For hundreds of years, fueled mainly by Christianity, Western man felt like the supreme being on this planet. As far as we were concerned, animals, plants, other life forms and non-living matter existed only to be exploited by us. And not in a balanced, sustainable way, but simply as much as we could get hold of in our greed, with the help of increasingly efficient technological tools. There was no end to it, we thought.
We thought we were superior. Or actually, I shouldn’t use the past tense, because most, especially Western, people still think they are superior. The result? Plundering of the Earth. Depletion of natural resources, pollution of our living environment, and the extinction of many species of living beings because of our actions. And there is no end to our greed. Not even now that we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, having to deal with the first serious consequences of the climate disaster we have caused. And with shortages in what we long thought were inexhaustible resources, to which we believed we were entitled.
Why do we think we are superior in the first place? For hundreds of years, we had forgotten that we are just one of the many animal species on this planet. We had invented spoken and written language and started an agricultural revolution, an industrial revolution, and an automation or information revolution, and there was no other living being capable of such a thing, so we felt omnipotent. Even when we had long since gone too far and we had become the only animal species, the only kind of living being on Earth that began to endanger its own habitat, and that of most other living beings.
Many people nevertheless continue to insist that we are far more intelligent and advanced than all other living beings. They still struggle with the concept that we are just another species of animal. But one that has spread so successfully across the planet, and plunders it so efficiently, that it has become a real plague. To the point that our planet would be better off without us. Personally, I rather feel that, despite all our wonderful inventions, we are perhaps the dumbest animal species on Earth. After all, what other species destroys its own habitat? That doesn’t show much intelligence, does it?
And besides, due to a lack of knowledge and understanding – after all, we cannot easily communicate with other animal species, let alone with plants or microscopic creatures – we have no idea of the intelligence of other types of living beings. Whenever scientists discover ‘new’ smart behaviour in other species, species that have often been around for hundreds of thousands and sometimes even millions of years longer than we have, we are very surprised. As if intelligence were only reserved for the relative newcomer, humans.
If we are open to it at all, we marvel at the skills and thinking abilities of other living beings. At their superior senses and means of communication, their astonishing navigation skills, their surprising problem-solving abilities, their ultimate adaptability, at the extreme circumstances in which they manage to thrive, at their mutual interaction, their emotions, and their collaborations with other species. And yet there is still so much for us to discover in this area.
Even the internet was not invented by us: trees have been selectively sending information, warnings and food to each other for millions of years, via a complex network of underground fungal threads.
We humans are finally beginning to realize that we can learn a lot from other animal species, from plants, from other living beings, and even from inanimate matter. That species and materials that have been around for hundreds of thousands or millions of years longer than we have can provide us with the solutions to our problems, if only we are willing to ‘listen’ to them. If we stop destroying and plundering the nature around us, we can learn from that same nature how we can live sustainably from now on.
PS: and then a small group of top plunderers, who have lost their way, can also stop their money-devouring search for a future ‘livable’ planet for humanity. After all, we already live on the most ideal planet for us: the one where we were born! It is so much easier, cheaper and less polluting to make our own planet sustainably ‘livable’ again for every living being.