Sharing Earth and Its Resources Equitably Benefits Everyone

In the book entitled “The Science Of Good & Evil” Michael Shermer claims that disparate groups, who might otherwise go to war with one another because one group has something the other group needs, will tend to peacefully coexist if they learn how to trade with one another to obtain what they need rather than take it by force. What if all human beings on Earth could learn to share Earth’s natural resources and the produce of those natural resources equitably? The world would become a community in which everyone is able to sustain themselves in a viable existence. What’s preventing that from happening? Humanity’s unwillingness to acknowledge that all Earth’s natural resources should belong to everyone and that the products created from those resources should be distributed in a way that enables all Earth’s residents to benefit equally.

Since the Earth’s resources are not evenly distributed geographically, some areas have an abundance of natural resources while other areas have a paucity of natural resources. Regardless, given Earth’s present geopolitical structure, there is no country in the world in which all its citizens have the wherewithal to support themselves in an adequate lifestyle. That’s because of the way resources are owned and distributed. Therefore, the way natural resources are owned and distributed needs to be changed, and that means national sovereignty can no longer extend to the natural resources found within the area claimed by each nation.

Consider the issue presently being discussed in a conference of nations whose sovereignty extends to land bordering the Artic Sea. They are arguing over which country owns the rights to the huge deposits of natural gas located there. Consider also the long standing understanding that whoever owns a piece of land also owns the natural resource on or below that land unless they’ve sold those rights to someone else. In both instances, the benefits derived from those natural resources are not distributed in a way that benefits everyone. Consequently, unless people and/or nations are fortunate enough to own the mineral rights for the place where extractions take place, they do not benefit from the extraction of those natural resources.

Why should luck and antiquated laws be involved in determining who benefits from natural resource extraction and who doesn’t? It shouldn’t. In fact, all of Earth’s natural resources should be owned by all human beings and used to insure that every human being living on Earth as well as all other life forms on which human survival depends has enough of Earth’s natural resources and/or the produce of those natural resources to sustain their viability.

The question is what can be done to insure that everyone and everything has what is needed to sustain a healthy, productive existance?

Humanity cannot survive in a social structure in which individual human beings and human institutions are able to do whatever they want without regard for the effect those actions will have on others. On the other hand, creativity is lost when individuality is completely suppressed. Therefore, the optimum solution is to require that the behavior of every human being and every human institution conform to the following basic precept:

Be all you can be and do all you can do as long as what you choose to be and what you choose to do isn't harmful to yourself or to others or to anything else in Creation, and it doesn't prevent anyone or anything else from doing likewise. And, just as important, trust that every other person will behave in like manner.

Humans, having evolved from instinctive creatures into sentient beings who are able to think and communicate their thoughts to other humans more effectively than any other creature living on Earth, have become Earth's most accomplished complex lifeform, but they are still struggling to overcome the instinctive animalistic reactions to threat and provocation that have influenced their behavior from the beginning of human existance, even as they have organized themselves into ever more effective societal relationships which are intended to moderate those destructive inclinations and to improve humanity’s ability to peacefully coexist with one another. Never-the-less, human beings have an innate mutual empathy for one another which means they have the capacity for caring about the well-being and happiness of other human beings, even human beings with whom they have no personal relationship. Therefore, it is time for all human beings to enable their mutual empathy and accept that every individual member of their species has the potential to improve the species as a whole.

In order to do that, humans must recognize that they and all other humans constitute a worldwide community of the same species and that the survival of every species depends on every one of its members having the opportunity to

thrive. Therefore, Earth's resources need to be more effectively and efficiently utilized so that all human beings, regardless of where on Earth they live, are able to achieve a healthy, productive standard of living in a living environment which is as supportive of healthy living as possible.

In other words, every human being is precious to the species, and each of us must adopt the attitude that as long as an individual is not doing anything that physically threatens our own wellbeing or the wellbeing of anything or anyone else, that individual should be allowed to live life however he or she pleases. It shouldn't matter what a person’s physical appearance is like or what religion a person practices or whether he or she practices any religion. Physical appearance is superficial, and religion is simply a means of teaching people how to treat one another. Therefore, as long as people have mutual empathy toward one another and learn to adhere to the basic precept in all that they do, the color of a person’s skin color, a person’s physical appearance and the religious rituals a person practices are immaterial. The important thing is for everyone to respect and care for themselves as well as everyone and everything else they affect in the course of living their life, because, in the final analysis, the well-being of all life on Earth depends on the symbiotic relationships that every individual organism has with all the other organisms which are essential to its survival.