On Tuesday, I read an article saying that the male contraceptive pill was almost ready for use, and I was excited. I thought: finally, men can share equally the load that is birth control. After all, since it takes two to start a life, it should take two to prevent ‘accidents’.

I thought that most women would be excited but as I read through the comments, there was one recurrent message; do not entrust your reproductive health with any man.

"Take the pill,” they said. "Make him wear protection. Really make sure that the protection is legit and check to make sure that he doesn’t take it off.” Basically, get physically intimate with someone without getting emotionally intimate enough to trust them.

Reading the comments, it dawned on me that all the information in the world will never be enough to rid the world of its problems. I realised that some things will never change because knowledge isn’t strong enough to override human nature.

See, it is 2018. There are already numerous contraceptives without even counting the pills that have been developed specifically for men. Even further, there are emergency measures for the immediate aftermath of a momentary lapse in judgment. And yet people still conceive and then panic and start seeking to terminate the life they have created.

It is 2018. Thanks to technology, information is available almost like the air we breathe. So everybody knows that AIDS is incurable. And yet there are new infections year in year out. Because against all reason, in the heat of the moment people still make irrational decisions. They choose momentary pleasure over their own health and the health of their partners.

Despite the plethora of research about the dangers of unhealthy lifestyles, the elite incrementally die of non-communicable diseases. But there are gyms, zumba and yoga classes and affordable equipment that can be used at home. There are three-minute diet fix videos from people who look like they live at the gym and eat only broccoli. People watch these videos and get inspired but only for a moment.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that seatbelts and helmets could potentially save your life in case of an accident. And yet people ignore them only to scamper when they think they might get caught by traffic police. They are more concerned about having their cars impounded and paying hefty fines.

The fact that people need to be policed even over the things that concern their lives shows just how much we live in recklessness even when we know better. The government has to make it compulsory for parents to take their children for immunisation. Some still won’t go.

Granted, things are not as bad as they used to be. But the fact is that many changes have not been through a general consensus but rather, through the radicalism of a few individuals. But on the whole, despite what we know, as humans we are just who we are.