On Being a Good Steward of Earth: NDP 181

You don’t have to look far to find something to complain about. 

Climate changeInequalitySuicidal ideationMalnutritionLoneliness 

The world is full of problems.

Now, I’m no doomer. My intent is not to illuminate human suffering. Rather, I accept the Buddhist notion that there will be suffering. My issue is all the EXTRA suffering. I can’t shake the naive, hippie belief that solutions are within our reach. 

When it comes to the end of the world I’m an optimist.

The question is, what can we do to reduce suffering?

Isolation and ‘rugged individualism’ are a big part of the problem

I’m still wrapping my head around the concept of nonduality. I get that we are stardust. After all, I’m a huge fan of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I believe the Big Bang is a good explanation of what probably happened to get us here. I understand ecological cycles and geologic time. 

We are all connected, but I have seen little evidence of these connections in human behavior during my lifetime. 

We exist in this world simultaneously as individuals and as obligate members of the human species. Many of us experience cognitive dissonance around being two places at once and I get that. This is a feature of reality we have to embrace. It’s quite literally cosmic.

We are going to have to hit ‘refresh’ on our values

Human values have shifted from the group to the individual. This ‘we to me’ transition aligns with modernity, the industrial revolution, financial systems, and religions. I continually ask, ‘What happened?’, to speculate about this transformation but we will never know.

The great value shift from kindness, connection, and cooperation toward money, status, and power has created most of our problems. The solution is a shift away from individualism and toward collectivism. 

The problem is, that individualism promotes short-term fitness. Humans are hedonistic and we love a good dopamine hit. Our values shifted to maximize this. Moving back toward collectivism ain’t gonna be easy.

How do we convince ourselves that the ‘success’ of the human race over evolutionary time is more important than feeling high for a few seconds? 

To move forward we have to understand our past

Winners write history. 

The shift from collectivism to individualism is characterized by strong men defeating weak communities. This story gets recorded and repeated because the strong remain to tell it. Cherry picking at its’ finest.

Do we want the meaning of our existence to cater to a few men? Unfortunately, we continue to tell that story today. 

We value the strong. The competitive. The winners. 

We look down on the peaceful. The cooperative. The mutualisms.

Humans are so much better than this. 

It’s time to move past maximizing the ‘line of cocaine dopamine bumps’ and understand the importance of delaying gratification. 

Our nervous systems evolved for more complex and intimate social interaction but we are headed the other way toward simpler and less interactive social behaviors. Rugged individualism is a great leap backward and spits in the face of our evolutionary prowess.

Maybe we can stop treating life like a game of winners and losers

Winning is not better than losing. They are the same when we experience the game as a community and not as individuals. 

We need to stop playing Monopoly with our DNA.

Rather than socializing the gains and privatizing the losses, we can socialize gains by being a good steward of Earth and all its inhabitants. This is the pathway toward reduced suffering. We can change our values. There is still time.

Frankly, I’m embarrassed for us if we continue to choose otherwise.

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