The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(15)

The daylight was waning. I tried to read the expression on Jane’s face, but it was shadowed in the dim light. I felt like Jane was leading me step-by-step to a deeper understanding of how we actually might find a better path ahead—though I was also skeptical of any easy solution.

“So what needs to happen?” I asked. “How do we evolve into better, more compassionate, more peaceful creatures?”

Jane poured the wee drams as she considered my question.

“We need a new universal moral code.” Jane suddenly laughed. “I’ve just thought—every single major religion gives lip service to the Golden Rule—Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So it’s easy—there’s our universal moral code. We just have to find a way to persuade people to honor it!” And then she sighed. “It does seem impossible, doesn’t it, given all our human failings. Greed. Selfishness. Lust for power and wealth.”

“Yes,” I said—and then, tongue in cheek, said, “after all, we’re only human!”

Jane took a sip.

She laughed, then added, “But I do honestly think we’re moving in the right direction.”

“So you really do think that we are becoming more caring?”

“I honestly think, Doug, that the majority of people are. Unfortunately, the media devotes so much space to covering all of the bad, hateful things that are going on and not enough to reporting about all the goodness and kindness that’s out there. And think of it from a historical perspective. It wasn’t long ago that women and children in England were forced to work in the mines in horrific conditions. Children went barefoot in the snow. Slavery was accepted and justified in many parts of the United States—in Britain, too.

“Admittedly, there are still many children living in poverty, and there is still slavery in many parts of the world, and there is racial and gender discrimination and unjust wages and so many other social ills—but more and more people are believing that all these things are not morally acceptable, and many groups are working hard to address all these issues and more. The apartheid regime has ended in South Africa. British colonial subjugation ended as the British Empire collapsed. Gradually the attitude toward women in many countries has changed. I was astonished the other day to see how many women have attained important positions in governments around the world. And there are so many lawyers standing up against injustice, speaking out for human rights—and in more and more countries lawyers and special-interest groups are fighting for animal rights as well.”

I thought about this. Indeed, all that Jane had said represented steps forward toward a better global ethic. But I couldn’t help thinking how many steps backward we have taken in recent years, and how much further we still had to go. I shared these thoughts with Jane, mentioning the horrific way immigrant children were being separated from their parents at the Mexican-US border, put into what amounts to cages, then sent off to “schools” in the deserts. And the rise in homelessness and the number of people who go to bed hungry. “And,” I added, “we’ve already touched on the disturbing rise in nationalism.”

“Yes, I know,” Jane said. “And it is much the same in the UK and many other countries, too. It really is depressing.”

I said, “I think this is what President Barack Obama meant with his famous statement that history ‘zigs and zags’ instead of moving forward in a straight line.”

“It’s easy to feel we are zagging backward,” Jane said. “But it’s important that we think about the protests that have succeeded and campaigns that have achieved their goals. Thanks to the internet…”

I was about to interrupt Jane, but she started to laugh. “Yes, I know all about the downside of this technology and especially about ‘fake news’! But like our intellect, social media in itself is neither good nor bad—it is the use to which we put it that counts.”

I had once asked Archbishop Tutu, whose stand against apartheid had bent the arc of history toward justice in South Africa, what he thought of human progress. It was just after the Paris bombings, and many people were despairing about humanity. He said that history takes two steps forward and one step back. Almost exactly a month later the world came together to ratify the Paris Climate Agreement. I’ll never forget the other thing he said: “It takes time for us to become fully human.” Perhaps he meant it takes time for us to evolve morally.

Jane thought about this for a bit. “I think maybe it takes a lot of time in our evolution for us to realize that we can never attain our full human potential unless our head and heart work together. It was that genius Linnaeus who gave our species the name of Homo sapiens, the wise human—”

“Clearly,” I interrupted, “we are not living up to our name. You’ve already said that we are intellectually clever but not wise, so how do you understand ‘wisdom’?”





The Wise? Ape



Jane was pensive for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “I think that wisdom involves using our powerful intellect to recognize the consequences of our actions and to think of the well-being of the whole. Unfortunately, Doug, we have lost the long-term perspective, and we are suffering from an absurd and very unwise belief that there can be unlimited economic development on a planet of finite natural resources, focusing on short-term results or profits at the expense of long-term interests. And if we carry on like this—well, I don’t like to think what will happen. And it is most definitely not the behavior of a ‘wise ape.’