What is the importance of understanding our place in the world and how we affect it? [An internet question]
Understanding our place in the world is the most important learning you can aspire to.
The short answer is ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. The answer to the Why and the How will support the need for all of us to engage in this way, towards each other.
Why would you have to care for anyone else but your loved ones? Nature demands it.
We are part of an interconnected and interdependent system which is perfectly balanced. The natural world has no favourites and functions purely on the basis of cause and consequence. If an animal doesn’t prepare food and lodgings before winter comes, it will perish. If a mother raising her young is killed, her young will die. Nature is practical and impartial. Sentiment and judgements on these matters, full of poetry and emotions are purely human imaginings. Animals are driven by instincts to which we tend to attach human emotions. Animals depend on the environment they are suited for.
We are the apex animal and we haven’t been playing by the rules. We think that we have gotten away with it, but it has now caught up with us. We are fully adaptable. If one habitat was no longer suitable we would move to another. We are running out of habitats. Instead of living with our environment we have exploited it for profit. We have changed the landscape to suit our desires to conquer and acquire.
Socially we have remained underdeveloped. We refuse to share and don’t get along. We exploit and kill each other. Like a parent who disciplines an unruly child, nature is now exacting the consequences of our ignoring the fact that we are connected and fully depend on each other to function properly and to survive. From the production of our beloved cell phones to the food we put on our table, we need the global community. We have tainted our connection with competition, and greed. We can no longer depend on the delivery of goods and supplies and we are finding it increasingly difficult to secure our food sources. We are also threatened by those wishing to patent seeds so we will need to constantly buy them. Disease and war further add to problems. We are in a crisis situation globally.
Humanity has borne the many consequences of its ignorance of the laws of nature. We foster dreams and aspirations from our youth which often stem from deficiencies we have suffered or grand youthful dreams of fame and fortune. These dreams rarely fit into the world we live in, and in order to fulfill our desires we harm others and nature. From building large complexes to starting a company. We develop chemicals that kill the flora and the fauna. If it doesn’t kill outright, it makes us sick or gives us cancer. When we forget our place, our role in the natural system and only aim to please ourselves, we cause great harm that we are unaware of.
How will we be able to change that trend? Only through education. Along with reading, writing and maths, we need to learn about the natural systems ,and the laws of interconnection and interdependence in particular. We must turn to science and technology to teach sustainable farming practices which will increase a variety of yields and enrich the soil it is grown in. We must show and model the benefits of ‘Loving our neighbour’ or at least ‘Not doing to others what we ourselves hate.’ The media plays a vital part here in supporting people who do for others instead of predominantly those who are out for themselves and only interested in getting rich and famous. Only in this way will everyone have what they need to live a good life.
This is not to say that everyone should have the the same things. We are all different. Some are happy with very little, while others want more out of life. These entrepreneurs should be free to work towards any endeavour they wish, as long as they don’t harm others or nature.
In the natural system we exist in, when we strive to only please ourselves, bad things happen. If we strive to do good to others, the world will open up to provide humanity with everything that it needs to live well, and so much more.