It's all about perspective isn't it? The rule of the Jungle is "Eat or be Eaten." The reality is that we Eat and are eaten. It isn't a competition but a collaboration, a dependance, a relationship and an undeniable truth.
In America, we seem to have embraced competition as our driving force. Our economics are based on it, our recreation is steeped in it, even our educations are now ruled by it, and sadly our religions seem to be of this mind too. The only problem I have with this is that in competition there is always a loser as well as a winner.
If the rule of the jungle is the standard by which we operate, then how do we justify the simple fact that we all die eventually. One way might be to step back and take a wider view, to look at the success of the race as opposed to the individual. Ahhhh, now we are getting somewhere. Our race has progressed and now the lions and tigers and bears, (oh my!) are moved down the food chain, though we don't really eat them, but they are threatened by man and man's technology.
The wider view would also have us see that the advance of man and technology has allowed us to be at the top of the food chain, it has also threatened the other links on the chain, lions, tigers and bears included, and that with out those other links, it ceases to be a chain. We do not, have not, and cannot as far as we can tell, exist independent of the rest of the natural world. What we do unto it we do unto ourselves. It will take a wider, more patient view, a less egotistical view to see this but once it becomes apparent, it will be as if we suddenly stepped back and where only then able to understand the scale of that thing we were standing next to.
The reality is we are not in a competition with the rest of the flora and fauna of the planet, or with the rest of creation. The reality is that we are in league with the rest of creation and dependent on it for the sake of all creation.
For ages man has been working to remove himself from this undeniable fact of being a part of something greater than ourselves. From taking our bodily wastes, our household waste, and our own bodies, after they have served us, out of the system, we have desperately attempted to separate us, from the rest. In the end, in a longer measure of time than just one human life, even those things that we have directed away from the natural cycles will eventually be reunited with the rest of the decay and rebirth, life and death that is our reality.
When we have attempted to work around, or outside, or in spite of the reality of the cycles of nature, we have always created some kind of problem for ourselves and others. The problems always seem to be greater issues to resolve than the original one that spurred our "innovation".
One example, an easy one, is transportation. The cheap fossil fuel that we use has created a huge problem that can be seen in the health of the air, earth and water as well as in our own personal health. The previous methods of transport, horses, sail boats, human locomotion, all worked. Their impact was not threatening to the life as a whole and in some ways supported it. But, we wanted faster and farther. Never grateful, never satisfied, never happy now.
If one of us suffers, then we are all less for it. True progress would not come in the way of faster, and farther for some, but might be more inclusive of all. Isn't that what the foundations of our beliefs say? Equality for all. All are loved by God. Doesn't the law of the jungle just reduce our existence to something like a football game for the Creator to watch? Haven't our beliefs in the nature of God's creation been more like that of an artistic work rather than sporting event?
We live and die and after us there is other life. This is what we know, what we can witness as reality. The scramble to compete becomes an uninformed and pointless path when seen with a lens that looks beyond our personal existence and realizes our connectedness to all things, before, now and in the future.
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