Weaving a world that is compassionate
Yeah, sounds like a dream but it’s time to take the side of the people who are working towards building a more compassionate world. We credit ourselves of being a highly intellectual species. How can that be true if we ended up building a world full of atrocities? If our intellect did not result in building more just a society where all people live meaningfully with equal access to quality life, where natural habitats flourished, and we all thrived as a unit, then there is nothing superior about our species.
Margaret Mead’s (American cultural anthropologist) words “Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts,” to the question “When civilization started?” has gone viral as it is a great reminder of how compassion is at the foundation on which human civilizations stands.
Thankfully, there is enough proof, pointing towards a world that is going on a path of becoming more compassionate. And we not only are evolving as compassionate towards fellow humans, but towards all life forms on the planet. We are more committed to protecting other species now more than any time before. Of course, it might seem that our protective behavior is an offset of understanding the impact of losing several species on the ecosystem, at a policy level; but talk to the people on the ground who invest their life in protecting other species, you’d see they embody compassion.
Plus, if you consider the human past, you’ll see that the world is more peaceful now, than it was any other time in history. There is evidence of less percentage of deaths due to wars and conflicts between borders and our individual chances of dying due to violent conflict is lower compared to any time before. Each time you see a race, a gender or a community stand up for their rights and people from around the world showing their support, you know we are headed in right direction. Of course, we are on thin ice, as our journey has only started towards building a world that is compassionate and perhaps, it will take more time and efforts to nudge our societies. It also needs us to consciously work towards preventing wars that now has the potential to destroy the entire global ecosystem.
We are all working on bringing a balance and still figuring out ways. When you see the gap in rights, access to quality life and the social stratification that exists today, you know there is a lot more work before we realize our status as compassionate towards our own species. We are running out of time when it comes to our natural habitat, the Earth, as climate change is teaching us.
Survival of the fittest?
The words “Survival of the fittest”, actually coined by a philosopher, Herbert Spencer, still holds us back as the idea of being fittest invoke in us a narcissistic attitude that demands us to be better than others. Keeping us busy with achieving tasks that do not allow us to look beyond self and our immediate needs. Charles Darwin adopted these words in the fifth edition of The Origin of Species, only to explain natural selection better. In his later work, Darwin stated “for those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”
He explored sympathy (now referred to as compassion) shown by mankind to strangers and wrote in one of his last books “As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. Experience unfortunately shows us how long it is before we look at them as our fellow creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions… This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they extend to all sentient beings.” (The descent of the man and the selection in relation to sex)
The only way we can reach the epitome of human race is when we have created a world where individuals are compassionate towards self, people around them, other species, the planet Earth itself and even beyond. Climate change cannot be resolved until we invest in compassion, economies are yet to adopt a growth model that is about quality rather than quantity and output of increased quality of life for all rather than financial output. We need to stop thinking war.