Jane Goodall at the Parliament of the World's Religions

how are the Traditions meeting the changing demands of our time and I wonder if you have a sense because you're somebody who's taken in in a sense the the global ecological crisis particularly with relation to species Extinction and some of these horrendous issues that we're facing how do you feel the Traditions are are meeting the uh world of the world that we face at this time I think the religious tradition i s have been lagging behind what's actually going on they've been lagging behind the reality of the what's going on in the world today but there's some very encouraging signs I mean there are more and more people who are looking deeply into the philosophy of their particular religion for information to guide them in their attitude towards the environment and towards other animals and lo and behold you find when you dig deep back into the scriptures of the different religions there are there are rules if you like to call it that for dealing with environment and animals that that haven't been honored I think there's been a tremendous emphasis on you know human Spiritual Development on morality on ways that we should live our lives as it relates to how we deal with other people but there's been very little emphasis on living in harmony with nature very little emphasis on what I've learned so clearly from The Chimps isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom it's a very fuzzy line and once you're prepared to admit that it's not only humans who have personalities minds and above all feelings that brings you to a whole new realization of how we should be relating to other amazing beings with whom we share this planet and how might that Insight you just expressed inform uh the way we practice our spirituality the the way religion uh the teachings in a sense of religion I think that once we lose this arrogance of believing that of course we are different from other animals we have this amazing spoken language we can develop all kinds of of um attitudes towards life which is not possible unless you can discuss ideas you know once you believe that animals with whom we share the planet are sentient and sometimes Sapient then it raises a lot of ethical problems when we think how we use and abuse them so often including in religious beliefs but once you once you show people how chimpanzees live once you help them to understand how like us they are when they see the that a chimpanzee can actually be taught more than 500 of the signs that deaf people use when they communicate with each other once they've seen a chimpanzee using a computer a touchpad and solving difficult problems and wanting to solve them you know then suddenly their whole their whole mindset changes and that's what we're moving towards changing that mindset and it it doesn't matter who I speak to if there's time to talk gently to people about what I believe to be the true nature of animals just from the perspective of living out in nature for so long then you you see people changing we just have taken for granted that God put animals on this planet for us to do with as we wish and come away from the old indigenous people's belief that even if they kill an animal to eat they honor it they they send up a prayer for the spirit the animal they talk to the animal about the fact that they're sorry but you know they need this animal in order to live in its part of the cycle of life but at least they understand that life has a meaning whereas we stick animals in intensive Farms we deprive them of everything that it means to be a sentient Sapient being and then we're surprised that we get all these sicknesses so it behooves us from the point of view of our own Survival to treat animals better to