Growing Up Out of Africa

...to know that we are one humanity and an integral part of one Earth.

Updated from a Green Pen post in April 2011. Sadly, it’s still relevant, now more than ever.

The cauldron of oil called the Middle East is aflame with passions of the oppressed and dispossessed, of fear and intolerance. Every day, bombardments of breaking news crawl by in the ticker like a weather watch, pursuing the path of an advancing firestorm: Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Syria – and spreading eastward to add fuel to ongoing fires in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

And then there are the earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, prairie fires, volcanic eruptions, floods, oil spills, and mine cave-ins: Haiti, Chile, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Gulf of Mexico (yes, Mexico!), and more. Earth is waking up and letting it be known that she is not amused.

An image keeps coming to my mind: Earth as seen from space in that famous portrait taken half a century ago by the Apollo 17 astronauts. The focus is on Africa, birthplace of Earth’s most precocious progeny to date, who descended from their hominid forebears over two million years ago. Scientists estimate that Earth, on the order of 4.5 billion years old, is about midway through her own life. Putting those 4.5 billion years on the scale of a 45-year-old, mid-life human, it’s been about 8 days since our genus homo first appeared.

In that week and a day of life, we, the infant human species, have self-multiplied to over eight billion individuals, dominated Earth, drained her of energy and resources, and committed fratricide against our own and sibling species. Particularly in the corner of Earth shown at the top edge of that same portrait. We humans have come to call it the Middle East, cradle of Western Civilization and three of its great religions. It is a region where for centuries we have been particularly adept at presumptuously staking private claim to the gifts that Earth has given us all to share.

The picture is most notable, though, for what are not there – lines in the sand! But we humans insist on drawing lines to demarcate territory and property. Imaginary, nonexistent lines in the sand – is that what we are fighting and killing over? We imagined lines into existence; we can imagine them away.

Perhaps this place where East meets West and the West was born can be the place where we humans leave our infancy and boldly pass into adulthood, as we must if we are to survive as a species. It is time to leave the make-believe behind – everything from private ownership of Earth to the nation state (which, in the eight-day time scale of homo on Earth, we imagined less than 20 seconds ago). It is time to grow up and know that we are one humanity and an integral part of one Earth, and to take our responsible place in it.