Community in the Time of COVID – Meet us May 5 in the LiveStream
Community –
in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures –
is the smallest unit of health.
– Wendell Berry
Here, in the middle of the making-it-up-as-we-go-along, there are as many versions of improvisation as there are people. Nonetheless, something coheres. We continue, mostly and with enough generality, to make it from one day to the next joining together in support of the best interest of all. Headlines would have us think otherwise. But the natural procession of life, and in particular, the life of our species these days, continues consistent with the facts of evolutionary biology. As it turns out, these facts have something important to show us about human nature. About how nature is right here for our guidance, reassurance, and reliable companionship.
On May 5, we’ll be offering our second livestream Full Ecology Deep Dive – this time our conversation will focus on these evolutionary truths. Because we’re still piloting the format, this livestream is free and open to all. You can send us a note here and we’ll make sure you have the sign-in information for Zoom. Some of you may have Zoom-fatigue, but know you can join in just to listen. Questions and comments by chat or by voice will be optional, but welcome as part of true conversation.
Join in Here
A fundamental fact of emolutionary biology has been that cooperation is vital to survival. The deeper investigation into the evolutionary progression of our own species is revealing that we’ve only made it to this point in human experience – weird and fraught as it is with judgment and disagreement – because, most essentially and reliably, we humans are cooperative. These days social media and news outlets leave the impression of human community as the Keystone Cops meet Mr. Burns. Nonetheless, in the mahem with its real threats to individual lives, to families, towns and cities; we press on. Making it one day to the next because of the same unheralded acts of cooperation that have sustained our species since we first collected in camps and villages.
Join us for the conversation on May 5. And make sure to check out our 15-minute recorded Monthly Update here.
None of us can make sense alone as well as we can together.
I couldn’t agree with you more! This is the bedrock of my own understanding. Nature’s resilience, and that demonstrated by her animals, birds, plants, is a continual source of deep inspiration for me. Compared to nature, our human response to SURVIVAL ISSUES seems way over the top!
As Shakespeare famously said: ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.’
Perhaps we should say, it has the POTENTIAL to do so, and always has, and always will have. If we contemporary humans are not too arrogant to learn from nature, as did the First Peoples of North America.