A Treatise on Natural Truth: Organic Truth Perspective V
Organic Truth Perspective V. Human societies and relationships are wisely based on benefit through cooperation, not selfish competition.
Humans are not the only "social animals" on the planet. A sense of natural cooperation is found in many species, and in humans, it has been crucial to our survival and success since our beginning. We must not think of human cooperation in terms of a "good idea" that a few lone humans had one day, who then introduced the notion of cooperation; the reality of cooperation is a natural, innate part of the human being.
We cannot live on our own. There are no true "hermits". Even hermits were born helpless, in need of a human mother or parent to take care of him, and those mothers or parents were in turn dependent on a chain of relationships and other persons aiding in some manner, aiding both her own life and her efforts to sustain a child. It is impossible to characterize a human being's origins or life in terms of aloneness. As we have seen, it is impossible to look at the world that humans inhabit in terms of aloneness- humans have never been alone, and will never be alone. Hermits emerge from within a tight-knit social grouping, and, while working hard to sustain themselves alone, must depend on other beings in thousands of ways, seen and unseen.
Humans don't just gain the benefits of food and protection from cooperation with other humans; they gain social benefits, emotional benefits, and the ability to procreate within a secure, protective group. None of these factors can be minimized. A human's emotional life- and the mental well-being that it influences- is as crucial to his or her survival as food or a warm cave in winter.
A human families, clan-groups, bands, villages, tribes, and societies from the start were natural expressions of that aspect of mankind that emerges as social cooperation for benefit. It comes in terms of sharing excess resources, or even self-sacrificing to help others within one's local group-system of affection to find benefit. No human society-project was ever built up to large proportions without cooperation, and none ever endured without it.
Cooperation, in the human sense, necessarily seems to involve self-sacrifice, the natural "altruism" that is, indeed, sometimes found in certain situations. We share a communal life with all other forms of life, but we feel that communal life-force most easily and strongly with one another, in proximity with one another. An act of altruism is born, in my way of seeing, from the group life itself moving to preserve the group life. This sort of movement or act includes human beings, and operates through human beings, but cannot be said to be explained only by individual human beings.
A sense of "group life", along with its thriving through sharing and self-sacrifice, is difficult to maintain when groups become too large, and especially when they reach the vast size of populations today.
When the individual comes to feel threatened by the group (for the group has become largely anonymous to them) they react with an almost worshipful focus on the "self"- a means of bolstering and sparing the self from drowning and loss in the collective. This worshipful focus on self has been lifted up in the distorted teachings of mainstream religions in our world, and it has been enshrined in the materialistic, consumerist cultures that have become prominent.
The idol called "self apart from others" is the focus of the psychic and emotional life of many people (totally without a consideration for the social context that it was born within and which it necessarily exists within) and all which benefits the self is accorded maximum honors, and all which stands in the way of the gains or pleasures of the self is accorded villainy. The "self apart from others" also reduces its kin and family and friends to the status of objects of possession, or of features of it's own life which can either serve it or stand in its way. Gone is the sense of compassion for others, even family or kin; others, from the perspective of the "self apart from all", either serve or hinder, or they have no value because they don't affect the person one way or the other.
Every person's well-being is tied up with other persons. We heal in the presence of others. We survive through cooperation. We procreate and nurture through cooperation. We find avenues of expressing our deepest hopes, fears, and longings in interaction with others. We cannot remain unmoved while others in our societies need our assistance, and we have the power to give it. We cannot blindly compete with others for resources that all need, and accumulate more than we need, while others go without what they desperately need- though many of us do, and are despicably taught that this selfish way of life is an expression of our "freedom". But there is no freedom of any moral authenticity that is based on selfishness.
Any religious or social doctrine that teaches ideas contrary to these, on any grounds or justifications whatever, is guilty of a fundamental distortion of a basic, natural human reality.
One contrary doctrine which is commonly believed today mostly by Muslims and Christians is the idea of "individual salvation". "Look to your own soul..." the saying goes; "work out your own salvation..."- but in a world of inter-connected Persons, there is no "individual salvation". The belief that the world can go to "hell in a hand basket" but you alone can maintain your own purity and grace, is fundamentally flawed. And this common, selfish religious notion gives a powerful unconscious underpinning to institutions like capitalism- capitalism being one of the ultimate social and economical expressions of the "self apart from others."
There is no weakness in our reliance on others. There is no weakness in being a helper to others when they need it. There is no loss to self when one shares, and the loss to self that comes from self-sacrifice is immediately "made up" in the preservation and increase of the group life. Even today, in our times quite bereft of natural truths, we feel, praise, and encourage "good family members" who are generous with their kin and protective of them, and self-sacrificing for them; we recognize, on a deep level, the innate goodness of this behavior.
Socially speaking, all human resources must be tapped, utilized, and shared within a society to assure the maximization of benefit. The issue with modern day "welfare societies" is that not all human resources are being tapped- humans that could contribute to the whole of society are not doing so, but are still being rewarded and maintained by the contributions of others. A careful balance must be walked in these sorts of instances; not all human members of society have or can have the same efficacy, utility, and power to aid society as others. It is not the value of the effort of the less capable members, but the effort itself and the will to make it, that should be considered when attempting to judge who is "worthy", finally, of society's support.
Life alone is sacred and worth protecting; we must not let our appraisal of another person's life or their "ontological value" drop in response to some materialistic questions or criteria about what they "give back" or what they "produce", but we must expect everyone who is capable to contribute in whatever way they can.
Wealthier or more capable members of society will always have the honor, respect, and esteem that comes by virtue of their abilities and positions, but they will also have to sacrifice more. This is unavoidable; it is the cost of being the "best" or the most honored, or the smartest- and it always has been. In past times, (to make an example) early European "kingships" were based on kings being generous and protective to their subjects. It should be noted that I believe "kingships" and the entire concept of "kings" or "lords" or "masters" to be a distortion of the natural truth about how humans are supposed to relate to one another, but these sorts of institutions did, for reasons of distorted thinking and behaving, come into existence. And even in those times, Kings had to see to the welfare of poorer, more helpless subjects. This is what my researches have led me to understand about kingships (more like local chieftainships) before the rise of empires and nation-states in Europe, of course.
With greater power, with greater ability to affect the world or endure, comes greater responsibility to the rest of the world, and one's society. Only self-focused and self-worshiping ethics of greed and acquisition prevent the wealthy and powerful from admitting and fulfilling their duties to social groups as a whole, today.
