Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

by Jane Goodall

That moment, a suddenly captured moment of eternity, was perhaps the closest I have ever come to experiencing ecstasy, the ecstasy of the mystic. How could I believe it was the chance gyrations of bits of primeval dust that had led up to that moment in time—the cathedral soaring to the sky; the collective inspiration and faith of those who caused it to be built; the advent of Bach himself; the brain, his brain, that translated truth into music; and the mind that could, as mine did then, comprehend the whole inexorable progression of evolution?

Since I cannot believe that this was the result of chance, I have to admit anti-chance. And so I must believe in a guiding power in the universe—in other words, I must believe in God.

I believed in the spiritual power that, as a Christian, I called God. But as I grew older and learned about different faiths I came to believe that there was, after all, but One God with different names: Allah, Tao, the Creator, and so on. God, for me, was the Great Spirit in Whom “we live and move and have our being.” There have been times during my life when this belief wavered, when I questioned—even denied—the existence of God. And there have been times when I have despaired that we humans can ever get out of the environmental and social mess which we have created for ourselves and other life-forms on the planet. Why is the human species so destructive? So selfish and greedy and, sometimes, truly evil? At such times I feel there can be no underlying meaning to the emergence of life on earth. And if there is no meaning, doesn’t this suggest, as a bitter New York skinhead once put it, that the human species is simply an “evolutionary goof”?

How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.

Indeed, mine was the very best kind of childhood: because every penny mattered, everything that was extra such as an ice cream, a journey on a train, a cinema, was a treat, exciting, to be treasured and remembered. If only everyone could be blessed with such a childhood, such a family. How different, I believe, the world would be.

Above all, she had a horror of going to bed without making peace with those around her. There are always little upsets, minor rows, when many people live together—these should be resolved before bedtime; “Let not the sun set on thy wrath” she would quote.

I think that is why the words of Walter de la Mare strike home when he bids us “Look thy last on all things lovely every hour.”

REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM (Lines written after reading the philosophy of Hume) Now if you take an orange And hold it in your hand, It isn’t really there at all— Or so I understand. A sensationalist will prove to you That though you know it’s there, It’s only just sensations Of which you are aware. Seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, Sensations he will call, And all these things exist in you Not in the fruit at all. “Now eat it!” he may say to you, “Sensation once again.” (Though since he says it isn’t there To eat would seem in vain!) But still you feel he must be wrong And so you will persist, And tell him plainly you’re quite sure That matter does exist. “It can’t be seen or touched or heard And so it can’t be known, So why assume it’s there at all When truth can ne’er be shown?” Thus he’ll reply, and after that Maybe he will declare That you are only his sensation And so you can’t be there. “But I’m as real as you!” you cry— To this he must agree, And so maintains that he himself Is unreality. It follows thus that everything Which you would say exists, Is non-existent and unreal To the sensationalists. And therefore I will cease to write Since I cannot be here, And none can ever read these lines For nobody is there!

To paraphrase what Eleanor Roosevelt once said: people are like tea bags; you never know how strong they are until you dump them in boiling water.

Yet this was my idea of hell: The margins of my Soul pressed each on each And I was naught. And yet assigned, as nothing, Existence to the end of time.

Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God (Job 13, verse 4).

Words can enhance experience, but they can also take so much away. We see an insect and at once we abstract certain characteristics and classify it—a fly. And in that very cognitive exercise, part of the wonder is gone. Once we have labeled the things around us we do not bother to look at them so carefully. Words are part of our rational selves, and to abandon them for a while is to give freer reign to our intuitive selves.

For we are human-bound, imprisoned within our human perspective, our human view of the world. Indeed, it is even hard for us to see the world from the perspective of cultures other than our own, or from the point of view of a member of the opposite sex.

There are really only two ways, it seems to me, in which we can think about our existence here on earth. We either agree with Macbeth that life is nothing more than a “tale told by an idiot,” a purposeless emergence of life-forms including the clever, greedy, selfish, and unfortunately destructive species that we call Homo sapiens—the “evolutionary goof.” Or we believe that, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, “There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth.” In other words, a plan, a purpose to it all.

And we, and only we, have developed a sophisticated spoken language. For the first time in evolution, a species evolved that was able to teach its young about objects and events not present, to pass on wisdom gleaned from the successes—and the mistakes—of the past, to make plans for the distant future, to discuss ideas so that they could grow, sometimes out of all recognition, through the combined wisdom of the group.

One of the most significant facts established about human behavior, as it relates to warfare and other acts of violence against conspecifics, is the following: cultural evolution permits the development of pseudospeciation. Pseudospeciation, simply defined, means the transmission of individually acquired behavior from one generation to the next within a particular group. Over time this leads to the collective culture (the customs and traditions) of that group. Pseudospeciation (or cultural speciation as I prefer) in humans means, among other things, that the members of one group (the in-group) may not only see themselves as different from members of another group (the out-group), but also behave in different ways to group and nongroup individuals. In its extreme form, cultural speciation leads to the dehumanizing of out-group members, so that they may come to be regarded almost as members of a different species. This frees group members from the inhibitions and social sanctions that operate within the group, and enables them to direct acts toward “those others” which would not be tolerated within the group. Slavery and torture at one end of the scale, ridicule and ostracism at the other.

It was particularly shocking for me to reflect on the extent to which different religious groups had, from the beginning, tried to force their beliefs on others. The number of wars throughout history that had been fought over religious issues was staggering. The so-called holy wars—fighting over whose god was the God—had resulted in an incomprehensible amount of suffering inflicted on unbelievers by those who had the upper hand at the time.

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” He also advised: “Judge not that ye be not judged.” Similar expressions of tolerance and inclusiveness can also, of course, be found in Eastern scriptures.

But it was obvious that unless we “walked the talk,” racism, bigotry, and fanaticism, as well as hatred, arrogance, and bullying, would continue to flourish. (As, indeed, they have.)

Only we humans inflict physical or mental pain on living creatures deliberately despite—even because of—our knowledge of the suffering involved. Only we, I concluded, are capable of evil. And in our evilness we have designed a variety of tortures that have, over the centuries, caused unbelievable agony to millions of living, breathing human beings.

If our motivation to perform charitable acts is simply to advance our social standing, or to lessen our inner discomfort, should we not conclude that our action, in the final analysis, is nothing more than selfish? Some might argue thus—and in some cases it could be true. But I believe it is wrong—dangerous even—to accept reductionistic arguments of this sort that denigrate all that is most truly noble in our species.

Science does not have appropriate tools for the dissection of the spirit.

In a flash of “outsight” I had known timelessness and quiet ecstasy, sensed a truth of which mainstream science is merely a small fraction. And I knew that the revelation would be with me for the rest of my life, imperfectly remembered yet always within. A source of strength on which I could draw when life seemed harsh or cruel or desperate.

Albert Einstein, undeniably one of the greatest scientists and thinkers of our time, had sustained a mystical outlook on life that was, he said, constantly renewed from the wonder and humility that filled him when he gazed at the stars.

Human Destiny, written in 1937 by the French doctor-turned-philosopher LeCompte DuNuoy.

Homo sapiens, modern man, has walked the planet for only a couple of million years. And so, although there always has been and still is a great deal that is clearly unethical and often downright evil in human practices everywhere, a growing number of people around the globe are more aware than ever before of what is wrong, what needs to change.

But suddenly it seemed clearer, and I thought I understood. The “self” that we had to love was not our ego, not the everyday person who went around behaving thoughtlessly, selfishly, sometimes unkindly, but the flame of pure spirit that is in each and every one of us, that is part of the Creator; what the Buddhists call Kernal. That which is loved, I realized, can grow.

The shame I felt was because I was human. Very gently JoJo reached out through the bars and touched my cheek where the tears ran down into my mask. He sniffed his finger, looked briefly into my eyes, went on grooming my wrist. I think Saint Francis stood beside us, and he too was weeping.

If we accept that humans are not the only animals with personalities, not the only animals capable of rational thought and problem solving, not the only animals to experience joy and sadness and despair, and above all not the only animals to know psychological as well as physical suffering, we become (I hope) less arrogant, a little less sure that we have the inalienable right to make use of other life-forms in any way we please so long as there is a possible benefit for human animals. We are, of course, unique but we are not so different from the rest of the animal kingdom as we used to suppose. This knowledge leads to humility, to a new respect for the other amazing animal beings with whom we share this planet, especially those with complex brains and social behavior about whom we know the most, such as dogs and cats and pigs. Even if we only suspect that other living beings have feelings that may be similar to our own, or not too dissimilar to our own, we should have doubts about the ethics of treating those beings as mere “things” or “tools” for our own human purposes.

If we raised humans for medical experiments, would they be less human and suffer less and matter less than other humans? Were human slaves less able to feel pain, grief, and despair simply because they were born into slavery?

We need only to list some of those who have spoken out for kindness and compassion toward animals to realize how many of the truly great have been among their ranks. Albert Einstein begged us to widen the “circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Albert Schweitzer insisted, “We need a boundless ethic that includes animals too.” Mahatma Gandhi believed, “You can tell about the people of a country by the way they treat their animals.”

Pythagorus wrote: “The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent food, and offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh.”

If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution—and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity.

Yes, we are destroying our planet. The forests are going, the soil is eroding, the water tables are drying, the deserts are increasing. There is famine, disease, poverty, and ignorance. There is human cruelty, greed, jealousy, vindictiveness, and corruption.

We love to shrug off our own responsibilities, to point fingers at others. “Surely,” we say, “the pollution, waste, and other ills are not our fault. They are the fault of industry, business, science. They are the fault of the politicians.” This leads to a destructive and potentially deadly apathy. Let us remember, always, that we are the consumers. By exercising free choice, by choosing what to buy, what not to buy, we have the power, collectively, to change the ethics of business, of industry. We have the potential to exert immense power for good—we each carry it with us, in our purses, checkbooks, and credit cards.

The trouble is that we suffer—all of us—from just me-ism. “I am just one person. What I do, or don’t do, can’t possibly make any difference. So why should I bother?”

There is a powerful force unleashed when young people resolve to make a change.

Albert Schweitzer wrote: “A man who possesses a veneration of life will not simply say his prayers. He will throw himself into the battle to preserve life, if for no other reason than that he is himself an extension of life around him.”

Henri writes: “Where does a heart truly broken, a spirit hopelessly abandoned, find hope? What exists within a human being that allows for survival amidst such devastation? It must be God. …Who else could it be?”

One volunteer who was helping me at one of these sessions put her finger on it when she said: “These people are feeding you, aren’t they?” Yes, that is exactly what they are doing. I make a big effort to reach as many people in the room as possible in the hope that my message will enter their hearts as well as their minds.

And now, through experience and reflection, I believe that there was indeed a message. A very simple one: Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.

I ended with one of Albert Schweitzer’s moving prayers: “For animals that are overworked, underfed, and cruelly treated; for all wistful creatures in captivity that beat their wings against bars; for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death …and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words.”