“We must learn to see the world anew.”
-Albert Einstein
A SUNFLOWER FOLLOWS a simple elegant design; obtaining sustenance from sun and soil, creating seeds to propagate genes, and eventually decomposing back into the land. Humans follow this same general pattern – just over a longer time frame and with a few more added details.
Our bodies are of this universe and of this Earth; indeed, they are physical extensions of it. Every speck of matter in the cosmos is constructed from the same pool of elementary particles, each forged in the heat of an exploding star.
The air in our lungs, the calcium in our bones, and the water in our tissues are not ours alone. We borrow from a giant repository of reusable eternal building blocks – such as oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. We share these atoms with the atmosphere and the oceans, with rocky cliffs and valley soils, and with all other creatures of our planet.
A lotus flower graces a quiet garden pond. As autumn nears, a petal drops into the water, creating tiny concentric ripples that vanish into the surface. Sinking to the bottom, the petal soon relinquishes its component parts back to the environment.
A decade later, one of the hydrogen atoms of the petal will have moved on. Now residing in a myocardial cell of a young elk, it helps pump blood to muscles coiled and ready for combat with an older bull.
Over millennia, this same atom will bounce through time and space, becoming briefly incorporated into the bodies of great leaders, and humble peasants, too. It will ascend high into fluffy clouds, and tumble down pristine mountain streams. In a never-ending random regenerative cycle, it may once again help bring color to an exquisite lotus flower, floating on the still waters of yet another garden pond.
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Using a relatively limited number of different elements as building blocks, and arranging them in myriad combinations, the creative cosmos moves unceasingly towards increasing complexity and diversity. Sharing a common genesis, all entities of the universe remain connected.
Our bodies and subconscious minds, and that of all creatures, remain at least loosely tethered to this common starting point. And change comes slowly.
Evolutionary processes trudge forward at a leisurely pace, particularly on a human time scale. Following Darwinian rules, random mutations that produce profitable change are rewarded, as species struggle to secure their niche in highly competitive ecosystems.
Our conscious minds are somewhat different; capable of evolving more rapidly than our subconscious minds and our physical bodies. Consciousness does not wait patiently for random mutations that rely on chance alone to offer profitable change. Consciousness takes action. Possessing the ability to shape itself, consciousness can determine the course of its own evolution.
Human beings have been endowed with the ability to think, to reason, and to ponder. We can even think about our thoughts. We can thus direct our own future. This has afforded humanity the luxury – and attendant possible peril – of charting the destiny of all present and future life on our planet.
HUNTER GATHERER DNA
As with many other species, early hunter gatherer humans fared better when they organized into small groups. Being a member of a tribe meant that an individual could benefit from the ideas and works of others. This also provided a measure of protection against dangerous animals and competing clans. Learning to cooperate with other tribal members increased the odds that an individual would survive to mate and pass on his or her genes.
Genetic predilections of cooperation and collaboration were thus selected for; and these traits persist in our human bodies today. It is hard wired into our neural connections to find joy in helping and interacting with others. When we lend a hand to a fellow member of our tribe, neurotransmitters are released across neural synapses, landing in receptors located in pleasure and reward centers of our brain.
This reward-based system appears to be a primitive mechanism of the evolutionary process of survival – as the act of helping others benefits both the individual and the group.
It is perhaps likely that early human tribal members may not have been inclined to perform actions intended to help others, if there was not a subconscious knowledge of a tasty neurotransmitter morsel to follow.
Our DNA directs actions that are most likely to perpetuate itself and the species in which it resides; creating frameworks of neural connections that incentivize behaviors to improve the well-being of the tribe.
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Are we then merely slaves to our genes; worker drones in the swarm, unwitting members of a hive community that has developed a persona of its own? Are we ruled by a subconscious brain that simply follows a script handed to it by its DNA, responding to treats tossed across neural connections? This would certainly not be a very romantic version of life.
Perhaps this is where consciousness comes in.
EVOLVING CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness itself is an evolutionary process. Learning to interact well with others may have been an introductory step to consciousness; one that allowed humans to cross a threshold into a more intricate and purposeful network of existence.
As human consciousness has become more fully developed, we now interact with others not just for personal and species survival. Consciousness has given us the ability to shape our perceptions and to create happiness.
Consciousness also allows us to give love and to deeply feel love.
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It is possible that early humans were merely the first users of consciousness, and therefore we are further immersed into its complexities than other species.
Our family’s beloved dog recently succumbed to an apparent heart attack, at only five years of age. We have experienced the death of other pets, but it was remarkably more painful this time as Henry was so very bonded to our family.
It may sound silly, but Henry appeared to truly manifest the human emotion of love, or at least something that closely resembles love. I am not certain that this was simply a learned behavior, one developed only to increase the likelihood that we might put a little gravy in his food bowl.
It is true that some of us may tend to overly anthropomorphize our pets; but perhaps some creatures are more similar to humans than is commonly realized. Maybe Henry and others animals like him are vanguards of their species, just beginning to dip their paws and wings into a global pool of consciousness.
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When the consciousness of humanity began to more fully awaken, our ancestors developed a greater awareness of their surroundings. They observed the moon and the stars. They stood in awe; watching meteors rain down from the darkness of the night sky.
The evolution of consciousness appears to have paralleled the evolution of intelligence – and that of happiness as well.
It is with increasing levels of consciousness that humans may begin to expand their notion of self and tribe, helping to create a vision of lasting global happiness.
EXPANDING THE NOTION OF TRIBE
We are born alone, hungry and naked; but, if we are lucky, we are immediately fed and clothed by a loving mother and father. In the beginning, this is our tribe.
Soon we are also cared for by an extended family or clan. As time progresses, we interact with other members of our larger community. We learn local customs. We exchange food, ideas, and love with those whom we interact with each day.
As we continue to grow, we develop increasing levels of consciousness. We soon begin to further expand our idea of tribe; to now include our towns, our states, and our nations.
Perhaps we will then read about great blue whales and trumpeter swans, who migrate great distances from north to south and back again, through oceans and atmospheres unencumbered by boundaries or jurisdictions.
We may then begin to think differently about great walls and invented land borders. We may consider the idea that all humans are in our tribe; even those living very far away and speaking unfamiliar languages. We may notice that some of these people suffer greatly. We may then even ask ourselves, “How can I not share my abundance with all of my brothers and my sisters?”
The evolution of consciousness may then carry us to yet another vantage point; to a place of wide perspective, where a living panorama of all Earth's creatures is displayed. It is from here that we see that our group, Homo sapiens, is but one of millions of species on this planet – perhaps each with a purpose.
We soon realize that it is not just humans who are important and special.
The evolution of consciousness is still not yet complete. Humanity has only a rudimentary understanding of the workings of our universe. Perhaps we can thoughtfully turn our pencils around, and begin to erase long held ideas of things such as time and distance.
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We must learn to see the world anew.
-Albert Einstein
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TIME AND DISTANCE
Further immersing ourselves into consciousness, we see that our planet is just one of many formed from the accreted dust of an exploding star, one of billions of such stars in an impossibly vast universe. Our tribe is even more expansive than imagined; expanding into all spatial directions and all dimensions of time.
In 1989, the spacecraft Voyager I turned its cameras around and took one last image of Earth, just as it was leaving our solar system. The Earth appeared as a tiny pale blue dot, illuminated by a sunray against the darkness of space.
Here is as excerpt of what the famed scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan said about this pale blue dot:
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.
On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner."
Voyager was launched over 40 years ago, and is now in interstellar space over 12 billion miles away from Earth. Traveling at over 35,000 mph, it will take 40,000 years before it approaches the nearest star. It is barely out of our solar system. And ours is but one of billions of solar systems in our Milky Way galaxy, itself one of over 100 billion galaxies in the known universe.
Many continents on Earth, which I once considered so very far away, now seem to be quite close. And it requires only a small cognitive shift to consider the idea that a young girl dying across the globe – from violence, hunger, or treatable disease – is really no different than if she perishes on my own doorstep. Distance is relative.
As we enter even more deeply into consciousness, we may begin to see that time, like distance, is simply another variable that is poorly conceptualized by humans. And this variable does not far separate us from entities that exist in moments other than the present.
My current actions have tremendous influence on the safety, health, and happiness of future generations. If I fail today to support an agenda of peace and environmental sustainability, I may in part be responsible for a child succumbing to the ravages of warfare or hunger one hundred years from now. And this is no less a tragedy than if he dies in my arms today. Time is relative.
Perhaps this idea about time is not so far-fetched. For millennia, many cultures have acknowledged the spirits of ancestors, listening hopefully for voices from a prior age; immortal echoes reverberating across the universe.
Evolving perceptions about time may perhaps allow us to sharply envision the lives of all generations to follow. We may imagine future Earth inhabitants going about their days; working and playing, sharing the same joys and sorrows that we do today. We may see children walking safely home from school, past verdant fields and clear waters.
The idea of intergenerational equity is now unveiled. We see that all of these future citizens are also our brothers and sisters, and that their concerns are equally as important as our own.
Our eyes are fully open, and our view is unobstructed. We see quite clearly now.
We see beyond self and family; beyond gender and sexual orientation; beyond age, color and creed; beyond nation-states and borders; beyond time and distance. Before us is the whole of our universe and all of creation – past, present and future.
It is from here that we can now comprehend our station in this fantastic existence. It is from this place that we understand the importance of treating all of Earth’s inhabitants with dignity and respect. It is from this vantage point that we can see the fragility of our planet and realize just how carefully we must preserve its beauty and bounty.
This impossible immensity, this limitless universe, is us. This is what and who we are. This is our tribe. It is to the totality of the cosmos that we belong.
It is within this expanded notion of tribe and community that we can create lasting global happiness. It is here where we will discover the true richness of life.