We Are All Part of One Big Human Family

Image by Annie Spratt

Where are you from? You might think that’s an easy question and that the answer would be New York, London, Sydney, Berlin, Budapest… or wherever else you were born and raised. But there is a deeper answer to this question, because for all of us, whichever country we now call home, our ancestors all came from the same place. And that place is Africa.

I learned a great deal about this in a fascinating BBC series presented by Dr Alice Roberts, a medical doctor and anthropologist: The Incredible Human Journey. It really is a wonderful series, bristling with revelations about who we are and where, ultimately, we are all from. And although the idea that all humans originated in Ethiopia is not new to me, what did blow my mind is that every single human on the planet today who does not live in Africa – that’s around 6.5 billion people – are all descended from the same tiny band of Africans who left the continent between 60,000 and 90,000 years ago.

It doesn’t matter what you look like, what language you speak, your facial features, the colour of your hair, skin or eyes – if you trace your ancestors back far enough they would be African. And it’s jaw-dropping to me that you (if you are not today an African) and me can trace our genetic lineage back to this band of intrepid early humans who left Africa in search of new lands and possibilities for life. Just a few families who emerged from that continent and slowly spread into Asia, Australasia, Europe and the Americas.

You are part of my family

And so you are my brother, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle, grandparent… You are part of my family. And isn’t that a wonderful idea which, if we all truly understood it, would make all the anger and fear and ‘othering’ of refugees a complete nonsense. Because these people coming, for example, in small boats to the UK, are my family. They are your family. And they are the family of all those politicians who speak of them with anger and disdain, knowingly stirring up primal fears and hostilities so we treat these poor, desperate people as somehow less than us, subhuman.

I dream of a future in which we understand that all humans are equal. That we all wish to be happy and safe. All of us want our children to eat healthy food and drink clean water, to live in a warm home, to get a good education and live a comfortable, meaningful life. In which we understand that, on an ancestral and genetic level, we are all the same, that skin colour is literally skin deep – because my skin and perhaps yours is only light because we live in cold countries, where our recent ancestors’ skin pigments changed as they adapted to colder climates.

And if, one day, we evolve to the point where we all understand this, it is taught in every school, every person on this planet understands and embraces their lineage, maybe these artificial borders we have drawn as mere lines upon a map, will no longer have meaning. The idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’ will melt away, because we are all, in fact, ‘us’. And keeping ‘them’ out, pushing those small boats back, becomes ludicrous, because those boats are full of family members, needing our help.

And I know, with all the war and aggression raging around the world, that these ideas seem fanciful, even naive. But I don’t care. I am an optimist. And I think if we all work towards it, this is a future we can co-create. Because, honestly, what’s the alternative? More war, division and darkness – and that’s not a world I want to live in, or leave to my son and his children.

If this resonates with you, please do watch that series – I think you will find it both fascinating and inspiring. You may also feel moved to help those refugees/family members. If so, Choose Love is an excellent charity, which is helping displaced people stay warm, safe and dry over the cold winter months. You can support them using the button below.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

How to Take Compassionate Action for Ukraine

Image by Christopher Beloch

As I read my newspaper this morning, my heart was full of pain about Russia’s latest atrocity against the Ukrainian people – blowing up the Kakhovka dam, which has caused massive floods around Kherson. These floods will (intentionally) kill many people, drive many more from their homes and is forecast to be the worst environmental disaster in the country since Chernobyl.

My first feeling was overwhelming sadness and a kind of mental/emotional exhaustion about the latest example of how cruel humans can be. I often feel overwhelmed by stories like this, because it can seem as if psychopaths like Putin, or narcissists like Trump and Boris Johnson, continue to gain power around the world and dominate our lives.

Why do we put these terrible people in positions of power? Why hasn’t humanity evolved beyond this by now? Why do the bad guys always seem to win?

The loving majority

And then I remember that the news is deliberately filtered through a negative, catastrophic lens to highlight the worst of humanity, the most scary and upsetting stories. There is so much good in the world, so much kindness, compassion, altruism and basic decency. I passionately believe that most humans are kind and treat each other with respect.

But we live in an age when the Putins, Trumps and Erdogans of this world cleverly manipulate the media (both mainstream and social) to trigger evolutionarily ancient parts of our brain, making us scared and angry, firing up our threat systems so we lose access to the rational parts of the brain and respond with hostility and mistrust. We are manipulated into blaming outsiders, ‘the others’, who may be refugees, people of colour – or Jews, like my own ancestors, who have been scapegoated and persecuted for millennia.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We – the kind, loving, determined majority – have so much power, if we know how to use it. And one way to exercise that power, today, is to take compassionate action to help the people of Ukraine. I see one small example of that in the Ukrainian family living downstairs from us, rent-free, in an expensive flat generously offered to them when they escaped the horrors in their own country.

My wonderful community

My local community has rallied round this family and other refugees in the area, giving them money, food, clothes, furniture, help and support in a thousand small but meaningful ways. I am so proud to live where I do – East Finchley, a tight-knit community in North London – and with neighbours who deeply care for each other, whatever the colour of their skin and wherever they are from in the world.

So, as you read about Putin’s latest act of madness, please don’t be discouraged. Never give up. As Martin Luther King reminds us, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’.

And if you would like to help people – and especially children – on the ground in Kherson, please donate to Unicef using the button below.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Where is Our Compassion for Refugees?

Image by Ahmed Akacha

This is a little different from my usual posts. It’s not about mental health – well, not about your mental health, or mine. But it is about compassion which, as regular readers know, is very dear to my heart.

Living in the UK, I have watched with increasing anguish as our right-wing government demonises and persecutes people arriving on our shores, frightened and desperate for help. Many of these ‘migrants’ are in fact asylum seekers, with perfectly legitimate claims for asylum. They are fleeing war, torture and persecution in troubled countries like Afghanistan, Eritrea or Sudan.

They increasingly arrive in small boats, making the perilous crossing from France because this government has made it very difficult for people to use safe and legal routes to enter the UK. Those of us who believe in a thriving, multicultural society, with a flow of migration in and out of the UK (which benefits the economy, by the way), have watched with dismay as our former prime minister, Theresa May, created a ‘hostile environment’ to deter immigrants. Later, the self-inflicted disaster of Brexit legitimised the racist, xenophobic rhetoric our right-wing media has been trumpeting for decades.

These poor, traumatised people arriving in boats often take great risks, putting their own lives and those of their family in danger, travelling vast distances in the desperate hope of finding safety, sanctuary and welcome in this country. Instead, they are treated as less-than-human, as things – to be feared and treated with disdain.

My refugee family

This demonising of refugees is a deeply personal issue for me, because I am the descendant of Russian Jews, who fled to Britain in the early 20th century to escape the violence and persecution of ‘pogroms’. My maternal grandfather was the first-born in this country when his family settled in London’s East End – where wave after wave of immigrants have made their home.

My wonderful, wise, warm-hearted grandfather later worked for a charity, the Jewish Board of Guardians, which worked tirelessly to help Jewish refugees living in the UK, including those fleeing persecution by the Nazis. My grandparents lived in terror of a German invasion – which came perilously close during World War II – for obvious reasons.

So when I see politicians talking about an ‘invasion’ of immigrants and using language not dissimilar to that of the Nazis, it fills me with horror. Have we learned nothing from history? Have we no compassion, no humanity, no basic decency?

Compassion for all of humanity

I think it’s crucial for those of us who embark on journeys of personal growth and healing from our own trauma to remember that compassion is not just for ourselves, or those close to us – the Buddha taught us that compassion must be for all sentient beings. That means all of humanity, not just those we like, or who share our skin colour, who are part of our tribe. All humanity, without exception.

I’m sure you agree. And I’m sure you are a kind, decent person, who may already do a great deal to help others. If I could ask you to do one small thing today, it’s to take compassionate action by donating to Refugee Action, a wonderful charity helping people who arrive on our shores, desperate for help. The button below will take you straight to their donation page.

Thank you – sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Humans Can Be Cruel – But Also Kind, Compassionate and Altruistic

Image by Tim Mossholder

It’s hard to live in this world sometimes. Of course, the crisis in Ukraine is dominating the news right now – as it should – and is utterly heartbreaking on a daily basis. But let’s not forget there are many other, less-well-covered, conflicts around the world right now. War is currently raging in Yemen and Ethiopia, to name but two, with many other places – like Syria and Afghanistan – experiencing shocking strife and instability.

Sometimes, as we view the world through the media’s negative, catastrophising prism, it can seem as if humans are terribly heartless and cruel. And in some ways, this is true – our species does have the capacity for great cruelty, aggression and barbarism. A quick glance at the history books will prove that to be true.

But we are also capable of wonderful things – acts of kindness, compassion, selfless generosity and altruism. Around the world, billions of tiny, good things happen every day, but go unreported by the media, because they are too small, too unexciting to make the headlines, rolling-news cycle or your social media feed, which can be dominated by scary and upsetting stories.

This is not an accident by the way – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube’s algorithm’s are designed to grab and hold your attention in any way they can. And, sadly, stories that scare or outrage people get more attention than sweet, simple, kind stories, so you get bombarded by the former and then think this is ‘the truth’, when it’s only a tiny fraction of most people’s daily experiences.

Are you a chimp or a bonobo?

As a psychotherapist, I am fascinated by the human mind and the capacity we all have for light and dark, good and evil, aggression and altruism. I’m also intrigued by evolutionary psychology, which seeks to explain where these capacities came from, in terms of our evolutionary history. I recently watched a Netflix documentary, Animal, which shed some surprising light on this.

One episode featured the great apes – a group of which humans are, of course, a member. And it compared the lives and behaviour of two closely related apes in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We first saw a ‘community’ of chimps, who could be tender and loving, but also shockingly violent. In this patriarchal group, males compete, fight and kill each other in a constantly evolving struggle for dominance. Chimps also kill members of local communities, as they seek to expand their territory.

The documentary then switched to a ‘party’ of bonobos, living just across the River Congo from their chimp cousins. Bonobos look a lot like chimps, but they are smaller and live in matriarchal groups, where women rule. And the difference is remarkable. They might squabble, but they live highly peaceful, pro-social lives. Bonobos don’t kill each other, or their neighbours. If young males get a bit over-excited, the women soon put them in their place. The contrast with über-violent chimps is stark.

Much has been written about this in the evolutionary-psychology literature, but as I watched this documentary I couldn’t help but think about some of our autocratic leaders: Putin, Assad, Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Orban – they are all basically chimps, no? Violent, macho, aggressive, lacking human empathy or compassion for the millions of people they hurt and even kill.

And then our (mostly female) bonobo-like leaders: Jacinda Ardern, Sanna Marin, Angela Merkel, Joe Biden, Barack Obama. Not perfect, of course, but still kind, compassionate, empathic, pro-social. They really seem to care about other people and do their utmost to help them. Again, the contrast with the chimp-adjacent autocrats is stark.

Humans are basically good

So, even at a time like this, when it can be so upsetting and depressing just to glance at the headlines every day, remember that the vast majority of people are basically good, kind and decent. Just look at the response to the Ukrainian refugees, which (apart, I’m ashamed to say, from the UK) has been wonderfully warm and generous. Neighbouring countries like Poland and Romania have take in millions of displaced people, with ordinary citizens giving up their homes, money, food, medicine, clothes, hotel rooms, rental cars – even driving refugees hundreds of kilometers to be reunited with their families.

It fills my heart with joy to see these generous, benevolent acts. And reminds me that as a species, we might be closely related to chimps – but we are just as intimately connected to bonobos (research shows that bonobos share about 98.7% of their DNA with humans—about the same amount that chimps share with us.) So please remember that, if the world seems rather dark and scary right now. Inside your heart and mind are wondrous capacities for kindness, decency, selflessness and other beautiful qualities. Putin can never destroy that, however hard he might try.

And if you would like to do something to help, please donate to Unicef using the button below, which is working on the ground in Ukraine to help children affected by the war.

Sending you love and warm thoughts, wherever you are in the world,

Dan