Fundamental Connectedness, Differences, and Survival — Abridged version
This image represents, to me, how everyone who inhabits our planet is fundamentally connected to everyone and everything else in the Universe.
Conflict often arises when people lose sight of this fundamental (basic, intrinsic) principle of essential oneness, and instead focus on our differences. These differences include our perceptions and beliefs, social status and material wealth, group affiliations (e.g., nationality, race, gender, religion), physical appearance, etc.
When we concentrate on our similarities, on the other hand, we realize that many (most) humans love their families, are loyal to their friends, and have respect for their communities. They also desire to express moral character, do for others and learn from them, be respectful, and engage in civil conversations in which compromises are made that take into account other people’s wants and needs together with their own.
But when we concentrate on how we’re dissimilar, our thoughts of separateness can lead to judgments of who is more deserving, worthy, and righteous. These judgments are most problematic when people who perceive themselves as superior judge another person’s differences as indicating the individual is inferior, undeserving, unworthy, unrighteous, indecent, or immoral. They may then ridicule, reject, treat with contempt, or physically harm that person.
As a result, they’re unlikely to feel empathy, tend to act without respect for societal norms and civilized rules and disregard the feelings of others. Rageful hatred and destruction of others — including cultural violence and war — due to feelings of superiority, deservingness, and feeling disrespected.
When people are continually told that they have little or no value and that they don’t matter, it’s easy to convince them that the rules of society are against them. They learn to hate themselves and act in ways that enable others to gain power and control over them.
These common, yet irrational judgments, in turn, can lead to emotions and behaviors ranging from:
- Depression and self-destruction due to feeling inferiority, worthlessness, and undeservingness to
- Rageful hatred and destruction of others — including cultural violence and war — due to feelings of superiority, deservingness, and feeling disrespected.
If our species is to survive and thrive long-term, and if we are to increase the well-being of humanity, we must do three things:
- Focus more on the universal principle of oneness by appreciating the value of cooperative diversity, compassion, and acceptance
- Prevent harmful destruction and rejection by eliminating biased judgmental beliefs about our differences, including racism
- Unite to protect ourselves from destructive behaviors of people who want to harm us, and those whose disregard and denial threaten to destroy our planet.
See https://stevebeller.medium.com/fundamental-connectedness-differences-and-human-survival-f7d51426e270 for the full version of this article.
