A Story of Us: Relationship, Civilization, and the Living World

Come. Sit for a while.

There is a story I want to tell you.

It is not the story of one nation, one religion, one race, or one civilization.

It is the story of us.

For most of human existence, there were no corporations, countries, currencies, factories, supermarkets, or global economies.

There were people.

And people depended directly upon the living world around them.

They gathered plants, roots, fruits, nuts, seeds, fungi, and medicines. They hunted and fished where their environments and circumstances required it. They learned where water could be found, when plants emerged, where animals traveled, when seasons changed, what could be harvested, and what needed to be left alone.

But saying they simply “knew the plants” does not begin to describe the depth of that knowledge.

A plant was not merely edible or poisonous.

One part could nourish you while another could harm you.

A young shoot might be usable at one stage of growth and unsafe later.

A root might serve a completely different purpose from its leaves.

A plant might require specialized preparation before it could ever be considered food.

Pokeweed is one striking example. The plant contains toxic compounds, yet generations of people developed traditional methods of preparing very young shoots through repeated boiling and changing of the water. Modern poison control authorities still warn against eating pokeweed because improper identification or preparation can cause serious poisoning.

Think about what knowledge like this actually required.

Someone had to distinguish one species from another.

Know where it grew.

Know when it emerged.

Recognize its stages of development.

Know which portion was useful.

Know which portion was dangerous.

Know how it needed to be prepared.

Know what purpose it served.

And then preserve that information accurately enough to teach another generation.

Multiply that knowledge across hundreds of plants, fungi, animals, insects, soils, waterways, weather patterns, medicines, fibers, woods, stones, seasons, and ecological relationships.

That was not ignorance.

That was knowledge developed through generations of observation, experimentation, experience, memory, and teaching.

It was a library carried by people.

And because knowledge could mean the difference between nourishment and poisoning, medicine and injury, abundance and depletion, passing it forward mattered.

Elders taught children.

Children watched.

People practiced.

Stories preserved lessons.

Language preserved distinctions.

Knowledge remained connected to place.

A person did not merely know that a plant existed.

They understood something about its relationship to everything around it.

When does it appear?

What soil does it prefer?

What animals depend upon it?

Which part can be harvested?

When should it be harvested?

How much can be taken without destroying what will return next season?

What can replace it if it becomes scarce?

What should simply be left alone?

This was ecological literacy.

Nature was not somewhere people visited.

Nature was home.

And community was survival.

A person alone was vulnerable.

People survived because they cooperated.

Food was shared.

Knowledge was shared.

Children were cared for.

Elders carried memories.

Communities developed responsibilities toward one another.

Human civilization was built not simply through competition, but through cooperation.

Over thousands of generations, different peoples developed extraordinarily detailed knowledge of their particular environments.

There was never one Indigenous way of life.

A Cherokee community living among the forests and fertile valleys of the Southeast faced circumstances completely different from Iñupiat communities living in the Arctic.

Different environments produced different foods, technologies, practices, and relationships.

Cherokee peoples cultivated crops including corn and beans and gathered numerous wild plants for food, medicine, ceremony, and materials.

Across many Indigenous agricultural traditions, corn, beans, and squash were cultivated together in systems commonly remembered as the Three Sisters.

Wild plants were not simply weeds.

They were food.

Medicine.

Fiber.

Tools.

Materials.

Knowledge.

Animals were part of these relationships too.

Indigenous peoples hunted animals.

That should never be erased from their history.

But neither should the ethics surrounding the taking of life.

Across a number of documented Indigenous traditions, hunting was not understood simply as obtaining a commodity.

There were responsibilities.

Take what you need.

Do not kill merely because you can.

Show gratitude for the life taken.

Do not waste what has been given.

Use what you take.

Share with elders, family members, and those unable to provide for themselves.

Protect the land so animals and plants remain for those who come afterward.

These principles were not identical among every nation.

Indigenous peoples should never be reduced to one philosophy.

But variations of these ideas appear repeatedly.

Survival sometimes required taking life.

Taking life did not require treating life as worthless.

That distinction matters.

If an animal had to die so people could survive, wasting that animal could represent another kind of disrespect.

Meat became food.

Hide could become clothing or shelter.

Bone could become tools.

Sinew could become cordage.

Other materials could serve purposes that prevented what was taken from simply being discarded.

And when animal material was unnecessary, the living world provided alternatives.

Wood.

Stone.

Clay.

Fiber.

Gourds.

Shells.

Rivercane.

Plants supplied food, medicine, baskets, containers, cordage, dyes, construction materials, instruments, and countless other necessities.

Human ingenuity did not begin with industry.

People had been solving problems with the materials around them for thousands of years.

This gives us an important distinction.

Necessity and convenience are not the same thing.

Imagine an Arctic community where plant foods cannot provide sufficient nourishment throughout the year and survival historically depended heavily upon fish, caribou, seals, and other animals.

Now imagine someone thousands of miles away with access to supermarkets containing grains, beans, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fortified foods, and alternatives from around the world.

Those people are not facing the same circumstances.

Responsibility must acknowledge circumstances.

The important question is therefore not whether humans have ever killed animals.

We have.

The deeper question is this:

When must life be taken?

And when it does not need to be taken, why take it?

That question will follow us throughout this story.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

People also formed relationships far beyond their immediate communities.

Indigenous peoples were never one people.

The Hopi were not the Diné.

The Diné were not the Cherokee.

The Cherokee were not the Lakota, Zuni, Haudenosaunee, Maya, Inuit, Māori, Aboriginal Australians, or thousands of other peoples.

They possessed different languages, governments, economies, ceremonies, technologies, beliefs, alliances, rivalries, and histories.

They sometimes fought.

They also traded.

Negotiated.

Formed alliances.

Intermarried.

Shared knowledge.

Exchanged foods, medicines, technologies, materials, stories, and ideas.

In the Great Plains and surrounding regions of North America, peoples speaking different languages even shared a sophisticated sign language commonly called Plains Indian Sign Language or Hand Talk.

It allowed communication across spoken language barriers and was used in trade, diplomacy, storytelling, ceremony, and ordinary conversation.

The continent was therefore not without territories.

Nations had homelands.

Communities had hunting grounds.

Territories could overlap, shift, or become contested.

But differences did not prevent enormous networks of relationships from forming across them.

A stranger did not necessarily have to become one of your people before you could establish a relationship.

You could communicate.

Trade.

Negotiate.

Cooperate.

Become allies.

Human beings discovered something extraordinarily powerful long before modern economics attempted to describe it.

Cooperation creates possibilities that isolation cannot.

Many Indigenous knowledge systems also developed traditions emphasizing relationships among people, animals, plants, land, water, ancestors, and future generations.

Again, they were not identical.

But themes appear repeatedly.

Relationship.

Reciprocity.

Responsibility.

Community.

Gratitude.

Consequences.

What do I take?

What do I return?

What happens to others because of my actions?

What will remain for people I will never meet?

Modern biodiversity science increasingly recognizes the importance of Indigenous knowledge and governance in maintaining ecosystems.

Human beings had learned something that remains true today.

You cannot permanently separate the health of a community from the health of the world supporting it.

Then something changed the scale of human civilization.

Agriculture.

Humans had already managed landscapes and plants in sophisticated ways for thousands of years, but in several regions people increasingly domesticated plants and animals and established permanent agricultural communities.

Agriculture allowed larger and more permanent settlements.

Food could be produced.

Food could be stored.

Storage created surplus.

Surplus supported larger populations.

Larger populations created new possibilities.

Not everyone needed to spend every day obtaining food.

Someone could farm.

Someone could build.

Someone could make pottery.

Someone could weave.

Someone could work metal.

Someone could heal.

Someone could trade.

Someone could study the stars.

Someone could organize irrigation.

Someone could keep records.

Specialization increased human knowledge and productivity.

Villages became towns.

Some towns became cities.

But success created another problem.

How do thousands of people live together?

Someone had to organize irrigation.

Someone had to resolve disputes.

Someone had to coordinate construction.

Someone had to defend the community.

Someone had to decide how shared resources would be managed.

Customs became laws.

Leadership became institutions.

Institutions became governments.

Governments administered territories.

Territories became states.

As states became larger, they divided themselves into smaller administrative areas.

Provinces.

Regions.

Districts.

Counties.

Municipalities.

These divisions were tools of organization.

It is difficult to govern millions of people from one location.

Civilization was learning how to coordinate human activity on increasingly large scales.

But organization could also concentrate power.

Food could be accumulated.

Land could be controlled.

Resources could be controlled.

Authority could be controlled.

Surplus created abundance.

It also made inequality on a much larger scale possible.

Social hierarchies became increasingly pronounced in many societies.

States collected taxes and tribute.

Governments maintained armies.

Armies defended territories.

Armies also conquered territories.

Cities became kingdoms.

Kingdoms became empires.

Human conflict had existed long before states.

But states allowed human beings to organize conflict on scales previously impossible.

Meanwhile another revolution was occurring.

Accounting.

As societies grew larger, memory was no longer enough.

Who owed grain?

Who possessed livestock?

How much had been harvested?

What had been traded?

What taxes were owed?

What debts remained?

People developed increasingly sophisticated systems of recordkeeping.

Credit developed.

Debt developed.

Standardized measures of value developed.

Different forms of money developed.

Eventually coinage appeared.

Money solved a genuine problem.

It allowed value to move through increasingly complicated societies.

A farmer no longer needed to find someone who possessed exactly what the farmer wanted while simultaneously wanting exactly what the farmer possessed.

Value could be represented.

Stored.

Transferred.

Borrowed.

Taxed.

Invested.

Money became one of humanity's most powerful coordination technologies.

Trade expanded.

Roads connected settlements.

Ships connected civilizations.

Markets connected strangers.

Human cooperation could stretch across enormous distances.

But something subtle was happening.

Value was becoming increasingly abstract.

A forest could become timber.

Land could become property.

Minerals could become commodities.

Animals could become livestock.

Human effort could become labor.

Increasingly, things that once existed primarily within relationships could also be represented by prices.

Kingdoms expanded their trade.

Empires competed for territory and resources.

Commercial networks stretched across continents.

Then ocean going European powers expanded outward on an enormous scale.

They encountered peoples who already possessed governments, economies, diplomatic relationships, trade networks, agriculture, ecological knowledge, and civilizations of their own.

Some encounters involved trade.

Some involved cooperation.

Some involved conflict.

And some brought catastrophic disease.

There were occasions when Indigenous peoples helped newcomers survive environments those newcomers poorly understood.

One famous example occurred at Plymouth, where Wampanoag knowledge and assistance contributed to the survival of English colonists.

They understood the plants.

The seasons.

The soils.

The animals.

The waterways.

The place.

Knowledge accumulated across generations became the difference between surviving and dying.

But cooperation did not prevent conquest.

European powers increasingly claimed sovereignty over lands already inhabited by other peoples.

Christian European legal concepts later described collectively as the Doctrine of Discovery were used to justify claims of dominion over Indigenous lands.

Different concepts of land collided.

There was never one Indigenous concept of property.

Indigenous nations possessed territories and defended homelands.

But many Indigenous systems understood relationships and responsibilities toward land differently from European systems that increasingly treated land as something that could be surveyed, purchased, sold, inherited, and accumulated as private property.

Colonization expanded.

Land became wealth.

Resources became wealth.

Empire became wealth.

Millions of Indigenous people suffered warfare, forced displacement, disease, cultural suppression, broken agreements, and dispossession.

In what became the United States, this process continued for generations.

Treaties were negotiated.

Many were violated or imposed under enormous pressure.

The Indian Removal Act was enacted in 1830.

Native nations throughout the Southeast were pressured or forced westward.

Beginning in 1838, thousands of Cherokee were forcibly removed from their homeland in what became part of the Trail of Tears.

People died along the journey.

Similar stories unfolded in different forms across the continent.

Yet Indigenous peoples did not disappear.

They resisted.

Survived.

Adapted.

Continued speaking their languages.

Continued ceremonies.

Continued governing.

Continued protecting knowledge.

Continued raising children.

Continued being nations.

That matters.

Indigenous peoples are not simply part of humanity's past.

They are part of humanity's present.

Meanwhile the global economic system continued changing.

Commerce expanded.

Banking expanded.

Investment expanded.

Corporations expanded.

Different forms of capitalism emerged.

Private ownership and markets allowed enormous amounts of human activity to be coordinated without one central authority directing every transaction.

Innovation accelerated.

Production increased.

Trade expanded.

Wealth grew.

But competition for profit also created incentives to reduce costs, acquire resources, expand markets, and continuously increase production.

Then humanity discovered something that transformed civilization again.

Stored energy.

Coal powered machines.

Machines powered factories.

Factories manufactured quantities of goods that generations of craftspeople could scarcely have imagined.

Industrialization accelerated.

Then came petroleum.

Electricity.

Internal combustion engines.

Industrial chemistry.

Railroads.

Automobiles.

Airplanes.

Modern medicine.

Telecommunications.

Computers.

Satellites.

The internet.

Humanity acquired extraordinary power.

We illuminated the night.

Crossed oceans in hours.

Communicated instantly across continents.

Prevented diseases that once killed millions.

Built cities containing tens of millions of people.

Observed hurricanes from space.

Split atoms.

Placed machines on other worlds.

Human ingenuity accomplished things our ancestors could scarcely have imagined.

But every increase in power increased the scale of our consequences.

Industrial civilization demanded enormous quantities of matter and energy.

Forests were cleared.

Mountains were mined.

Rivers were redirected.

Wetlands disappeared.

Fossil carbon that had remained underground for millions of years entered the atmosphere.

Factories produced goods.

Goods traveled around the world.

Advertising encouraged consumption.

Consumption supported production.

Production supported employment.

Employment provided income.

Income enabled consumption.

Economic growth increasingly became one of the primary measurements by which nations judged success.

And somewhere inside this enormous machine, relationships became harder to see.

The person purchasing a shirt might never meet the person who made it.

The person using electricity might never see where the energy originated.

The person purchasing food might never see the farm producing it.

The person buying meat might never see the animal.

The person throwing something away might never see where it eventually went.

Modern civilization connected humanity technologically while simultaneously making many consequences of our choices invisible.

We even developed an interesting word.

Garbage.

But nature has no place called away.

Everything goes somewhere.

The Earth receives it.

The water receives it.

The atmosphere receives it.

Other living beings receive it.

Eventually we receive it.

Our relationship with animals changed dramatically as well.

Humans had hunted and consumed animals for millions of years.

Agricultural societies domesticated animals thousands of years ago.

But industrialization transformed the scale and the relationship.

Animals could now be bred, confined, fed, transported, slaughtered, processed, packaged, refrigerated, shipped, and sold through enormous supply chains.

The animal could disappear almost completely from the consumer's experience.

What remained was the product.

Meat.

Milk.

Eggs.

Leather.

The living being behind the commodity became easier not to see.

And this is where the old distinction between necessity and convenience returns.

A subsistence hunter looking directly at the animal whose life would sustain a family inhabited a very different relationship from someone selecting a plastic wrapped product produced by an industrial system thousands of miles away.

The question was changing.

Humanity increasingly possessed alternatives previous generations did not possess.

So the ethical question could change too.

If taking another life is necessary for survival, that presents one moral circumstance.

If taking that life is unnecessary, that presents another.

This is where veganism enters the modern human story.

Veganism does not require pretending humans never consumed animals.

We did.

Nor does it require condemning people whose environments genuinely require animal foods for survival.

It asks something much more immediate.

What should those of us with alternatives choose now?

If another sentient being can suffer, and we can reasonably live without causing some of that suffering, what responsibility follows from having that choice?

What does our food require?

What does our clothing require?

What does our entertainment require?

What does our convenience require?

Who pays the price for our choices when we do not?

Perhaps veganism is therefore part of something much larger than diet.

It is another expansion of humanity's circle of moral concern.

Do I care only about myself?

My family?

My community?

My nation?

My species?

Or does the experience of another living being matter simply because that being can experience its own life?

Meanwhile the environmental consequences of industrial civilization continued accumulating.

Habitats disappeared.

Species declined.

Pollution spread.

Soils degraded.

Oceans accumulated waste.

The climate changed.

Human activity became powerful enough to alter planetary systems.

And yet the story was still not simply decline.

Scientific knowledge expanded.

Literacy spread.

Medicine advanced.

Child mortality fell dramatically.

Communication became global.

Education expanded.

Human rights movements challenged slavery, racism, sexism, colonial domination, exploitation, and other forms of oppression.

Workers organized.

Communities organized.

People fought to protect children.

People fought to protect animals.

People fought to protect forests, rivers, species, and ecosystems.

Human moral concern was capable of expanding too.

So civilization's story is neither simply progress nor simply collapse.

It is progression and regression.

Discovery and forgetting.

Connection and disconnection.

Cooperation and domination.

Compassion and violence.

Creation and destruction.

We gained knowledge while losing other forms of knowledge.

We created abundance while allowing deprivation.

We connected continents while many communities became increasingly fragmented.

We learned how to manipulate nature while sometimes forgetting that we remained part of nature.

Modern civilization possesses extraordinary scientific knowledge.

But specialization has created an unusual situation.

A person can operate technology capable of communicating instantly with someone across the planet while being unable to identify the plants growing outside their own home.

That does not mean Indigenous peoples were universally wiser than modern people.

Nor should we ever repeat the colonial stereotype that they were primitive or unintelligent.

Intelligence cannot be measured by possession of computers.

Different civilizations develop extraordinary knowledge around the problems their lives require them to solve.

Modern civilization mastered things our ancestors could scarcely imagine.

But Indigenous knowledge systems mastered relationships with particular landscapes that many modern people scarcely recognize.

Perhaps progress should therefore not mean choosing one form of knowledge and discarding another.

Perhaps wisdom means carrying both forward.

The scientific knowledge allowing us to understand the planet at extraordinary scales.

And the ecological knowledge reminding us how to actually live within it.

This brings us back to something very old.

Relationship.

Reciprocity.

Responsibility.

Community.

Compassion.

What we take matters.

What we return matters.

How we treat beings with less power than ourselves matters.

What we leave for people we will never meet matters.

Science gives us another language for understanding these relationships.

Ecology shows us networks.

Biology shows us interdependence.

Evolution shows us kinship among living things.

Climate science shows us planetary systems.

Physics reminds us that nature operates according to physical constraints regardless of what our economic systems choose to measure.

Entropy has a specific scientific meaning.

Love is not literally low entropy.

Hatred is not literally high entropy.

But as a metaphor, something remains worth considering.

Destruction can happen quickly.

Healing requires effort.

Division is easy.

Reconciliation requires work.

Consumption is easy.

Regeneration requires intention.

Hatred separates.

Compassion reconnects.

Perhaps humanity's fundamental crisis is therefore not only economic.

Not only political.

Not only environmental.

Not only technological.

Perhaps underneath many of these problems lies something deeper.

Disconnection.

Disconnection from ourselves.

Disconnection from one another.

Disconnection from our communities.

Disconnection from the animals sharing this world with us.

Disconnection from the ecosystems keeping us alive.

Disconnection from the people producing what we consume.

Disconnection from the consequences of our choices.

Think about how strange our civilization has become.

Someone can purchase something containing materials extracted in one country, processed in another, assembled in another, transported through several others, sold by a corporation headquartered somewhere else, and eventually discarded somewhere the purchaser will never visit.

Our relationships have become planetary.

Therefore our responsibility has become planetary.

We cannot return billions of people to the Paleolithic world.

Nor should we throw away medicine, science, engineering, communication, agriculture, or everything civilization has learned.

The challenge is harder than returning to the past.

We must carry forward what humanity has learned while recovering what humanity has forgotten.

Science without compassion is incomplete.

Technology without responsibility can become dangerous.

Economics without ecology eventually destroys the foundation upon which every economy depends.

Freedom without responsibility can allow consequences to be pushed onto someone else.

Spirituality without action can become merely words.

And compassion without understanding can fail to solve the problems it wants to solve.

We need both.

Knowledge and compassion.

Reason and relationship.

Individual freedom and collective responsibility.

Human wellbeing and ecological health.

Perhaps a mature civilization would stop asking only how much it can produce.

It would also ask whether its children are healthy.

Whether its elders are cared for.

Whether its communities trust one another.

Whether people have meaningful lives.

Whether animals suffer unnecessarily.

Whether rivers remain clean.

Whether soil remains fertile.

Whether forests remain alive.

Whether biodiversity can recover.

Whether technology serves life.

Whether the economy serves humanity or humanity serves the economy.

Whether progress leaves the world healthier than it found it.

And whether people not yet born will inherit a planet capable of supporting them.

Our ancestors could not leave us instructions for managing a technological civilization containing billions of people.

But humanity has inherited principles worth remembering.

Respect life.

Practice reciprocity.

Take responsibility.

Protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Think beyond yourself.

Think beyond your lifetime.

Understand the consequences of what you consume.

Take what you genuinely need.

Give something back.

Help your community.

Treat strangers as potential relations rather than automatic enemies.

Waste as little as possible.

Remember that cooperation is not weakness.

And never forget that humans are not outside nature.

We are nature.

For thousands of years, humanity learned how to increase its power.

Agriculture.

Cities.

Writing.

Government.

Money.

Trade.

Navigation.

Industry.

Medicine.

Electricity.

Computing.

Automation.

Artificial intelligence.

Spaceflight.

We learned how to coordinate billions of people through systems spanning the planet.

Perhaps the next great human achievement is not simply another technology.

Perhaps it is maturity.

Learning that intelligence without compassion is not wisdom.

Learning that abundance without responsibility is not prosperity.

Learning that endless material expansion cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet.

Learning that another animal's suffering matters even when we never witness it.

Learning that another person's suffering matters even when they live on the opposite side of Earth.

Learning that there is no human economy without an ecology underneath it.

Learning that our differences do not erase our interdependence.

Learning that cooperation is not some childish dream.

Cooperation is one of the reasons we survived long enough to have this conversation.

We learned to cross oceans before learning how to protect them.

We learned to split the atom before learning how to settle all our differences.

We created global communication while still struggling to listen.

We learned to produce extraordinary abundance while allowing deprivation to remain.

We became powerful enough to alter the Earth before becoming wise enough to fully understand what that power meant.

But humanity's story is not finished.

And perhaps that is the most important part.

We inherited this world.

But every generation also creates the world inherited by the next.

Every meal.

Every purchase.

Every invention.

Every business.

Every law.

Every community.

Every relationship.

Every act of compassion.

Every animal spared unnecessary suffering.

Every person helped when they could not help themselves.

Every forest protected.

Every ecosystem restored.

Every resource returned instead of discarded without thought.

Every time someone chooses understanding instead of hatred.

Every time a community chooses cooperation instead of division.

Every time humanity chooses responsibility instead of indifference.

Those choices become part of the next chapter.

Perhaps progress was never supposed to mean becoming powerful enough to dominate the living world.

Perhaps progress means becoming wise enough to understand our place within it.

Your family is your first community.

Your community belongs to something larger.

Your nation belongs to something larger still.

And eventually every border reaches the same ocean, the same atmosphere, and the same living planet.

There is no separate Earth for another religion.

No separate atmosphere for another country.

No separate ocean for another race.

No separate biosphere for another species.

There is only this one extraordinary living world and the countless beings experiencing their brief lives within it.

We belong to one another.

We live alongside our animal brothers and sisters.

We depend upon plants, fungi, microorganisms, soil, water, atmosphere, sunlight, and relationships older than our species itself.

The question facing humanity is no longer whether we can become more powerful.

We already know that we can.

The question is whether our wisdom, compassion, and sense of responsibility can grow alongside that power.

Humanity learned how to become a global civilization.

Now we must learn how to become a global community.

And whatever comes next will depend upon whether we remember that we were never separate in the first place.