I recently read a book about saving the world called Ishmael. While I do not agree with all of it, much is worth thinking about.
We seem to be destroying our world. Socially, the rate of teen suicide has tripled in the last 40 years. Violent school shootings occur with frightening frequency. Our population is expanding. Our prisons are overflowing. Environmentally, our world’s rain forests, whose function in global air production is not fully understood, are shrinking.
Worldwide, civilization works in an environmentally unsustainable way, and also in a psychologically unhealthy way. America is one of the richest and most environmentally destructive countries in the world, yet other nations strive to be more like us. Is the world we live in fundamentally flawed? Is it our fate to struggle to find happiness in a uncaring world?
Many believe that we need to improve people themselves-if people would only love each other, or be less greedy, everything would be perfect. Our system of laws and punishments is set up to “make people be better,” yet often it does not work. Human nature seems to be fundamentally destructive. Some religions believe that we are a “cursed” race, perfect except for a tendency toward evil that ruins whatever we touch. One of the insidious things about this perception is that we as individuals are blameless, because if we fail, we are suffering from a flaw in human nature. As part of a flawed race, our mistakes are inevitable
Bullshit.
Not all people are destroying the world. Our culture, however, which spreads across the developing world, does not know how to live sustainably. People of our culture can be identified by their perception of humanity as flawed. Often we are not surprised to be living in poverty, corruption, toxicity or pollution, with corrupt rulers and uncaring neighbors.
Who are these people who live in a healthy and sustainable way? Are they super-environmentalists, who live in trees, eating only recycled cardboard? Of course not. We humans once knew how to live well. We must look for what we’ve lost where we last had it.
People have been living tribally for hundreds of thousands of years, and they have been content and happy living that way. By tribalism, I am not talking about living in caves and foraging but rather a more communal and egalitarian way of living, thinking and working. Tribal peoples would often fight to the death to defend their lifestyles, and the rates of suicide and depression appeared to be almost nonexistent in unmolested tribes.
Unfortunately for us, our way of life is destroying us. The idea that there is one right way to live and that we are innately flawed are the cause of our problems. What is the solution?
Tribal people may still know things about dealing with each other and the world, that we, despite all of our technical innovation, do not. Just because we do not want to live like so-called “primitive” peoples does not mean we can not learn about why their lifestyle works.
I don’t know if living in a way that would enable us to be healthy and happy would require that we give up all of our “fabulous” riches. No one knows. I do know that we are not a rich people. We are desperately poor in basic human wealth; safety, mental health and acceptance. In comparison, the mere fear of losing our pagers seems like a rather silly reason to not look for other ways of living.
Besides looking for alternative ways of thinking and living, every single one of us must realize that there is more than one right way to live. The government of our country has historically been extremely harsh to any group which attempted to live outside of its jurisdiction. I do not presume to pass judgment upon what has happened in Waco, Texas, or to the Native Americans, yet it seems that if we deny others’ attempts to try new ways of living and allow our government to crush nonconformists, we will render the world uninhabitable.
We will be the future lawmakers and policy implementers of this country. If we choose to follow the trend set in eliminating nonconformists, we will be destroying the good with the bad in the name of homogeneity. Only through tolerance and exploration can we save ourselves. Better recycling policies, emission standards and psychiatric medication are all band-aid like “adjustments” of current practices. They slow our destruction without changing the culture that is destructive.
Why should we care? We are attending one of the best universities in one of the richest countries in the world. Yet many of us are depressed. Many of us are without direction or without a dream for a better world. Violence in our society effects us all. So does hopelessness. We are all pathetically poor in basic human wealth-security, mental health, respect-the list of what we don’t have goes on and on.
I do not know what tomorrow holds, but now I know some of the places to look for solutions. We do not have to live like this. Malcolm X says, “You have an opportunity to change history.” It seems to me that we have everything to gain and nothing to lose, from trying.