Tag: environment

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Nature Is Calling For Love

Millennia from now, will we be just another figure on the evolutionary chart? Looking back, will our future generations know that at this point in time humanity became aware of its integral relationship with nature and each other? Right now, it appears the answer is ‘no’. If we continue on our present trajectory, there will be a mushroom cloud marking our place in the biological process.

We have insulated ourselves from nature so well in this age; our predicament comes from a conviction that we are beyond the laws of nature and its rules do not apply to us. Patrick Henry, one of America’s founding fathers confirms, “It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts… For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it”. Apparently, mankind has been utilizing the ostrich approach for a very long time…

Instead of inventing our own rules as we go along, we should study the laws of nature and learn to work within them. Knowing the rules was essential when our ancestors shared living area and hunting grounds with saber-toothed tigers and mammoths. The difference between surviving and becoming a quick snack depended upon their knowledge of the system and the ability to work within it. Failure meant a swift and merciless end. Even up until the 20th century, our forefathers wouldn’t have imagined themselves living outside this system.

Presently the majority of people still don’t realize that we operate under nature’s laws and these laws, unlike man’s, don’t change and can’t be manipulated without consequences. To avoid the mushroom cloud on the horizon, we must pull our heads out of the sand and learn the ground rules.

The law of development has been in operation since the beginning of time and works to ensure that our evolution unfolds properly. Our progress wasn’t left to blind chance or coincidence. There is an over-arching plan in the natural world and humanity is an integral part of it, not separate from and independent of it. Little by little, we are beginning to understand that countless negative circumstances occur because we don’t realize our role in this system correctly. Therefore, it benefits us to study these learn how to advance within them.

It is nature’s law of development that defined us as social animals. Hence, nature compels us to interact with each other and our natural environment. We cannot live or grow in isolation; science and history both support this truth. Being the willful animals we are, we continue to ignore the obvious and try to insulate ourselves from the very environment that our existence depends upon. This obstinacy is why the steps on our evolutionary ladder are often experienced as suffering.

By Angela Moore Duck

Photography: Marc Hollembeak


Continue to part 2:  Sustainability and Advancement

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Public Opinion – The Key to Change

For hard proof we needn’t look any farther than the communist regime of the former Soviet Union. Human nature will outlast any regime or experiment that contradicts it. In a war against the ego we are doomed to fail from the start, so in order to avoid the mistakes of the past, let’s take a different approach and learn to use the ego to our benefit.

In the 1950s, the now iconic Asch series of experiments proved that public opinion is of primary importance to an individual. Applying this principle to society as a whole, it becomes clear that the “be-all end-all” target of all human endeavors is social status.

We slave away for a bigger house, a newer car, or a fatter bank account only because society dictates that these things are valuable. In essence, though, they are not the goal but mere means to it, while the goal is achieving higher social status. If we lived in a culture where big muscles or high intelligence were the pinnacle of prestige, we would be compelled by society to put the same amount of effort toward achieving excellence in those areas, paying little to no mind to material possessions.

Now imagine a switch got flicked, and we were no longer venerated for our ability to hoard virtual zeroes in the bank, throw the pigskin, or manipulate the stock market. There would be no pleasure in these achievements, and we wouldn’t have any fuel to go after them. And if such things were actually scorned or ridiculed, we would gladly and readily relinquish them all.

It follows that by changing the values in society, even artificially, the entire game gets transformed. If our offspring, friends, and neighbors respected and admired us for our contributions to society, and despised pursuit of personal interests, the same indomitable ego which is threatening the world today would be channeled toward collective benefit and the common good.

The key to such a transformation is public opinion. If we build an environment with abundant examples of favorable behavior toward society, we will finally begin to utilize human nature correctly. Not only is it the only way to survive in the new integrated world, but we will also begin to tap the truly limitless potential inherent to humankind.