Baboon Bastards and Compassion

“What good is social class and status? Truthfulness is measured within. Pride in one's status is like poison - holding it in your hand and eating it, you shall die.” - Sri Guru Granth Sahib

In the documentary produced by National Geographic called Stress: Portrait of a Killer, it tells the story of humans compared to baboons.

A baboon is considered a dirty bastard that disgustingly enough is no different than us humans. In a troop of baboons there are different social status levels. There are alpha males and subordinates. There are those with higher social value and those with little social value. The alpha male is the one that gets baboon poon when ever he wants, beats on the lesser social valued baboons and creates a level of who can do what to whom and how they interact with one another is trickled down the line of where you rank.

A similar study was done for 40 years amongst 28,000 people in England. Of those they study were government civil workers, much like those that work at Hill Air Force Base, and the same things were found as the social class in baboons. The lower on the totem pole one is, the more stress one had, the less healthier an individual was, even the more fat one had on his or her mid section and butt.

It is horrific to me to look from a birds eye view that we humans have become so inhumane as a specie. We now are set in a desire with our ego and pride to climb the ranks of social status. To get more from others. Yet we have manipulated even ourselves to believe it to be OK as whole society. Even worse... we keep repeating the same pattern.

The B Side To The Truth is we are no different than baboons. We have high level of stress and low quality of life in society that does not have to be. We are unhealthy and have low immune systems and even more so in western societies where we constantly focus on work and gain. This must and can be eliminated from an individuals life. We may not be able to change the human troop as we can not and should not control another human being, yet we can change ourselves.

What really makes this comparison mind bottling, is a certain incident that was studied with a troop of baboons. One day this troop was foraging food at an old tourist spot in Kenya. As they chowed down the alpha males began to die off first. And most of those that participated in the social status began to die off. The food was tainted with tuberculosis. As further study continued those that survived were those that did not engage in class or social status. And in turn the males had twice as many females, they respected the females, and when new baboons entered the troop they began to live the new social structure and low to no levels of stress were found in all of the baboons. It increased longevity of life, standard of living, and happiness level.

So you ask yourself what you're really stressing about... does it really matter?

And taking it a step farther... in another study with people that spent there time helping others just for the sake of helping... they had increased telomerase which is an enzyme that creates DNA repair. So compassion, service, and love are key elements to reducing stress, increasing longevity, and repairing your body to increased health.

As we run a world based on benchmark lending, juggling mortgage rates, chronic disease, and worrying if the new web conferencing software works for our next big meeting... we simply are destroying ourselves.

Colton - discover your true'ness'