of powerful cooperations that benefit from driving engagement by pitting people against each other. u/StrangeArcticles. Social media is by far the biggest elephant in the room. Most of these other issues aren’t being addressed due to dysfunction, but they are widely acknowledged. People aren’t even grappling with the damage social media is doing to people psychologically, mentally and to our collective psyche as a nation. I don’t even know the answer myself, but I worry about it a lot. u/I_Am_A_Cucumber1

5. Treating Earth poorly

We are continuing to treat the world like it's a rubbish dump and keep expecting that life will go on as it always has. u/Fuse1on. I came here to say "climate change", which has spurned wildfires at ten times the normal rate, made for erratic and potent hurricane seasons, messed up the snowfall and floodplains, melted the polar ice caps, caused entire ecosystem collapses. This s*** is probably going to cause the extinction of humanity if unchecked. But (at posting time) the post above this one is about how tipping is silly, which I suppose is a more pressing matter, apparently. u/DangerousPuhson

6. Focusing on profits too much

Putting “making a profit” as our main priority in society, no matter the sector, be it healthcare, housing, education, renewable energy, etc. u/killedbill88. Not just a profit, but massive profits. Numerous industries, such as healthcare, have tons of middlemen who should not have any involvement in your transactions but have somehow inserted themselves so that they get a cut whenever Party A and Party B do business. u/mike_b_nimble

7. High cost of housing 

Lack of affordable housing. u/tekvenus. If things keep going as they are in most Western countries, we're going to have an entire generation that has never owned a home or have any significant savings. An entire generation going into retirement under those conditions is going to be a disaster for everyone. It will mean mass homelessness or subsidised rents in old age and yet nothing seems to be getting done about it. u/CryptographerMore944

8. Poor food 

Garbage food. The overwhelming majority of people eat poorly because that's what the giant corporations want them to do. Andrew Zimmern did a show where he talked about food in our society. One of them showed how a small town got a new Dollar General Store, which forced the "mom and pop" grocery store out of business. He walked through the DG and noted, "This is all the worst possible food." Nothing but chips, sodas, processed foods, candy, etc. u/Big_Romantic

9. Child abuse 

Child abuse in all forms is largely ignored and much more common than people realize. Many with PTSD and warped views on relationships never really accept or realize that they were abused. u/Roninnight1. Yep. Brought mine up to my family when they just kept pressing me as to why I don’t want to interact with my parents. The entire extended family decided my parents are saints and I’m making it all up since I don’t have proof of abuse from when I was a child. When I offered to show literal scars the response was either “Those could be from anything” or “It doesn’t look like anything to me.” u/LukerOrHydralisk

10. Global Warming

Global Warming. The rising seawater will flood coastal cities. The heat waves will cause droughts that reduce sources of freshwater. The harsher climate will reduce the living space and amount of arable land to the point that even at 100% efficiency it won't be able to sustain the global population. A lot of us are about to die a slow death due to famine, running out of livable space. Even more of us will die due to conflicts brought about by the slowly dwindling resources. Not tomorrow, not in a year or 10 years, but soon. It's a huge problem that could've been solved if only governments were harsher and took more decisive action. Instead, corporations and profits won out. The oil barons were able to bribe away the government and sell the future off since they won't be alive to experience the consequences. We saw it coming, but we didn't do enough to stop it. We're now at the damage control phase because we failed the prevention phase. u/NighthawK1911