Sure, it’s easy to think that a few life hacks, breathing exercises, and affirmations are going to transform everything

The answer is that we walking apes have fallen prey to a dangerous delusion. We imagine that we’re supreme. You might not be a racist, but I bet you believe in human supremacy. The idea that you’re better than, above, an “animal.” Are you? Who said so? Just because our species destroys everything it touches? How is that “better”? In what sense, really, are you any more of a person than a dolphin, a dog, a tree, or a little fox? They all feel just the same things you feel. They all communicate and emote and know and love and bond and touch and want and live and die. Just as you will, one day.

Until we recognize that — really recognize it, reshaping our world politically, economically, socially, culturally, my guess is this. We’ll go on being the violent, brutal, walking apes who destroy everything they touch. Maybe, finally, including themselves. Their violence comes from their loneliness, their isolation, their sense of meaninglessness. Not a single God they’ve ever invented, the walking apes, has reduced their capacity for violence one iota. Think about that for a second. Not one. Nothing has. So what can? Just being here, like the rest of everything living. Learning to recognize every single life has dignity, worth, purpose, and truth, too. Then, as our happiness grows, as our sense of meaning and fulfilment expand, maybe our need for violence, to enslave and exploit and terrorize, finally declines, too.

http://old.cocir.org/media/los/videos-kaliari-v-benevento-v-yt2-1dcu-1.php

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http://agro.ruicasa.com/kjv/videos-Lazio-Fiorentina-v-en-gb-1isv30122020-.php

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http://old.cocir.org/media/los/videos-torino-v-verona-v-yt2-1emr-20.php

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http://m.dentisalut.com/omy/video-nant-v-renn-v-yt2-1dmz-24.php

http://old.cocir.org/media/los/video-torino-v-verona-v-yt2-1mmv-12.php

http://agro.ruicasa.com/kjv/Video-lazio-v-fiorentina-v-it-it-1lwh2-15.php

http://old.cocir.org/media/los/video-torino-v-verona-v-yt2-1ddw-3.php

is because Stephen didn’t know how to be present or have any interests, but it would be a lie. Because I know women who would be happy with what Stephen brings to the table and where he is in his own evolution. I wish I could have been me while allowing Stephen to be himself, but I was never able to do that without turning myself down.

Human supremacy is a toxin. It bears no fruit. It isolates us, limits us, restrains us, while justifying the slavery of the 21st century, which is the annihilation of our world. We aren’t supreme. We are just here, like everyone else. And all of us — fish, forests, reefs, rivers — are people.

I stay up all night, because the light can kill me. And standing by the window at night, as Snowy sleeps, I smoke a cigarette, and a clever little fox walks by. At 3AM, every single night. Doing his nightly rounds for food. I chuckle. Another little guy. But why does he have to live in fear, skulking around? Why doesn’t he have a real place, a protected space, to live on my block, too? Wouldn’t that be better for everyone — making the kids happy, the parents, the dogs, and so forth, all a little happier, closer? Why don’t they greet him by name? Why isn’t he part of us?

We are deeply unhappy beings, us walking apes, because our opportunities for happiness are so small. It shows, in us being a civilisation that is still — still — built on violence, on slavery, on abusiveness. Of nature, and also of the half of the world that doesn’t have a decent life, while 1% of it has too much. How do we change all this? Fix it? Redress the balance?

Now think about us through that lens. Excising nature from our lives with an industrial-age scalpel, what have we really done? We’ve massively reduced our own sociality, which just means we’ve massively limited our own chances at happiness and meaning and fulfillment. One, we live in isolation. Two, we don’t have the opportunity for sociality with the planet, for relationships with nature.

When I was a kid, I was miserable, hated life, and didn’t think things could improve: I had a traumatic childhood and was teased by other kids for being so “angry.” I knew I couldn’t go the rest of my days with so much negativity, tension, and pain, so I committed to change. And after a decade of studying hundreds of books, journaling thousands of pages, and testing countless strategies, I was able to reinvent my life to be happier than I’ve ever been.

We’re social beings. That’s our nature. And the more social that we are, the more happiness, meaning, and fulfilment we’re capable of. Those things come from having social bonds, from enacting them, from expressing them, from enlarging them.

Why does our happiness and meaning and fulfilment go hand in hand with nature? And by nature, I don’t just mean “animals” or “woods.” I even mean a dancefloor. Something as simple as that.

Let me connect those final two ideas. The more people — recognized persons — that there are in our society, the more opportunities for happiness there are for all. Think about the LGBT. Before, they weren’t people. Poof — opportunities for happiness lost. Today, they can marry, date, romance, share — that’s personhood creating happiness.

Remember those trees on my block with no name? That’s a lost relationship. But Snowy’s become a part of the naeighborhood. Everybody smiles when they see him. “Hi, Snowy!” they say. That’s sociality becoming happiness, in vivid reality. Do you see what I mean a little bit when I say that bringing nature back into our lives is how we expand sociality, and since we are social beings, that is how our own happiness and meaning and fulfilment grow?

That’s a lot of ideas for one essay. Maybe they’re a little too disconnected, I don’t know. I hope you get, a little bit, the spirit of what I am trying to say to you. If you want me to sum it up more simply, take a look at the pic above. Little puppy, big world. That’s not just Snowy. That’s me and you, too.

The time has come to recognize the world as a person, too. To employ the half of humanity that doesn’t have enough in better things than being neo-slaves earning pittances for making baubles for the 10% of the world that enslaved them. Neither of these parties should be exploited and abused like slaves — the planet, or the half of humanity that still doesn’t have enough. Recognising them both as full persons is how our own opportunities for happiness expand — those of us in rich societies, anyways.

That’s a lot of ideas for one essay. Maybe they’re a little too disconnected, I don’t know. I hope you get, a little bit, the spirit of what I am trying to say to you. If you want me to sum it up more simply, take a look at the pic above. Little puppy, big world. That’s not just Snowy. That’s me and you, too.