Our Living Companions

  Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

That’s what traditional Christianity teaches us that God wants us to do with this world. To say that we’ve been successful is a huge understatement. We have multiplied and replenished the earth to the point of gross human overpopulation, poisoning and polluting the environment, and destroying our fellow creatures that for all practical purposes are our only living companions in the universe.

Here are two examples. We’ve helped save the people of Africa be killing the mosquito which carried malaria and then we send food and foreign aid which allows them to reproduce far more people than they would have been able to otherwise. Now, because there are too many of them with no way to make a living, they do so by poaching the last few hundred elephants that are left for their tusks, which are valuable for ivory. 

We think everyone in the world needs a car. Actually most of the people who now have cars were better off with bicycles and rickshaws. Now all of these cars sit idling in massive traffic jams everyday polluting the air and contributing to global warming and melting the polar ice caps, which are the only home for the Polar Bears. The bottom line is the Polar Bears will become extinct so everyone in the world can drive a car.

Those are only two examples of many, but here’s the bottom line. We shouldn’t take any comfort in the fact that it’s only animals that are becoming extinct, because when our planet becomes uninhabitable for them we will follow them into extinction.

That was a brief overview of the way we have abused this planet and our fellow creatures. I will now analyze the differences between them and us.

The first and most important difference is we have opposable thumbs, thus we are able to utilize tools and build things. That’s either good or bad, depending on your viewpoint. We live in comfort because we can build houses. The animals have adapted to and live in harmony with the environment.

We are smarter and have developed consciousness and thus we are superior to the animals. At least that is what we are told. But we have no way of verifying that theory. It’s unlikely we will ever be able to prove the existence of consciousness among animals because we have no way to communicate with them. 

I will now explain how we are similar to our fellow creatures. They have a physical body and a Spiritual Body, as we do. When their physical body perishes their Spiritual Being reunites with God, or the Creator, as ours does. I have no idea if they have a version of our ego or not. It’s possible they have an ego for the purposes of the stronger more fit being able to mate and reproduce superior offspring. But that would be the only reason. They obviously don’t have an ego for the purpose of acquiring material wealth, as we do.

In the end because I am an ESM I believe our fellow creatures have as much of a right to live as we do. I know that idea isn’t really going to be practical or thought about for a long time. But at the very least we need to start now undoing the damage we’ve done to the environment. It may already be too late, but if not we had best get started. 

In summing up this chapter I will say that traditional Christianity has nothing to offer as far as protecting the environment or the animal population from extermination.

Although A Course in Miracles doesn’t speak specifically about these issues I believe if we lived in a Course world our fellow creatures would no longer be ruthlessly exterminated and people would be more conscious of the environment.

RR-ESM