All fictional utopias like the Garden of Eden or real paradises like the South Pacific (before the invasion of Western civilization) have one thing in common: There is plenty of everything in such places and their human behavior tends to reflect that cardinal fact. These residents largely live in peace and harmony. Having plenty of what they need to satisfy their daily needs is obviously crucial in their peaceful and harmonious communal life.

Unlike such wonderful dreamlands, fictional and long-gone, of course, those of us who live in the real world must endure constant fights among ourselves and teach our children that this is the way “human nature” is and they had better expect to face such unending conflicts. After all, our social mantra goes, “it’s dog eat dog and take everything that you can while you can.”

Desperate to find some signs of humanity among us — that we are not just savages – I have found one example of our coexistence with our fellow human beings without constant fight and struggle: The way we share the air we breathe! Yes, the air we share peacefully and harmoniously with our neighbors! Indeed, it’s quite amazing the way we handle air, which is perhaps the only thing on earth that humanity manages with moderation. Air is precious, abundant, and free, and all human beings enjoy equally and without any disturbance over either its use or possession. In other words, in peace and moderation, and with it we are all incredibly rational and humane. Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Indians and Pakistanis, Israelis and Palestinians, and even Koreans and Japanese, all breathe it peacefully without incessant quarrels. Showing our very best as humanity, we breathe in only what we need and waste not a single morsel of it. No one tries to hoard beyond his needs only because there is so much of it that’s free.

It’s the only thing whose benefit is shared by all, rich or poor, powerful or powerless. The most amazing, still, is how we react to such sharing with acceptance and tolerance, without a slightest sense of envy or jealousy, even when someone’s lung capacity is larger than ours and therefore in need of more air (albeit unintentionally). Opera singers and carnival barkers, among others who shout a lot as a professional requirement, and those who are born with bigger lungs, naturally use up more of our air, certainly consuming more air than average people. But nobody seems to mind it. Some people would argue that we have to be just, fair and rational with air simply because corporations cannot, under our present technology, monopolize and market it for profit. This argument is technically true. In the meantime, we must still appreciate how generous we are about air consumption. The sole explanation for such wonderful human capacities for love is that there is enough air everywhere and we don’t have to fight for it, just like the residents in utopias and paradises. When there is enough for everyone, humanity can be quite intelligent and generous. (Water, most plentiful after air, on the other hand, is in trouble as the next world war would be over water).

Such wonderful behavior of humanity, as demonstrated by our reaction to air consumption, sadly, is the only thing about which we show our full human generosity and love for one another. Consider our American behavior, now savage and hateful, in spite of the fact that — with only rare exceptions — we, in America, have always had enough of everything for everybody. We have so much to eat that obesity, not hunger, is the issue; even during the Great Depression, we had to destroy food to keep farmers solvent; we have so much living space that when poor Haitians immigrate to America, 20 of them are accommodated in a space considered adequate for an average American family. We have so much of everything that what we throw away can alone sustain many poor countries. Even the one thing we always complain about for not having enough — money – we have so much of it in America. Quite reminiscent of frontier America where land was abundant and it was made available to all free men, America’s Golden Age of freedom and equality, no citizenry has ever been so blessed with so much.

While we have so much of everything in America, and unlike our reaction to air management, we live neither in peace nor in harmony. We compete, fight, and argue with each other to get more of everything, even when there is enough for everybody. We are so unreasonable that our biggest regret when we leave a buffet table is that we cannot eat any more of the “free” food. Every day, Bill Gates (our wannabe dream model), who makes $1,000 dollars in every four seconds of his life, even asleep, plots to get more money into his bank account. If you had your share of the nation’s money, you could not possibly spend all your income without deliberately wasting it. The problem is not that we don’t have enough of everything in America, as we do, but some people have too much (like Gates’ 99-room home) and some people too little (like Haitian immigrants).

Why can’t we be as rational, fair and just with one another, as we are with air? Don’t we demonstrate to ourselves every day that we can?

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and professor emeritus, lives in Greenfield.

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