A human being is a part of the whole called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. - Albert Einstein
In this coming year and with National Bird Day on the horizon, how might we enlarge our circle of compassion? How can we ask others to bring parrots into their sphere of concern and out of cages? Is it a matter of our reasoning others, and presenting just the facts? It turns out that reasoning and arguments are but just one tool for bringing care and justice into the world and for addressing the Parrot Crisis.
My spouse, a One Earth Conservation Board Member and a Unitarian Universalist minister spoke of reason recently during a sermon from which I summarize, through the lens of parrot conservation, below (the full sermon can be heard here embedded in a recording of the entire Sunday service). He concludes his sermon with:
In the end, reason is our only hope.
It is slow, and it is plodding, and it is pretty useless for day-to-day moral decision-making, where our emotional habits of right and wrong guide us, and our biases are just consistent enough to lend us an appearance of integrity.
How slow is reason? We learn our moral and emotional habits from our society, our community. It’s our socialization, and it is passed down. For reason to successfully call into question a moral habit may take generations. That’s how slow reason is. Firm moral habits widely held 200 years ago upheld slavery. Those of 150 years ago denied women the right to vote. Those of 50 years ago denied marriage equality to same-sex couples. Those of 10 years ago tacitly accepted the public presence of Confederate monuments. Are darker and lighter skinned humans so different that it’s reasonable for the latter to enslave the former? Why shouldn’t women vote? Why shouldn’t gay people marry and have family lives? Why do we still have Confederate monuments? [Why do we capture and place in captivity wild animals for our own pleasure?]
Repeatedly pressing such questions eventually shows us that our strongest convictions aren’t so strong in a different set of circumstances [and at different times], and what seems like ironclad logic is probably an illusion of rationalization. So let us hold our own opinions with humility. Don’t believe what you think.
Second, relatedly, let us try to have empathy for those with whom we disagree. Yes, their brains have built-in biases. Our brains were built the same way and are just as biased, so let us seek to replace the urge to be right with the call to love. And let us try – not all the time, but sometimes – to take the time to take the slow road of entertaining hard questions of whether our own most precious moral intuitions really are justified.
My spouse is not saying that inactive love is the key to freeing parrots from cages. We need active love and hope to reduce the harm to them as individuals, to populations, to ecosystems, and to humans when we trade of parrots is conducted. The quick action of our moral intutions is necessary to urgently address the Parrot Crisis but it is not enough. The needed growing awareness and changing behavior is a slow road and comes from asking hard questions of all of us caught in systems that beg for transformative thinking and action.
Let us not refrain from asking one another to look at the harm our lives are enmeshed within, seeing one another as worthy others, and asking how this one conversation, this one thought, and this one action can be transformative in this moment. Such interactions can increase our narrow views into “bigger care” as Tom Atlee expounds in his blog and a recent poem where the nest he refers to is a place where more beings are cared for and welcomed as inherently beautiful.
But there’s always more to know
in this and all the rest.
So let us learn, and let us Go
and Make a Bigger Nest.
`
We will be highlighting courses in January and February that help us understand the Parrot Crisis, help us engage in transformative conversations and actions, and can show us how we can hold each other in love and empathy as we do so. In the meantime, for the coming year, may your nest of love and care be filled with the many beings and lined with feathers of hope.
Comments