The recent death of British anthropologist Jane Goodall was, I think, an instance of genuine global sadness. Which is pretty rare considering how few people have such international recognition and popular appeal. Goodall spent decades doing groundbreaking study of chimpanzees (as I saw in National Geographic magazine as a child). When that concluded, instead of retiring she dedicated herself to traveling around the world promoting wildlife conservation and awareness of the climate crisis, as she was doing in Los Angeles where she died at age 91.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that we are in need of new stories and I believe Jane Goodall was one who embodied that awareness. She rejected the traditional stories about what women could do in her field, and she rejected the accepted scientific stories about who chimpanzees were and how to study them. And while she certainly didn’t renounce her British heritage, she lived as a citizen of the world and urged others to do the same, embracing our oneness both with all humanity and with all our fellow earthly creatures.

There are countless ways that we identify ourselves, both to others and in our minds to ourselves. Some are objective: height, weight, gender, hair and eye color, etc. Yet even these measurable characteristics often have a value attached, i.e. we view some as better than others. We want to be lean but not skinny, tall but not too tall, and perhaps we would prefer our eyes or hair be different colors than they are.

Then there is the Jewish morning prayer, “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe who has not created me a woman.” This is just one (notorious) example of how we judge various aspects of our identity as better than those of others. We often use identifying characteristics not just to distinguish ourselves from others but also to judge others and boost our sense of self-worth.

Such habits begin almost from birth. Children are judged by adults as better or worse than others for countless reasons, and children then to do same with their peers. Schooling, of course, is notorious for this but even more damaging are instances within the family. Few if any of us enter adolescence or adulthood without acquiring some kind of message in our head that says, “There’s something wrong with me” or “I’m not as good as other people.”

Unfortunately, then, we carry this tendency into adulthood. Our ego supports itself by attributes we view positively and enhancing them whenever possible (“I’m rich but I want to become richer”). Our ego also promotes itself by demeaning the attributes of others that it views negatively (like that prayer above). This then becomes the basis for the divisiveness and strife that characterizes our world today: sexism, racism, agism, classism, nationalism, homophobia, and the conflicts between people of different religions, politics, ethnicity, languages, etc.

Jane Goodall saw our cultural identities, what’s called “cultural speciation”, as the age-long blockage to our maturity as human beings and the barrier waiting to be overcome. In her book Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, she writes:

Cultural speciation had been crippling to human moral and spiritual growth. It had hindered freedom of thought, limited our thinking, imprisoned us in the cultures into which we had been born … these cultural mind prisons…. Cultural speciation was clearly a barrier to world peace. So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the ‘global village’ we would propagate prejudice and ignorance.

And as Goodall and others have shown, it is our sense of species superiority, our belief that being human somehow gives us the privilege to abuse other species for our selfish needs and whims, that is now wreaking havoc across the planet.

Appealing to our egos to somehow to do better, to treat other humans more equitably and nonhuman life as well, will only have limited value, however. Our egos are the problem. The ego’s sense of value is derived from what sets it apart and it is forever on the watch for other egos threatening its status.

But fundamentally, we are not our individual egos. We are all, in fact, expressions of the One—call it God, Self, Truth, Life, or whatever you like. So, our oneness with all others and all living things is far more important than what sets us apart. This has been the core teaching of spiritual sages and seers around the world for millennia.

It is not something we learn in a book but is the result of a spiritual awakening to our true self, our true identity. This is why this awareness is growing so slowly in our human community, since it is so contrary to our natural egoic inclination.

It was at the heart of Jesus’ teaching but quickly became muddled by those who followed him. For this reason, we are startled by the notion that he was being quite literal when he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Because it is only by love that we recognize that the light within another person is the same light within us.

Writing a few decades later, for Paul, this was the most important result of knowing the risen Christ. In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul declares that being baptized into the new Christian community breaks down all the barriers that separate one human from another.

For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Of course, this startling vision was too much for the early church to handle and it became as rife with human division as any other institution. But that vision, brought to life in dozens of gospel stories of Jesus’ welcome of all who came to him, has remained, however dim, as an inspiration and guide ever since. Today, the crisis of our planet makes that seeing that vision more critical than ever.

Jane Goodall did not identify with any particular religion. She did, however, experience both her years in the jungle and her years of global travel as deeply spiritual. That shines through in the poem she wrote, included in Reason for Hope, called “The Old Wisdom.” For Goodall, the “global village” was no cliché but an awareness of the reality that binds us and all things together and binds us to our eternal Source. It is a “new story” about ourselves and the world in which we live, and which can give us all hope.

When the night wind makes the pine trees creak
And the pale clouds glide across the dark sky,
Go out my child, go out and seek
Your soul: The Eternal I.

For all the grasses rustling at your feet
And every flaming star that glitters high
Above you, close up and meet
In you: The Eternal I.

Yes, my child, go out into the world; walk slow
And silent, comprehending all, and by and by
Your soul, the Universe, will know
Itself: the Eternal I.

 

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