Live Science reports new findings that amoebas, the most fundamental form of micro-organisms, respond to environmental crises in a revolutionary way: cooperation and self-sacrifice:
Called Dictyostelium discoideum, this amoeba species generally keeps to itself when living in a healthy environment with [adequate sustanence].
But when food supplies run low, the free-living organisms clump together into a community of individuals. The result is a multi-cellular organism. Each amoeba takes on one of two roles in this organism: They either become spores, which can survive and reproduce, or they die and the dead cells form stalks that lift the spores above the ground to increase the chances the spores will disperse to more favorable environments.
It doesn’t reflect well upon human beings that we can’t take this simple lesson a step further than the most simple single-celled bacteria, or that sometimes we can’t even get as far as they do. With the economy plummetting, we hear to little “ask not what my country can do for me” and way too much “where’s mine?”
Jewish history provides endless examples. The world was destroyed in the Great Flood because a culture of greed and violence had spread over th face of the earth, and the Second Temple was destroyed because of the twin transgressions of senseless hatred and refusing to go beyond the letter of the law.
When research reveals that germs have more cooperative spirit and a greater predisposition toward self-sacrifice than we do, the echoes of history should warn us that even more troubles may be waiting around the corner.
Unless, or course, we take a sharp turn around a different corner.
Torah Ideals 