Planet and PEOPLE

All humans, indeed all living beings suffer stress.   It is part of being alive:   we all suffer injuries, sickness, and sooner or later death.   Without these limiting factors, life itself would not be possible.   Everything in the universe changes constantly: death makes life itself possible.   As Thich Nhat Hanh famously said, ‘Long live impermanence’.   

The first insight (‘noble truth’) of the Buddha is to acknowledge  the existence of suffering like this.   We see others suffer, and we look at our own experience, and we develop a deep seated fear.   We don’t want to grow old, get sick, lose the things and people we love or think we need, and we (usually) don’t want to die.   And we don’t want to feel responsible or guilty about what we say or do.  Our tendency is to fight our suffering and / or run away from it.

This fear is at the root of all our perceptions, and it is all too easy to be ruled by it.   But if we allow ourselves to stop and reflect, rather than being carried away by our strong emotions, we can see that we have two mechanisms for our survival: the emergency, active, fight or flight response, which uses a great deal of energy, and the recovery, more passive rest and digest one which allows us to recover and heal. We all need both; so does every living being.

It is sometimes claimed that we survive only at the expense of others, just long enough to reproduce (endless fight or flight). This is not true. In fact it would deny the very existence of any meaning in the universe or ecosystem at all. To claim that because we don’t understand the universe except in very limited terms it can have no ‘meaning’ at all is ridiculous, because we can observe that the ecosystem exists, it is complex, it is alive, and it is interdependent: every living being (including humans) has evolved to contribute positively to the system as a whole by filling an ecological niche. In fact our bodies are themselves whole ecosystems of living beings working together. Nature is only red in tooth and claw to maintain balance; and it is constantly evolving greater biodiversity to improve its stability. If we think that humans with our technology are above nature and can possess and control the ecosystem, we are deceiving ourselves. We cannot ‘save’ the planet from anything but ourselves. We would do better to ask the planet to save us, and listen to its answer.

Synergy, symbiosis, co-operation are therefore at least as important in nature as competition, and I suggest that living beings, like the cells and bacteria of a body, are at their ‘happiest’ when they are working together, in balance, for the benefit of the system they are part of. We are part of the planetary ecosystem, and our purpose is to contribute to it, not destroy it like cancerous cells. We not exactly the same as each other, but not separate either. We contain our parents’ and grandparents’ DNA, which was altered by their experiences; we are also the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink. And the ideas and images we consume.

The system as a whole maintains overall balance by both competition and co-operation. So when we are under immediate threat, adrenaline rises and the fight or flight mechanism kicks in.   When the threat reduces, the parasympathetic system takes over and enables us to rest, digest, recover and heal.  In the modern world the excitement of an adrenaline fuelled fight or flight state can become addictive. Or it can become a deep seated part of our physical and psychological existence through constant stimulation by fear.

Fight or flight is a biological and psychological stress response, a necessary but dangerously powerful emergency mechanism that should be approached with extreme caution.  
It should be used only when really necessary – when in direct and immediate personal danger and there is really no alternative; temporary measures that may prove counter-productive.  If we live in this mode continuously it will cause harm to us and others too. So before adopting flight or fight it is advisable to reflect and assess the situation. It may be time to invoke the parasympathetic system and rest and reflect.   Perhaps your enemy is trying to provoke an angry response that will enable them to escalate the situation.    Violence cannot be fought with violence.   As Gandhi said, ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’. But is is possible to be assertive without being aggressive.

The second and third insights of the Buddha were that suffering is not completely crushing and relentless:  because everything changes all the time, and we also have a parasympathetic rest and digest system, happiness is also possible.  In fact, the two are inextricably linked:  as opposites, one is the absence of the other.   If you never experienced one, you’d have nothing to measure the other against. So we need both activity and rest. And we can look at what brings us and others suffering and what makes us and them happier. This means we have agency. We do not have to give up in despair.

The fourth of the Buddha’s insights is called the ‘Eightfold Path’ that can help us reduce our suffering and that of others and increase our happiness.    He proposes we take time to rest and digest our experiences, in eight areas – our perceptions or ‘views’; our intentions; our communication with others; the actions we take (or not); our livelihood;  the effort we put into things (too much? too little? is it misplaced?);  our ‘mindfulness’ (awareness of our situation in the present moment); and our concentration, focus or state of distraction (is multitasking such a good idea?). We can examine all these things and consider whether they add to suffering in ourselves and others, or reduce it.

Of course, most people don’t bother with any of that.     Instead of reflecting and staying calm, we allow ourselves to be caught up constantly in fight or flight mode.   We start to see everyone and everything as a threat.  And so we either fight and destroy ourselves and each other or we run away now in order to come back and fight later.    The fear and anger build up internally and externally, on all sides until we become completely controlled by them.  We seek to excuse our own violence as ‘self defence’ – and so lose all trust, humanity, communication. Fear leads to a desperate need to control  every aspect of life.   If life is meaningless, as Sartre put it, ‘hell is other people’.  But actually, it is nihilism; it is the denial of any meaning in life at all; it is mutually assured destruction. And humans are animals that have evolved to create ‘meaning’.

Western nihilism has come to believe that the individual perceived self interest (wealth and its purchased power over others) is all that matters, and that it must come at the expense of others.   It has reached the stage in Palestine, as it did in Nazi Germany, where  it even seeks to ‘justify’ genocide.    The ‘other’ is solely responsible for ‘our’ suffering and must be destroyed completely. So the Palestinians and other victims of western nihilism are denied the chance to either fight or flee.   But they and those who care about them can never be eliminated altogether, so the cycle of fear, anger, hatred and violence continues.

Our real enemy is our own fear. We are not really separate from each other: the air you breathe out, I breathe in. Your suffering is my suffering.  Your happiness is my happiness.     People and planet can support us.   Humans are naturally social animals, and we co-operate, all the time, in every situation.    That co-operation is necessary and also (ultimately) voluntary –  ‘manufactured consent’ through fear-mongering is not sustainable for very long because it inevitably creates enemies.   There are those ( ‘Masters of War’) who tell themselves they can play and profit from both sides in a conflict, divide and rule, and walk away with absolute power. They are fooling themselves and those who believe their endless lies.   Sooner or later the disempowered will withdraw their ‘consent’ and unite to fight them.   And there will be nowhere for them to flee to. When that happens we might do well to keep a good distance.

Nature is only red in tooth and claw to maintain its balance, and it naturally evolves more and more biodiversity to make that balance finer and less destructive overall.   Humans are part of nature, with the same biology.    We can accept our limitations as living beings, and also recognise that our suffering cannot be reduced by inflicting it on others.  In the ultimate dimension there is no suffering or death, because we are all simply electrons moving in space, combining and recombining. The cloud becomes rain, the rain becomes the river, the river becomes the ocean, the ocean evaporates to form clouds. All these things are just manifestations of water.

Let’s learn from nature.  Instead of running in fear to fight or flee we can invoke the ‘reset and digest’ parasympathetic system. This is what mindfulness does. And with mindfulness of what works and what does not, we can reduce or fear and start to co-operate with other people and nature for the good of all.    Your suffering and happiness are not separate from mine.   There’s plenty of both available so we can reduce the need for fight or flight, access our rest and digest system, and work together to create a happier world for everyone and every other creature too.  

One way to do that is to sit down and calmly reflect on our own situation as objectively as possible, without being carried away by fear or feelings of guilt or inadequacy. How much of our suffering might be self-inflicted? Do we inadvertently spread it to others? Some happiness is available in every moment: can we find it?

However much money or power we think we have, it’s in our best interest to try to reduce rather than increase suffering in ourselves and others. It might be helpful to consider the elements of the ‘eightfold path’ described above.  In your own life, does you approach to each of them lead to more happiness and less suffering in yourself and others, or the opposite?  The answers might not be easy or comfortable, but self-reflection, rest and digest, might be a lot healthier for both planet and people than being caught in an endless destructive cycle of fight or flight.