WHY WE HUMANS NO LONGER LOVE ONE ANOTHER
Chet Shupe
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While Christmas shopping last winter, I encountered two women in a checkout line, who were out shopping together. While the first was checking out, the other looked back over her shoulder at the displays on the other side of the aisle. I stepped back a bit, and said, “I don’t want to stand between you and what you want for Christmas.”
She playfully grabbed my arm and exclaimed, “Why, I want you for Christmas.”
I replied, “I am most complimented but, if history offers any lessons, sooner or later I would disappoint you.”
Her friend, who had finished checking out said, “Don’t we all.”
That encounter provides crucial insight into virtually every problem that faces modern humans. We Homo sapiens no longer love one another—not enough to live together. We are thus deprived of “spiritual wealth,” the state of being in which we once needed each other, for survival.
Our most basic need, as social beings, is love. Why, then, is an utter lack of love endemic in our world? The culprit is our dependence on money, for survival, instead of the intimate, interdependent relationships in which mankind once thrived. Our use of money virtually eliminates any possibility for sisterly-brotherly love, which arises out of mutual need. You can’t love others, if you don’t need them: Indeed, to proclaim love in the absence of need is merely to pretend love. In a world where we depend on personal wealth to survive, sisterhoods and brotherhoods never materialize, even though the human soul still craves the unconditional love inherent to those relationships.
Unconditional love is so fulfilling that people experiencing it find contentment, in life, regardless of their material wealth. Think of love as evolution’s way of rewarding us for serving Life, through our relationships. Evolution rewards the members of socially bonded groups for taking care of each other, through sisterly-brotherly love. Without the inborn desire to place the needs of our sisters and brothers above our own, our species simply wouldn’t exist.
In our world, however, we do not depend on socially bonded groups, to survive. Instead, we depend on “sovereign” laws to protect ourselves from each other! Thus, we are not free to serve Life. Consequently, evolution has no cause to reward us with sisterly-brotherly love. This is why we moderns cannot live together.
And it begs this question: What inspired our distant ancestors to seek fulfillment in material wealth, rather than continuing to enjoy their natural state of “spiritual wealth?”
First of all, before people subjugated themselves to tribal, then civil authorities, they never sought emotional fulfillment in anything: It was implicit to their existence! Their greatest happiness was experienced when honoring their inborn sensibilities to serve life, by placing the needs of the people around them above their own. Shazam! Unconditional love, without intent!! Through service to one another, they experienced all the contentment a member of a social species can possibly know. So, when early humans turned their backs on one another—thus on life itself—by seeking pleasure in material wealth, it wasn’t by conscious choice. It occurred without anyone knowing it happened, much less how it happened. In hindsight, however, the sequence of events is clear.
When human language evolved sufficiently that people were capable of imagining what difficulties the future might bring, they became afraid of what they imagined. To secure wellbeing into the imagined future, they subjugated themselves to governments, which granted individuals the right to own things. Thus, they began living for the future, never realizing that living in the moment is the only way humans are free to be true to themselves. Once granted the right to own things, everyone had to join the fray. Otherwise, there would be nothing left for them, when the future arrived—not even a place to live! By owning things, civilized humans inadvertently severed their emotional connections to one another. Since then, humans have been trapped in a mindless rat race, having to seek contentment where it doesn’t exist—in material wealth.
Sisterly-brotherly love—the seamless intimacy and mutual dedication that once was the ridgepole of our species’ house—was no longer there to emotionally support human life. To compensate for a loveless existence, people sought meaning in progress. But, the constantly growing body of human knowledge that drives all human progress ignores a crucial fact: Trying to pin down our status throughout the unknowable future, by owning things, destroys humanity’s age-old, and most crucial, connection—sisterhoods and brotherhoods…our love for our fellow man.
The reason that humans no longer love one another is simple enough. The civilized mind, however, will argue: “We are so invested in our present way of life, there is no way to go back.” Whether true or not, in that assessment, the civilized mind is making a devastating error. It thinks it knows something that simply cannot be known: the future. That is the very mistake that severed our emotional connections to one another, thousands of years ago.
Unfortunately, I cannot tell anyone what to do. I don’t even know what to do, myself. But I do believe in knowledge. If humanity becomes generally cognizant of our distant forefathers’ simple mistake, we might figure out how to cease perpetuating the error. That would require us to surrender our designs on the future. No one knows, of course, whether that is possible. But I take comfort in the belief that, by placing our trust in the human spirit, through sisterhoods and brotherhoods, we will immediately get our spiritual lives back! If enough people become spiritually free, in this way, they will find themselves living in the moment, the key to allowing our species to return to its normal evolutionary trajectory. Then, in a surprisingly short time, the rat race that unintentionally resulted from establishing rights of ownership may cease to exist—not by intent, but because of lack of interest in the idealized future it promises.
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