HEALTHY AT 100 (40 page)

A friend of mine, Tom Burt, has spent much time with the Bushmen. He told me, “When I was there, I would sit out every night close to their huts and listen to the joy in their conversations and laughter. It is remarkable how much happiness they experience in their everyday life. The unconditional love that they have for one another and for all life is a model for the rest of the world to follow.”

Among the Bushmen, as among the Pygmies, there is almost complete equality between the sexes. There is also a shared sense of horror at the thought of violence and cruelty, including toward animals. Children and elders are cherished, and youngsters are taught that their most important resource is the goodwill of their neighbors. Their primary method for treating sicknesses of all kinds is a healing dance that brings the community together and maintains the profound spirit of sharing that the people see as all-important.
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Healing dance may seem terribly primitive compared to modern healing methods such as gene manipulation and organ transplantation, but before we totally reject such practices we would be wise to remember that these are a people who have thrived for tens of thousands of years, something I seriously doubt people of the distant future will say about our current form of civilization. When it comes to the healing power of loving human connections, the Bushmen, like the Pygmies, seem to know a great deal that modern medicine and modern society as a whole may need to relearn if we are to survive.

The Pygmies and the Bushmen, these oldest of all peoples, remind us that our capacities for mutuality, cooperation, and empathy are every bit as real and every bit as much a part of our humanity as our capacities for greed, competition, and exclusiveness. Raising their children with unlimited respect and treating each person as having infinite worth, they have survived longer than any other culture known to science. The Pygmies and Bushmen represent the living origin of humanity, and as societies they embody the greatest fulfillment that I know of on earth of the biblical injunction to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Unfortunately, the Bushmen’s survival as a culture, like that of the
Pygmies, is now very much in jeopardy. It is tragic that these life-affirming peoples who have made so few demands on their environment, and who have been able to sustain themselves for upward of forty thousand years, are finding themselves unable to survive in our modern world.

I believe we have much to learn from these people, but I am certainly not advocating that we return to their level of technological primitivism or that we turn our back on all forms of progress. Our material and scientific development have given us much for which I am deeply grateful. If we are to survive the challenges and difficulties of the times ahead, however, I believe we will need to integrate into our use of technological advances something the Pygmies and the Bushmen, like the Abkhasians, Vilcabambans, Hunzans, and elder Okinawans have long understood: We are part of each other. We need each other. Without love in our hearts for each other and for this beautiful world, we shall perish.

Down through history there have been great thinkers who have spoken of the fundamental unity underlying the human condition. They have known and taught that each of us is truly part of an extended family that includes all people everywhere. But today the future itself depends on more than just a few wise people understanding the concept. The quality of life for humanity in the future depends on ever-increasing numbers of people incorporating this understanding into their everyday lives. The health and survival of the human species in the days ahead depend on how deeply we grasp the reality of our interdependence.

Many of us tend to think that human nature is inherently competitive and destructive. We hear about “selfish genes,” as if our very genetic makeup predetermines that we will be egotistic people and that we will fight with one another.
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We’re told that our species contains a built-in “killer instinct,” and that it is normal and inevitable for us to wage wars and massacres. It is widely believed that we are descended from “killer apes” who needed to be brutal and ferociously
aggressive to survive the hostile conditions of prehistoric times.
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According to such notions, the natural world is an unrelenting battle for survival, and it is a romantic fallacy to believe that people can live in peace with one another and with their environment for any significant length of time. “War,” said U.S. vice president Dick Cheney in 2004, is the “natural state of man.”
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Cheney and others who think like him believe that the human condition is inherently and inexorably competitive, and that all of human experience is an expression of the Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest.” If they are correct, then given the existence of nuclear weapons, our species is almost certainly doomed. But in
The Descent of Man
, Charles Darwin mentioned the survival of the fittest only twice, and one of those times was to apologize for using what he had come to feel was an unfortunate and misleading phrase. By contrast, he wrote ninety-five times about love. In his later writings, Darwin repeatedly stressed that the “survival of the fittest” model of natural selection dropped away in importance at the level of human evolution and was replaced by moral sensitivity, education, and cooperation.
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We sometimes think of ourselves at root as just nattily attired chimpanzees, noting that chimps have quite a propensity for deceit, violence, theft, infanticide, even cannibalism. But it is equally true that among chimps, the toughest rivals will reconcile after a fight, stretching out their hands to each other, smiling, kissing, and hugging. And besides, there is another primate who is as genetically similar to us as the chimpanzee—the bonobo, an ape species native to the Congo. If, instead of studying chimps for clues to the origins of human behavior, we had been studying bonobos, we would have come to very different conclusions. Instead of the killer-ape model, we would have had the lover-ape model, for these primates show a phenomenal sensitivity to the well-being of others. Today, writes author Marc Barasch in his 2005 book,
Field Notes on the Compassionate Life
, “primatologists are finding in the bonobos evidence that it is not tooth-and-nail competition, but conciliation, cuddling, and cooperation that may be the central organizing principle of human evolution.”
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One of the world’s leading experts on primate behavior, Frans de Waal, calls it “survival of the kindest.”
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What kind of creature, then, are we? There are those who believe human beings are fundamentally selfish, and there are those who believe we are essentially kindly creatures who need only love to flourish; but I stand in neither camp, or maybe I should say I stand in both camps. It appears to me that we have nearly infinite potential in both directions. Part ego and part divinely inspired, we have both the potential to compete and the potential to cooperate. We can create societies like the ones Ruth Benedict called “surly and nasty,” and we can create ones like those she called “synergistic.” Depending on what we choose to affirm and cultivate within ourselves and our children, we can collectively turn this planet into a hell or a heaven. Whether we like it or not, and whether we accept it or not, our choices make an enormous difference. How we treat ourselves and each other always matters.

This is why I believe that the world’s healthiest and most long-lived peoples offer us a vision of hope for our time. In Okinawa, Abkha-sia, Vilcabamba, and Hunza, there is a deep sense of human connection and social integrity. People continually help one another and believe in one another. There are always ways for people to make amends for mistakes and be forgiven, so people are almost never discarded or rejected. Wealth is shared rather than hoarded. As one Abkhasian proverb puts it, “I am whole because you are whole.”

Characterized by the great respect with which women, children and the elderly are treated, these are societies with very little violence or cruelty, no harsh punishment, and hardly any crime. Instead of envy and greed, people living in these cultures are imbued with an attitude of trust and confidence, not only in others, but in the natural world.

In Hunza, I seemed to be in another world, a world of friendliness and good nature. Covetousness, envy and jealousy were nonexistent; no police force was needed to keep order; unlocked doors were not a temptation.

—Dr. Allen Banik, author of
Hunza Land

I have been fortunate enough to travel many places and experience a wide variety of different cultures, but there is something truly unique about Okinawan culture, which I believe is largely responsible for their long lifespan. Okinawans are by far the kindest, calmest, most warm-hearted people that I have ever encountered.

—David Puzey, longtime resident of Okinawa

I went to visit
[
the Vilcabambans
]
because I had heard they were old. But I stayed with them because they were themselves, a most lovable people, from whom I wanted to learn. Each one seemed to believe that he would become all that he had given away. I never before experienced a people who had so little and gave so much.

—Grace Halsell, author of
Los Viejos

I know, of course, that it would be neither practical nor helpful for those of us in the modern world to try live exactly as the Abkhasians, Vilcabambans, Hunzans, or elder Okinawans have lived. We have different challenges, different opportunities, and different destinies, and nothing would be gained by living imitative lives. But at the same time, I believe that if we can learn something from their examples, we can become more healthy, more fully human, and more loving people. They show us that there are steps we can take to reaffirm our humanity and health even if we live in the midst of a society that, comparatively speaking, seems to believe in “every man for himself.”

Today, the effort to create a web of caring, support, authenticity, and trust among your friends and family members, and in the larger human community, may be the most healing act you can undertake. To overcome the isolation and disconnectedness that pervade contemporary life means to build, nurture, and prioritize relationships grounded in the understanding that every human life is precious, and that each of us has unique gifts and forms of love to give.

As children, many of us did not grow up in an environment that provided the care and support we deserved. As adults, many of us
still suffer from a lack of connection, affection, and support in our lives. We know now that this loneliness is not only a source of emotional suffering, but also has serious medical consequences.

There are few achievements more important than to move beyond this legacy of lovelessness. Your efforts in this direction will likely lead to healing and greater longevity for yourself and your loved ones. But the impact of your caring will not stop there. The ripples that fan out from your acts of befriending and cherishing will also give rise to wider realities. They will, I believe, affect the greater political and spiritual directions of our times. They will not just improve your life and the lives of those in your circle of care. They will also influence our collective future for the better.

We are far more connected with one another than we often recognize. Deeply interwoven, we contribute to wellness or disease by the way we talk to each other, and we contribute to fulfillment or frustration by how we treat one another. We are part of each other’s hopes, part of each other’s healing, part of each other’s dreams.

The choices that we make today as to the way we treat each other, the way we raise our children, the kinds of families and communities we create, will determine how the future unfolds. If we treat each other one way, we can cultivate people driven by a death urge, who are despondent and mean. If we treat each other another way, if we encourage and uphold our essential goodness and capacity for loving connection, we can nurture a society of people who are healthy and whole and whose lives will bring healing, peace, and joy to those they touch.

I believe that the real news on this planet is love—why it exists, where it came from, and where it is going. I believe that ultimately it is the love in our lives that underlies and makes possible our greatest healing and longevity.

Whether we acknowledge it or not, we all have a choice to be either accomplices in the status quo or everyday revolutionaries. We have a choice whether to succumb to the cultural trance, eat fast food, and race by each other in the night, or to build lives of caring, substance, and healing. So much depends on that choice.

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

—Louis L’Amour

I
f one of the most important signs of an advanced civilization is the amount of unconditional love in the community, then modern Western culture may be more primitive than we normally think, while the Pygmies and the Bushmen may be leading the way. This makes it all the more a source of sorrow, then, that the Pygmies and Bushmen stand today on the edge of extinction.

And even more sadly, they are not alone. The modern world is becoming an increasingly inhospitable place for many traditional societies.

In Abkhasia, the idyllic isolation that the region long enjoyed, and that permitted the fabled health and longevity of its inhabitants to flourish, has been severely compromised in recent years, following the breakup of the former Soviet Union. Prior to 1993, Abkhasia had been part of Soviet Georgia, though with its own culture and beliefs. While many Abkhasians were living peacefully in the traditional lifestyle, others were beginning to abandon the old ways in favor of modernity and were taking an increasing interest in politics. After Georgia broke away from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s,
Abkhasian authorities decided to pursue their wish of becoming an autonomous republic, and declared the region’s independence. Almost immediately, Georgia sent its military forces into Abkhasia in an attempt to reclaim the region. In 1993, this tragically became a devastating war in Abkhasia, resulting in more than a hundred thousand deaths while causing tremendous upheaval and destruction.