“If Animals Behaved Like People” (Linkedin)
My new article on Linkedin “If Animals Behaved Like People”
Human beings stand at the top of the pyramid on Earth. Nevertheless, we are quickly drifting toward utter helplessness in the face of extreme climatic events, an irrepressible virus, fading political dexterity, and escalating social divisions. Not only civilization, but the entire world seems to be coming apart at the seams.
If we search for the culprit, none will be found, except for us. We are the wrong-doers. We are not only the worst; we are the only negative element on the planet. Were it not for us, everything would be thriving and peaceful.
Imagine what would happen if animals behaved like people. Carnivores would kill their prey for fun and to boast until none was left to feed on. Alternatively, herbivores would eat up all the grass until they, too, would starve or their stomachs would explode.
If animals behaved like people, species would deny other species access to grazing or hunting territories simply in order to maintain power and control. Animals would fight against each other not in order to feed themselves, but in order to humiliate other species or simply for sports.
Once in power, dominant species would fight among themselves not just over authority, but they would kill each other in order to prevent their rivals’ offspring from posing future threats. In the war over supremacy, they would also kill their young in order to commemorate themselves as the greatest of all time.
These atrocities, fabricated about the animal kingdom, are the reality of our daily lives. This is why we have no one to blame for the collapse of our world but ourselves.
If we want to save ourselves and our home planet, we need to dig much deeper than changing our energy sources and restraining the use of plastics. We need to dig into our own nature and reform the evildoer that lies within each and every one of us. This is our only chance of survival.
The amendments we need to perform are not behavioral changes; they are corrections on our egos, on our very selves. In its current, insatiable mindset, our nature is poised to devour anything and everything until there is nothing left. The desolation it will leave behind will destroy us and our posterity.
We think we are the smartest being but animals know that the environment sustains them while we exploit it as if there is endless abundance. We are cutting the branch we are sitting on yet define our behavior as “progress.”
Even when we can see our folly, we lack the resolve to change course. Because we are so powerless, our only option is to derive strength and encouragement from one another.
If we launch a collective effort to change our values from exploitative to considerate and from abusive to caring, we will change our social environment, which will change our mindset. This, and only this, will make us change our behavior toward each other and toward animals, plants, the soil, and the air. This is why changing our relations, our approach to one another, is the only way to save our planet and ourselves, and give our children hope for the future.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora:
