Love, sympathy and mutual aid are natural – we have to be taught to be greedy little narcissists

 

 

During a California wildfire rescue workers ran out of crates to place rescued animals, forcing them to put a fawn and a bobcat kitten in an office together. When they got back they found that fawn and the bobcat cuddling and the pair became inseparable.

 

Yes, compassion, love and solidarity are natural.

 

Or as the great Russian evolutionary biologist, Peter Kropotkin called it: mutual aid – the title of his magnum opus, which should be required reading for all high school students, not to mention all well-informed adults. That, and The Ecology of Freedom, by Murray Bookchin, and Escape From Freedom, by Erich Fromm.

 

J. Todd Ring,
October 8, 2013