Now that H1N1 vaccinations are underway, many of us are considering whether or not we should get vaccinated.  There are those who think it’s our moral duty to get vaccinated since we may be putting the lives of others at risk.  There are also those who feel that this may just be a large scale money making agenda on the part of the pharmaceutical industry.  Whatever the case, there is definitely a lot of fear going around.

I’d like to propose we take a step back and look at the big picture.  Humans have survived for tens, hundreds of thousands of years without anything such as vaccinations.  How is it that within the last several decades, we have come to see something so artificial as being essential to our survival?

In the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, we are presented with a portrait of the human race from an evolutionary perspective.  The story goes that about ten thousand years ago, a group of humans called the takers began attempting to conquer nature.  These takers had forgotten that in fact they were part of nature and inseparable from it.  The leavers are those humans who continued to live in acceptance of their role as equals amongst the rest of nature.  The story leaves the reader with the grim conclusion that our human race is headed for disaster ever so rapidly, fueled by this fundamental flaw in our perception that we are not animals and that we are somehow superior to the rest of nature.

Indeed, we observe that in nature everything balances itself out.  If we have made nature our enemy then we are setting ourselves up for a battle we can never win.  We ARE nature.  If we tamper with ourselves, we are tampering with nature.  We are tampering with evolution itself.

The scary part is that if you think about it, the successful evolution of our species requires that the strong survive.  This is how humans have evolved to become what we are today.  So what makes us think that all of a sudden, now we have to start tampering with our evolution?  If people are surviving and reproducing who might otherwise have died without vaccination, are we setting ourselves up to become ever more dependent on vaccinations for our continued survival?  By contradicting the “will of nature” that some people must die so that the strong can survive, are we weakening ourselves as a species?  Is it becoming that our only strength is in our ability to manipulate nature?  If so, we could be facing a much bigger issue of responsibility than most people would care to think about, let alone deal with.

What if instead of focusing all our efforts on outrunning death, we took steps towards learning how to better accept it?  After all, it is our fear of death that gives the pharmaceutical industry so much power.  Buddhism has long taught the virtues of accepting death, and in general accepting the external things that you cannot change.

Author and teacher Caroline Myss points out in many ways how Americans have developed a sense of entitlement that is completely unrealistic.  In her recent interview with Laurie Nadel, she points out how as a culture we have completely forgotten about the need for sacrifice.  I couldn’t agree more.  I see this as in fact one of many side effects of the fact that we have forgotten that we are part of nature.  It’s as though we think we are “special” and somehow different from the rest of nature.  We are entitled to our 52 inch TVs, and our vaccines to keep us alive so that we can keep watching them.

I am not getting myself vaccinated.  I trust that if I die, it is for the greater good.  I am okay with death.  Besides, I am going to die sooner or later.  In the meantime, I’m going to spend my time and energy on the stuff that makes life truly worth living.