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Finding Relationship

Seeking meaningful relatedness is one of the primary drives of our existence.

In his summary of Social Neuroscience, “Social,” Matt Lieberman presents overwhelming evidence that our nature is essentially collaborative and empathic. These are the most significant survival traits that have enabled us to achieve what we have.

Meaningful interaction and relatedness with others are so important to us that without them, we die off.

In “The Age of Empathy”, primatologist Frans De Waal reaches similar conclusions.

Rutger Bregman’s exposé of what he calls the “veneer theory” of human nature in “Humankind” reveals the idea that the notion that there is only a thin covering of civilization on top of a fundamentally vicious and selfish animal is wrong.

People have to be trained to mistreat each other. They have to be traumatized and brainwashed into hatred. When they are, their lives are miserable, with barely repressed guilt and shame at what they have done following them everywhere they go, exploding as rage and hatred once again.

This is a disease that can be undone. It is not a “natural” state. If survival is genuinely the most significant driver of life, then what we see right now is that overcoming this disease is an existential necessity.

We can do better. We can become united as we need to be to deal with the systemic problems we now face.

We are at that crossroads.