Sally Zito’s Report on What Led Me to the Cooperative Society we are today, Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2050
In retrospect, it seems so obvious and inevitable that we would be here, now, in 2050, sitting in a co-operative world where all are working together to continue to solve the planet’s challenges of 25 years ago. It’s difficult now to even remember how impossible it felt that we would ever achieve liberation for all, cooperation, and planet healing, much less relay in this essay the uncertainty and fear that so many of us felt in 2024, but remembering that pivotal year makes it all the more inspiring to revisit…
2024 was the year I was able to break my mental paralysis that had been gripping me ever since my “awakening,” which is what I call the rather sudden jolt of awareness I experienced that showed me in an instant how my actions, and the collective actions of humanity, had harmed so many (humans, non-humans, plants, land, water, air — LIFE itself). While this did cause me to make some quick changes (I went vegan, I sold my large home to downsize, I began to learn about climate change), it also caused me to withdraw from this world — so much so that I found myself almost friendless and could no longer work at my job, taking a leave of disability due to “inability to think clearly.”
All I saw around me was destruction, harm, selfishness, and apathy, and in my newly awakened state, I didn’t feel I belonged here anymore, nor did I particularly care to belong to a species that could so callously prioritize its desires over the suffering of most other living beings, as well as the over the health of our home, planet earth.
And not being good at the art of persuasion (because of growing up with a narcissist parent, I can easily get confused when confronted by differing opinions, and become unable to remember my own valid points), I felt completely ineffectual to share my new found awareness with my family, my close friends, all of whom continued to defend the way of life that they were used to, which bred in me something quite new that I had never experienced: misanthropy.
It was this terrible new state of being that actually set the stage for my actions in 2024.
The misanthropy led to extreme isolation, which caused me to spend much time alone in nature with non-human animals. But the more time I spent in nature, the less isolated I felt because of my newly discovered connection with the natural world, the animals, birds, cockroaches, worms, snails, everyone who I had never even noticed before. It was on these walks that I began to see what was so beautiful — trees, grass, worms, birds, blue skies — as these things stood out so starkly against a back drop of cement buildings, cars, even a slaughterhouse, grocery stores filled with man-made items and dead animal bodies wrapped in plastic. And the stark difference let me see so clearly: the natural world, the one that flourishes on its own when allowed to thrive in a healthy way, is actually, a true heaven, a utopia — a place of immense beauty, awe, mystery, and life.
My thoughts were: “If only we could get rid of the people that are causing all the harm, everything could be fine.” Though divisive and pretty negative, this new view of the earth as a natural heaven that was suffering a cancer called “humanity,” is what further nudged me to my 2024 actions.
I began to study basic physics — it’s really the only place I found any solace. The world of quantum mechanics, chaos theory, natural laws, and biology was beautiful and awe-inspiring and free of human-meddling. And the more I read and observed, the more I began to understand something that completely changed the course of my perceptions.
For years, I had been struggling with the question: Can we, humanity, change? Can we become cooperative? Is violence baked into our DNA such that we will never be able to overcome our desire to dominate? What if we are simply NOT equipped, biologically or psychologically, to be peaceful towards all of life and each other? Does the very nature of duality, reality as we know it, require constant war (between nations, between individuals, between all living beings, etc.)?
And, ironically, it is in the human body that I found hope, and possibly an answer to the above questions.
By design, the human body is a system that, when functioning as intended and at optimum health, all actions within the system benefit life and the whole system. None of the parts of the body’s system sabotage or dominate the other systems. It is a symbiotic system, where all the parts of each system benefit from their interactions with other systems.
I’m not a brainiac at all. I’m actually a musician/songwriter/lyricist with a passion for observation, but I believe we are all equipped to observe and draw conclusions.
My conclusion was: The human body, a very complex system, is BENEVOLENT. And this means, we have an EXAMPLE of a system that works in a way that we humans could strive to work. Also, if this benevolent system comprises the very make-up and design of our physical bodies, then it seems not only likely, but perhaps inevitable, that we as a species would fall into the same pattern and become similarly co-operative, symbiotic, BENEVOLENT.
Where previously I felt hurt, even sickened, by seeing my fellow humans still engaging in destructive actions, causing me to distance myself from everyone, I was newly able to stop viewing people as either/or (“violent” or “nonviolent” , “cooperative” or “noncooperative”). I began to view us as all, including myself, in varying pupae stages of development towards benevolence within the system that is humanity.
Additionally, my studies showed me that we are all connected in ways we are only beginning to understand — as observed in quantum entanglement, the butterfly effect, healing from afar, remote viewing, meditators achieving inner peace outside war-torn areas where violence ceases during the time of the meditation, random number generators reflecting non-random responses to global events that caused global empathy, and more. We may not understand this connectedness for hundreds of years, but my logic and instinct tells me that we all must walk into our future together. None can be left behind.
And with that last piece, the connection piece, I found that I was no longer paralyzed. I had won the inner debate of hopelessness and futility, and as a consequence, I found the desire and strength to take action for the first time since my “awakening.”
I wouldn’t be meeting the requirements of this essay if I didn’t indicate which actions I took in 2024, so I will share them below, but not without first emphasizing that to me, the actions I took are almost inconsequential, as ANY action I had taken would lead us to a co-operative world so long as I had completed the inner work first. Without doing that… I wouldn’t have been able to act authentically and joyfully, and might still be paralyzed to this day.
So what did I DO??
It was the most obvious action — it was there all along! Anyone who knew me would have said, “Of Course that’s what you DID! That’s who you are! We would have guessed it… it’s the most natural thing you could have chosen.”
For me, this was to act through music. I’m a trained musician and composer, and in this capacity, I find it easiest to express myself to the world. THIS was this most important ingredient of my action: that it was natural to ME. It started with me creating art and beauty in song, with my performing those songs in public places. In these places I simultaneously shared literature, leaflets, and stories, from my perspective, about the preciousness of life, about animals needing rescue, about the hope in going vegan as a way to heal the planet. I shared visuals on a backdrop showing some of the painful truth, coupling the experience with the beauty of music, because as trained film composer, I know that music provides a backdoor entry to the listener and they are able to take in information a little easier when music is playing.
In 2024, I found my voice and joined the many voices, the growing number of voices, marching into the new era, trusting in the benevolence of something I don’t understand, revealing itself through the connection of all of us to each other and to life.
In 2050, I’m still doing this…
Happy Valentine’s Day, Beautiful Earth and Earthlings. We Made It!