It is a noble idea, and self-evidently (not to say trivially) true. But the ideal alone is bloodless. Think of the men of history - Rousseau for instance - for whom the universal brotherhood of man was the central passion and object of their lives, yet who couldn’t maintain a friendship to save their lives. And we might trace the failure of the french revolution etc to just this dissonance.
The ideal of the universal is dwarfed by the living particular. And the former naturally follows from the latter. That is, the best way to grok the objective fact of universal brotherhood is NOT through solo contemplation, but through actual real life brother- and sisterhood with a few specific others. The universal is contained within the particular.
Given that the Enlightenment was born of the contact between European missionaries and Indigenous tribes, and that many of its flagship ideals - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, etc - were imported from and inspired by the New World’s “noble savages,” we might find it a bit strange that liberal modern civilization has in fact become far lonelier and more individualistic. And perhaps we might find a clue in this distinction between the romantic ideal and the real deal. Only the most individualistic people were open to casting off tradition and responsibility in order to embrace the new ideals. They traded in the particular for the absolute. And then you get Napoleon, the absolute individual.
Anyway, let’s return to the root of the inquiry by way of trees. The subject of trees is of the deepest spiritual significance. Encyclopedic volumes could be filled by all the tree-related mythologies in the world–the Norse Yggdrasil is but one popular example of a Tree of Life motif which recurs across continents: the Celtic Crann Bethadh, the Mesoamerican Ceiba, the Chinese Jianmu, and so on. The Iroquois, too, believe in a tree of life, planted by the Sky Woman in the beginning of time.
And it’s only natural that trees should be such a universal metaphor, as they are by far our species’ most important symbiotic relationship. Our ape ancestors lived in trees, their arms adapted to swing from branches; trees were their very cosmos. It is not as if this dependence waned once we made our way to the ground. Trees offer food, shade, a quick escape from predators, and eventually wood for our tools and buildings.
The West as we know it is a product of the alphabet. We are very much the people of the Book. Our very relationship to God, to culture, to our ancestors, are all mediated by paper. We have come full circle, and trees are once again our cosmos.
David Abram has written very well about the history of the alphabet. He notes that animism (the normative consciousness of wild humankind, in which everything is felt to be alive and full of spirit) is a sort of synesthesia. Non-literate tribal people do not merely look at a tree; they experience it with their entire sensory apparatus. They experience the tree as a sentient and breathing presence because this is, in fact, the case, and they have access to more strata of reality than we, being open to them in a way that we are not.
Abram argues that this synesthetic experience of reality has not gone away with our alphabetic civilization; it has been condensed into the page. When I see these symbols, they are being transformed first into noises produced by the human tongue, and then in turn to images, stories, and abstract concepts. It is a deeply hallucinatory experience and perhaps the only one we are yet familiar with. As children, we are still open to strange energies and subtle presences, but as we grow and are initiated, we close our doors of perception and replace them with literacy’s tinted windows.
One could say that trees remain our only truly vital relationship to nature. Everyone who has climbed one, worked with wood, been absorbed in a book, cooked with a wooden spoon, or slept in a chair has been in some kind of relationship with Tree.
A man is only half a man without a personal symbiotic relationship with trees. But is this relationship to play out as a sort of abstract affinity with all of the trees in the world? Or will she know certain trees, learn their language to some degree, and through this come naturally to a relationship with the pure archetype?
It is, I submit, not possible to experience the depth and subtlety of the human-tree relationship in the abstract. The idea of this relationship is infinitely less alive than actually getting to know One tree, in your neighbourhood. To go and be with the tree, perhaps sit and meditate under it, even bring it gifts, try to listen for its quiet language. Within the particular is contained the universal, and the particular is the best place to find the universal. It is less desirable to seek the source. One would be foolish to meditate on spoons, to try to find the absolute, instead of simply grabbing one from the kitchen drawer, paying special attention to how it feels in your hand as you stir the soup and spoon it into your mouth. This is where the human-spoon relationship lives. Nowhere will you find it vaster or more complex; it is complete in its perfection, right here and now.
The Platonic form of the tree is infinitely less vital and beautiful than one tree. The whole universe lives in each living thing.
And so it is with family, friendship, and tribal belonging.
The particular is not arbitrary, it is not shadows on the cave wall. It is the life we are given, and therefore the most reliable conduit to the divine.
So, when we are lonely, lacking community, and we try to fill that void with ideas like universal brotherhood, we find that a vast and all-encompassing abstraction is a paltry substitute for a limited and specific direct experience.
Nobody comes to an awareness of our essential unity with all except through an experience of unity with an other.