Heroes Not Zombies

In Ian McGilchrist’s The Matter with Things he says we need to discover (or re-discover) the truths which unite us.

That sentence really leapt out at me and I immediately thought, yes, it seems that divisions have become deeper, that social media is used to set people against each other, to create echo chambers which exclude “the other” and that there is an unprecedented level of deception and lying.

I don’t know if the election of seemingly pathologically narcissistic politicians has brought to prominence people who either deliberately lie with ease, or who actually are unable to know they are lying.

So, yes, we could do with finding truths which can unite us.

But then I thought….you never, ever get absolutely everyone to agree what seems to be true. In a world of conspiracy theorists, religious fundamentalists and people with vested interests in power and wealth, how do we find truths which unite us all? Well, we probably can’t. But surely that’s not the point. Surely we can find truths which are more likely to unite than divide, truths which bring more of us together – in other words truths which turn the tide the opposite way and carry us towards greater togetherness.

Then I began to wonder what those truths might be….and, so far anyway, I’m thinking they mainly exist in Nature and the Cosmos.

We all look up at the same night sky, see the same Moon, see a particular set of constellations depending on where in the world we are when we look up (which reminds us that we can change what we see by putting ourselves in the shoes of others)

We all live on this one small planet, sharing the same air, water and soil. When we change the air, water or soil around us, we change what others will breathe, drink, and eat.

We see the cycles of Nature, seasons, which remind us that change is the only certainty, that transience can be beautiful, and that “this too shall pass”.

We see that, in Nature, living organisms don’t just co-exist, they interact, and often become interdependent.

We learn that all of Life on Earth depends on a wonderful synthesis of competition and collaboration.

How’s that for a start? Aren’t those truths which might unite us?

What do you think? What truths do you think can unite us?