If You Were Nature
How Would You Educate Humanity?
A Thought Experiment
Many people I know complain about the Coronavirus. They are also unhappy with other Mother Nature’s “gifts” to mankind, such as tsunamis, hurricanes, thunderstorms, earthquakes, volcanos, wild fires, floods, locust, global warming and air pollution. Not to mention poverty, injustice, political polarization, social disintegration, and the list goes on.
Here is a way to get the right perspective to all of these things. Imagine you are Nature, the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent force that created and sustains everything. An altruistic quality of absolute love, wanting only to give and do good. But those you want to do good to, about 8 billion of them, are not quite capable of receiving your love, appreciating it, and making good use of it. Which means, being like you. In fact, they are the complete opposite of you. Like terribly spoiled children they misuse and destroy anything they get, fight with each other for no reason at all, are not willing to share and collaborate with other, inflict misery all around them, and constantly cry and complain.
Clearly they need to be educated. Enlightened. So they can learn how to change and be happy.
So you are Nature, and you need to teach mankind. How would you do it?
The Benevolent Teacher
Let’s recall how we educate our own children. We give them tasks, challenges. We applaud them for every small success, and encourage them when they feel as if they failed. We give them examples. We try to guide each child according to his age, his capabilities, and his personality. We help them practice. We hold their hand and sometimes do things for them, but are careful to let them make progress by their own right. Most importantly, we love them, and they feel it.
We don’t apply constant pressure, but rather start and stop. Not only do the intermissions allow our children, our students, to absorb the previous lesson, but also to build a new desire and emotional readiness. Much like we eat our food during the day in multiple meals, and in between them we develop a new appetite.
Say we are trying to teach our child a a team sport, such as basketball. We work on individual techniques such as dribbling, shooting, defense, rebounding and passing. But more importantly, we try to instill in them the spirit, the emotion, a new “software”, of being a part of a team. Playing together. Being dependent on others. My score = the team score.
I believe Nature is teaching us just as we teach our children. It is teaching us the Game of Life. This game has a goal — for us to get to know who we are, where we are, and where we need to get to. To discover the ultimate purpose and meaning of everything. It is a “team sport”, and to succeed in it all of us must learn to collaborate, to integrate, to unite. We need to “reprogram ourselves”, replacing our built-in egoistic software with a new altruistic one.
Guided Evolution
If we look at evolution and in particular human development as a directed process, rather than a random one, we gain a totally different perspective. We examine every event through a single prism: why is Nature, the upper force, doing it? What is it trying to teach us? How can we learn faster, and move on to the next experience, the next lesson? By so doing we elevate our perception from the current level of biological life on this planet to the higher, spiritual level, of Nature itself. From being unconscious operated beings to being fully conscious partners of the supreme operator.
This may sound like philosophy, religion, or some new age mantra. By I am talking science. Expanding B. Freedman’s definition in [1], “Science can be defined as the systematic examination of the structure and functioning of [reality] … whose ultimate goal is to discover the simplest general principles that can explain the enormous complexity of Nature. These principles can be used to gain insights about [reality] and to make predictions about future change”.
With this new light we can evaluate every individual and collective action we take according to this single criterion: does it align with and promote Nature’s purpose and guidance, or go against it?
COVID-19/20/21…
In the modern era we never had a catastrophe such as the coronavirus that affected the entire human population around the world, globally and equally. In a May 2020 speech the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres’ said that “COVID-19 Must be global wake-up call … Deadly global threats require a new unity and solidarity. We have seen some solidarity, but very little unity, in our response to COVID-19. Different countries have followed different, sometimes contradictory, strategies, and we are all paying a heavy price”. He called for “a large-scale, coordinated and comprehensive health response, guided by WHO, with an emphasis on solidarity towards developing countries”, and ended by saying “Either we get through this pandemic together, or we fail. Either we stand together, or we fall apart”. In his 2021 new year message, Mr. Guterres declared that “Solidarity is humanity. Solidarity is survival. That is the lesson of 2020 … Together, let’s make peace among ourselves and with nature”. Honestly I do not expect the UN or world leaders to turn the course of humanity around. But I do believe all of us collectively can do it.
In reality, governments in countries around the globe rushed to vaccinate their own citizens, often competing with and even hindering the efforts in other countries. Examples include curtailing the amounts of vaccinations manufactured in one country and shipped to another country, allowing the local population to use only local vaccinations, trying to make political or financial gain out of human misery etc. Overall, we seem to be hoping that this COVID annoyance will just go away, so that we can go back to our old lifestyle. Back to work, shopping, watching TV.
The same self-centered and short-sighted approach we have to life, Nature and each other, is also killing any hopes mankind may entertain for reversing global warming, avoiding food and water crises, reducing the devastating economical and social inequality, and lowering the violent atmosphere and the international and political tensions that have reached such heights, where scenarios of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists and belligerent nations and even the outbreak of WW3 are no longer reserved to dystopic games.
Evidently we are not willing the learn the lesson that Nature is trying to teach us. Not surprisingly, COVID-19 has mutated into COVID-20 and then COVID-21. Our teacher is as persistent as its unwitty students.
Of course Nature isn’t a human teacher or a parent. It is an perfect system that follows absolute and unchanging laws. It cannot be bargained with or bribed. If we feel that we are being punished it is because we are punishing ourselves, by ignoring, not learning and not following the laws of integration, balance and homeostasis. If you fall off a cliff would you complain about the “cruel” force of gravity that is pulling you down?
So what can we expect? More waves of COVID, locust, record temperatures, fires and droughts, floods, hurricanes and intense winter storms. Mother Nature is showing her angry face. Until we learn. Until we change direction. Until we realize we are cells in one body, and start caring about the wellbeing of the other cells and the entire body instead of our own short-lived satisfaction.
The Bottom Line
After listing all sorts of ideas and alternatives, jumping through hoops and back again, you reach the inevitable conclusion. If I were Nature, and I was trying teach humanity the game of life, I would do it … just like Nature is doing it. With uncompromising resolution but also great mercy. With laser sharp focus on the end goal but personal attention to every individual. Sometimes showing an angry face, sometimes a happy face. And while directing them in every turn along the way, you would still give them independence and free choice. So they get to earn every bit of advancement. And this is how they can grow and be like you.
The Takeaways
So what does this imply for us, all human beings occupying this planet? First of all, it tells us what we shouldn’t do. We shouldn’t fight the process, the teacher, or each other. It doesn’t help, and it wastes time. In fact it takes us in the opposite direction from the desired one, thereby stretching the path and increasing the pain we feel.
What we should do is learn. Pay attention. Understand what is the end goal, which is connection. Between us, and with him — the teacher. Practice the means to achieve this goal, which is integral education. And help each other on the path. Because if the goal is connection, you can’t get there alone.
Welcome to Nature’s school!
[1] Environmental Science, B Freedman, 2018. Chapter 2 ~ Science as a Way of Understanding the Natural World
