I just discovered Tim Flannery’s new book “Here on Earth”.
I read, Plato (The Republic): In the ideal society mine and thine means the same thing. That is what prevails in the ant colony. The interest of the individual ant is entirely concordant with the interest of the colony as a whole.
Is that what King Solomon means when he says: go to the ant, lazy ones, watch its ways and become wise. That’s not the case with humans. Plato categorizes
democracy as among the imperfect forms of government, which it clearly is. But for a willful, upright ape it seems to be the best. As Churchill said, it’s the worst of all forms of government apart from every other that’s been tried. If you look around the world at the way democracies actually operate, I think you can see cause for hope. There is a commonality that is sufficient to make things work.
The basic question is – is there enough glue to hold a global superorganism together? To allow our commonality to bind us in sustainable actions? To allow some of us to formulate these actions and make the rest of us follow? What will this glue constitute? Religion has always torn people apart. Patriotism has divided nations since Paradise. Service, or work towards a common goal are abundant with socialist elements. We need a common mindset, a unified vision of Earth as unique and delicate organism that needs to be protected by her inhabitants. Our spaceship is under attack by the very people who travel in her. We seem like a viral invasion of a body that nourishes and protects us. If all could have the vision of a few tree huggers a peaceful symbiosis with our carrier organism may be possible. How do we propagate this thought through the collective mind of the human superorganism? How do we create this glue to unify us in vision? We not only need to get it right, we need to do it fast. Our media and social networks stretch around the globe like neurons, like arteries and connective tissue. Still this has not unified our mindset, has not brought world peace and a common effort to sustainable living. If we can formulate the glue that will hold us together, we may be able to propagate it through these nerves and veins, and travel a while longer on our precious spaceship Earth.