For better or worse
Chaperoning my son’s nature field trip helped me realize that humans are still in the larval stage of our species’ development.
Yesterday, I chaperoned a nature field trip to a regional park with my eight-year-old son’s summer school enrichment class. We canoed on a city lake, toured an urban farm, dug in the dirt, learned about decomposing organisms, and got up close and personal with all kinds of bugs and aquatic critters. It was awesome.
As I observed nature’s creatures navigate their ecosystems in effortless harmony, I couldn’t help but feel the contrast with the dysfunctional way humans relate to the world.
Then it hit me: most of these critters are far more intelligent than we are. After all, they live in balance with their environment, while we put profits over the planet and wreak havoc in the process. Looking out across the landscape—energy-inefficient human homes, power lines humming through the sky, cars polluting the air and drowning out birdsong—I thought that if this is intelligence, it’s not very bright.
Sure, we’re clever. But clever doesn’t mean intelligent. Our “progress” tends to elevate the human ego over the greater good—namely, Mother Earth and all her creatures. And as long as ego drives our engagement with the world, our behavior will resemble that of apes and other beasts—only worse. Beasts, after all, live in harmony with their surroundings, while we disrupt and devour ours.
Watching larvae wiggle in the dirt, I thought about the pain ahead if they made it to the pupa stage of their life cycle. Transformation hurts, as things usually have to get worse before they get better.
These days, things are definitely getting worse.
Yet that gives me hope.
Humans aren’t here to cause destruction. Quite the opposite—we’re here to raise the planet’s vibrations and transform the nature of consciousness. We’re just in the larval stage of our species’ development, breaking down before the breakthrough. The pupa phase is coming.
And one day, we’ll emerge like a butterfly—the flowering of a caterpillar beyond its wildest dreams.
