Integrating A New Awareness Of Human Nature

I'd like to share an idea I've been working on. I am not satisfied with our current notions of the nature of the human species. As someone used to viewing problems from a "large" systems approach, it doesn't make sense to think we know how to resolve global climate change and other impending ecological crises without focusing on what it is about our species that allows us to ignore the damage we may be doing to our life support system.

Two years ago, a close family member had a stroke, from which they have recovered wonderfully. However, during a period of around 10 days, this loved one basically had their central processing unit shut down. They functioned largely at the basic level of an ape, concerned about being safe and pain-free, not being hungry, being physically impulsive and unable to communicate effectively. This experience helped me solidify my sense that humans, indeed, are more ape-like than we seem to care to recognize.

Anthropologists have been telling us about our similarities to other primate species, but it hasn't seemed to sink in very far into our awareness. In thinking about our inability to address global climate change, it became obvious to me that our primate nature plays a major role in our collective and individual challenges in life - from relationships with the opposite sex, to finding a pecking order at work or at home, to not being so obsessed with television, tools and toys, to getting carried away with nearly every concept or material good we find or create.

So, what is keeping us from understanding that we are absolutely wonderful, brilliant beings, but are substantilly primates with naturally upgraded processors and speech synthesizers? Actually, creationism would seem to stand in the way of accepting ourselves as primates, holding that we are divine beings rather than "animals." Perhaps that old paradigm plays a role in our difficulties with resolving to curtail global climate change and even war. If god demands perfection from us, we can not succeed, so we become frustrated and shamed, which only makes human activity more quirky and potentially destructive.

So, please let me know what you think of this idea. It is not a new one, but is there some relevance to our efforts at curbing potential ecological crises? Please email me at divineprimates@aol.com or visit my blog at www.divineprimate.zaadz.com/blog.