What Will Save The World?

Recently, I was noticing that a Women’s March, that had been so united, was now showing signs of fracture, due to some personal agendas, creating racial divides, and the loss of some important sponsorship. I began to wonder about the reasons why even when we have a mutual cause, personal agendas get in the way.

I began to think of the issues with the NFL. I am an independent person, and had not taken a side, seeing the philosophies of both sides and the merit of both. Was it right to use the venue of the NFL to make a statement about race? I knew that the NFL would go on, but what would happen to the Women’s March? Without the sponsorship, they would surely experience growing pains. I wondered if they would recover.

I was considering lately that perhaps the only thing that can potentially unite the world, beyond personal interest, money, or pride is the issue of our natural resources. Are the air, the earth and the water the only things we all have in common, without argument? Do they provide the things that every individual needs, regardless of race, interest in professional sports or financial gain and do they override all other special interests? If they do, we haven’t found this universal truth to be self evident.

The most basic human need is survival. Period. If a child is not fed, or does not live in a safe place where basic human needs are met, an individual is not prepared for the world that they face every day. But wouldn’t it be worse if we didn’t have air to breathe, air that has been compromised in California by wildfires and in Hawaii by volcanoes? Hasn’t the water fallen short of its ability to hydrate when some of the outcomes of breaking into our earth have resulted in contaminated water and even some earthquakes?

Blaming is not the answer. Anyone can say that a problem is created from a different source, other than admitting the real cause, deflecting the source of any difficulty away from themselves. It creates the illusion that ownership of the cause or at least the effect belongs to someone else.  So are our needs for natural resources the universal needs that we could all agree upon? And before it is too late?

Being convinced that it was, I was feeling that I may be on to something, but then reflected on the work of Jane Goodall. She found that chimps, for no apparent reason, at times would divide into sides, begin wars, march in formation, carrying weapons and kill one another. Was war an innate activity that is even common in primates? I had carried this question for many years, since attending a program where Jane Goodall spoke about her life and interests, and reading her book, ‘Reason for Hope.’

But an even bigger revelation opened the inevitability of divisiveness even further. I began to read a fascinating New York Times best seller, ‘The Secret Life of Trees,” by Peter Wahlleben. There, in the first 25 pages, I learned that trees of the same variety tend to favor one another over trees of different varieties, leaning away so that similar trees can get sun and water, while being somewhat less inclined to do for other species. Trees? They are highly intelligent and sophisticated life forms with networks, families and independent activity both above and below ground. Still there is a support network that can be exclusive for the purpose of survival, a network that supports a tree “just like me.”

I had heard stories of businesses, law firms and government organizations where there was ethnic, racial and financial bias toward those who weren’t “just like me.” After all, there is evidence that people are more comfortable with those who they deem to be similar to them. But in consideration of the idea that animals and plants showed tendencies for divisiveness, were humans doomed to do the same? Not when animals, plants and humans are so interdependent that we cannot live without one another. Not when we all play a part in the continuation of one another. And not when it’s the only thing we all have in common. Let’s clean up the planet for “all of us.” It feels better than “just like me.”