Am I missing something?

There are some of you reading this who I know are thinking, "well, he's not even got to the important stuff yet; we're not a bunch of carefree creatures romping around in the Garden of Eden, we're serious, working adults trying to make ends meet in a rough-and-tumble world; this is all a bit pie-in-sky, don't you think?"

Well, actually, no. I don't think so. What I've been trying to make clear is the fact that if we possess something that could be called "human nature", then it is something that would occur naturally, right? That makes sense to me, and if we simply look at our biological background and the resulting social constellation, it becomes clear that our "nature", if you will is to cooperate, share, mutually protect, and care for one another, and this is something we fail to recognize all too often.

The skeptics among you, of course, are ready to tell me that what those free hands, opposable thumbs and tool using and making ability is all about is ... well, what is it really? In all this talk about nature, our nature, and our innate biology, there has been no mention of trading, dealing, commerce, or economics. That's a proper observation. Truth be told, there's none to be made. We don't have any economic genes. Whether we like it or not, humans are social creatures first, economic creatures later. This is also the point that Karl Polanyi argues in his book The Great Transformation. I mention it only because the priority is what is important.

We don't, and no longer can, live in a state of original bliss. We have complicated our lives to the point where we can no longer produce, by ourselves, what we need to survive in today's world. A lot has happened since the Garden, that's for sure, but it's still us out here in reality. We humans haven't changed all that much, we have simply rearranged and reorganized our environments (which is part of our ability to adapt, it should be remembered) more than other creatures on the planet. In doing so, however, we have forgotten, or perhaps only obscured, who and what we are: social beings.

Others matter. We can do for others and others can do for us. In this way, all of us can do better than any single one of us can do. To my mind, this is a good thing. I know it all sounds rather idealistic, and perhaps even utopian, but it is a simple point of fact. Even today, with everything else buzzing around our ears, we can refocus our attention on what matters most: our family (we all have something in there that could use sorting out), our friends (we're just as fickle as they are), and our immediate community. It's a place to start, and easing any tensions or fixing anything broken there can go a long way - a very long way - toward making the big, bad world we live in a better place.

Again, how hard can this be?