Forum Post: Birds and Bison

The inequity we rail against cannot have come to us except in a sneaky way. We got here because we pursued individual selfish wants (like funding your retirement or your kids' college education, if you were a middle class American) that can only be earned by externalizing the cost of your wants. The struggle for these wants (and their attainment) blinded us to the course we were actually on as a species. Now that we are gaining an appreciation for where we are (headed towards a disaster like in a boat heading toward a waterfall) we are panicked to find a way to tinker with our civilization’s engine. I say "abandon ship." The current isn't pushing us towards the waterfall; we are propelling ourselves towards it.

Think of a flock of birds or a herd of bison. They fly or run in the patterns they do not to make it to the breeding ground as a group, but because the individual birds, by joining a group, can be protected against enemies and so stand a good chance at passing along their genes. Lions never eat the bison in the center of the pack. What has been going on with humanity follows the same herd mentality law, but with the ultimate path being a path towards our destruction instead of our safety. We keep our families safe from the specters of famine and of squalor (those of us who are adept at screwing others of us over, that is) but steer the human race towards certain death. Why? Because we miss something vital in our pursuit of life. We miss the fact that what we are after is only good if it is good for all. The bison and the birds, if they are acting selfishly, are doing so to preserve the gene pool. Theirs is an altruistic selfishness. We have forsaken our sense of altruism; we have missed the joy that comes in being alive. We are, in our pursuit of a life better lived, proving that we are only obsessed with death. We are killing everything in sight on this planet in the name of self preservation. In that light, how different are any of us from the Nazi foot soldiers of WWII? Perhaps we are forgivable, but certainly we are to blame.