A Common Humanity — An Essential Consciousness for One Earth Living

We do not as a species live with a collective consciousness that we are a common humanity. The illusion of the central position prevents it. So, we identify ourselves nationalistically, ethnically, and according to whatever our egos need. Our diversity, though enriching at times, remains a basis for hate, hellish war, and obsene amounts of police and military spending. We aren’t a “we;” we are “us” and lots of “thems.” We do not currently have the political imagination nor the psychological or spiritual maturity to think of ourselves as a magnificently diverse One People, nourished by cooperation and sharing with all Creation. 

Nonetheless, strong examples exist of ethnically diverse people from different nations imagining themselves as a common humanity. One example is in Tucson, Arizona. Side-by-side with the immature consciousness of many Arizonans that plot apartheid and spews hate are those who shape the new consciousness that recognizes the deep bonds between us all, and act on them.

Immigrant advocates in Tucson, along with immigrants from Latin America, see themselves as loyal citizens of their country AND simultaneously bonded in a common humanity. You can read all about it in an engaging book, A Common Humanity: Ritual, Religion, and Immigrant Advocacy in Tucson, AZ, by Lane Van Ham and published by the U of Arizona Press in 2011. A YouTube of the author doing a presentation on his book and a podcast interview are also accessible. (Full disclosure: Lane is my son.)

It’s fascinating how immigrant advocates find the language to express that larger consciousness they intuitively have about how we humans are more deeply connected than our biggest differences can separate. Sometimes their language is humanistic, sometimes political or spiritual. Always their imaginations help take them beyond the more ordinary and confining definitions of who we are into language discovering who we are in the greater whole — that space in which we can live together on one planet and be more complete because of it.