Case Study twenty
Dame Of The British Empire Dr. Jane Goodall’s Hope Capstone
“I had this great sense of awareness of some spiritual power and it was so strong out in the forest. You cannot help but understand there how everything is interconnected.” – Dr Jane Goodall
INTRODUCTION
Dr Jane Goodall has spent over 60 years as an animal welfare and climate change activist and philanthropist. Even now, in her mid-80s, Jane travels over 300 days a year, and has done so since 1986 to spread her message of hope and continue her purpose:
“To make the world a better place for all living things.”
Jane is best known for her 60-year study of wild chimpanzees and their social and family interactions. It is the longest-running study of any nonhuman animal. According to the Guardian in an article in 2010:
“She combines stateliness with a kind of holiness, her religion a predominantly green one. Jane’s impact is alongside the best of them. Albert Einstein for physics. Jane has done that with biology.”
Jane has had a capstone mindset for over five decades, becoming the green confidante to everyone from world leaders to pop stars. She has, by her own admission, shaken hands with several million people. Her keystone phase shot her to prominence for birthing a new branch of science, radically defining our understanding of what makes humans distinct from animals.
CORNERSTONE
Foundations of a Technologist
Jane Goodall was born in April 1934 in Hampstead. The first toy her father gave her was not a teddy bear. It was a chimpanzee. At the age of five, when the war broke out, her family moved to Bournemouth to her grandmother’s home. She was given freedom by her mother to follow her hunt for curios.
“I was born loving animals and my mother supported this. A different kind of mother might have crushed that spirit of scientific curiosity.’.
Jane still calls the same house home, which she shares with her sister and her family, occupying only one bedroom within the house. She claims this is all she needs as she is on the road campaigning and lecturing so much.
Jane’s mother Vanne instilled in her daughter the notion of working hard and staying determined. When a friend invited Jane to stay in Kenya, she immediately quit her job in London and moved home to Bournemouth, where she worked as a waitress in a local hotel to save up for her dream trip to Africa. It took her some time but she managed to stay disciplined. According to Jane her mother said to her:
“If you really want something like this, you have to work awfully hard, take advantage of every opportunity, and never give up.”
KEYSTONE
After arranging a meeting with Dr Louis Leakey at the Museum in Nairobi, Kenya and working for him as a secretary, a 26-year-old Jane was asked to go to Western Tanzania to the forest of Gombe. Jane would have studied any animal. It was her childhood dream. But, on the 14th July 1960, she arrived on the shores of Lake Tanganyika and began observing the daily lives of her favourite animal: wild chimpanzees. At the time, women were not accepted in the field, let alone a young British woman venturing into the forest alone to practice primatology. The British Government insisted that she take a companion, her mother, Vanne.
Jane acknowledges that those were the best days of her life. She makes clear that everything that happens today in the present is because of those experiences in the forest. Seeing footage of her in early National Geographic documentaries, Jane is in her blissful state.
Jane fully immersed herself in nature. She became accepted and ‘at one’ with the chimpanzees and the forest. It was like some extended form of meditation, being fully in the moment with the animals and their surroundings. Jane knew she was in uncharted waters, having animals accept her, observing behaviours unseen by any other humans before. Her mission was to understand the animals as much as she possibly could. There would have been lows, sure, but also some ecstatic, higher states of awareness and selflessness whilst on her mission.
“A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, this is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.”
Jane experienced a unique spiritual connection, one that she still holds and talks about in the present day. Asked about God in 1980:
"I don't have any idea of who or what god is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I'm out in nature. It's just something that's bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it's enough for me.”
It’s a very similar experience to the early 20th-century British philosopher, writer and speaker, Alan Watts: “I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off far, far into the forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you are connected with everything.”
Jane’s work during this keystone phase was to give people a remarkable window into our closest relatives. We know now that chimps share 98.6% of our DNA. It was Jane who discovered that chimps made and used tools, that they hunted and ate meat. She found out that chimpanzees waged war and had mother/infant bonds. She observed chimps to be compassionate and caring beings, with feelings just as strong as our own.
“We found that chimpanzees could be brutal—that they, like us, had a darker side to their nature."
Jane changed the attitude of science towards other animals, helping the community come out of narrow reductionist thinking.
The next decade saw Jane rise to prominence as a celebrated primatologist, yet Jane prefers to be known as an ethologist. Despite the misrepresentation in Jane’s eyes, she was accepted into the pinnacle of the scientific community.
Jane’s ‘Damascus Moment’ leading to her Capstone
In the mid to late 1980s, Jane realised she had to use the power of her position. She felt a great responsibility to help. Jane told me she had her ‘Damascus moment’ (referring to the Road to Damascus) in 1986 whilst at a conference in Chicago.
She was there to discuss chimpanzee research across Africa. Jane soon realised that the species was seriously at risk due to habitat destruction, deforestation, and illegal trafficking. She began to look at ways to embrace the interconnectedness of people, animals, and the environment for conservation. She realised the key to protecting the chimpanzees was engaging local communities.
She says she “went to Chicago as a scientist, left as an activist”. She realised she could make a difference. She knew it was selfish to not campaign for the chimps as “they have done so much for me”.
"I realised, right there, that had to leave being an observer, and I had to go and do something. I had absolutely no choice. It was really weird, because I went to that conference fully planning to write volume two of that study, and I came away knowing I never would."
She had found her Capstone.
What was originally a mission to save the chimpanzees evolved to addressing problems of over-farmed and infertile land, to helping the local communities and the TACARE (“Take Care”) programme. Jane realised she needed to improve the lives of people to save chimpanzees. This has since expanded to climate change, which, in effect, is a mission to save the world.
Jane had already set up the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) in 1977 to continue the Gombe research and protect chimpanzees in their habitats. As her trusted assistant and Vice President, Mary Lewis recalls:
“Jane started the Jane Goodall Institute to save the chimps and help local communities, and the picture has become just bigger and bigger.”
Today JGI is a global entity with offices in 24 countries around the world. Jane also launched the JGI’s global programme, Roots & Shoots, in 1991. It began with a group of 16 local teenagers discussing their problems and concerns with Jane on her back porch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It has since grown to more than 100,000 groups in more than 65 countries. In the past 30 years, Roots & Shoots has impacted young people in more than 100 countries. It empowers young people of all ages to become involved in hands-on programmes of their choosing to benefit the local community, animals and the environment we all share.
“Young people are the governments of the future,” says Jane.
The JGI’s programmes are designed to empower young people of all ages enabling them to take their place in society that has been male-dominated. Today, the field of primatology is made up almost evenly of women and men, in part thanks to the trailblazing of Jane and her encouragement of young women to join the field.
~ Action: Changing Hearts ~
Jane has not been afraid to be a contrarian to get things done. She has reached out to whoever possible for support, controversially working with an oil company in the past to secure funding for the Tchimpounga sanctuary. Pragmatism has come first. According to National Geographic wildlife photographer, Nick Nicholls:
“You sometimes have to work with the bad guys for them to become the good guys.”
Jane’s approach has been to not be confrontational. To not do things for the honour of the glory of it. Make friends first. She does not agree with aggressive activism.
“If you don’t talk to people how can expect them to change? To change their mind it’s no good arguing, you have to change their heart. When head and heart work in harmony we can achieve our true human potential.
How do you get to the heart? … with stories”.
~ Amplification ~
Jane swapped her time in the forest conferences a long time ago. She travels to lecture on the world’s biggest stages – from the World Economic Forum in Davos to the United Nations and Milken Institute Global Conference. She aims to maximise the reach of her message.
“Time to outreach is limited. Jane wants to engage every second before she can no longer do it,” says assistant Mary Lewis. “I’d love to give jane more time. Jane is not slowing down. In fact, she is speeding up her efforts.”
Even during COVID-19 lock down Jane switched to video conferencing and sharing her stories on the likes of CNN, BBC, Discovery and pretty much all major podcasts.
She has devoted her life to sharing stories in order to increase awareness. Her family believe in and support her. “This is what she was born for,” one of her grandchildren recently and proudly stated.
HOPE
Jane’s work is a conscious decision to constantly fuel what she believes is one of the most powerful resources: Hope. Especially when, according to Jane, most scientists don’t talk about hope.
The fundamental assumptions of Jane’s work:
Firstly:
“Everything is connected- everyone can make a difference” and that currently, we don’t think of ourselves as part of the natural world and are destroying our future.
Secondly:
Hope attached to action is where we take responsibility i.e. that “Every person makes some impact on the planet every single day and we get to choose” and when billions of people make the right ethical choices each day we start to move to a better world and the change would be fast.
"We have to stop leaving all the decisions to the so-called decision makers, but take matters into our own hands, realise that each one of us makes a difference, and that if everyone who cares acts in a way that is ethical, thinks about buying ethical things ...living in greater harmony for the planet. Leave as light a footstep as possible"
Thirdly:
Our more advanced intellect can be our reason for hope. “My job is to go round and inspire and get people to take action”. Jane is somewhat pulled on by the response she gets as much as her pushing.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Jane moved to her Capstone phase earlier than most and remained true to it now, even into her 80s, like a compass finding true north. Jane had found early fame, and her keystone phase was based on the total immersion into nature and the world of chimpanzees.
Jane is a true leader, creating the type of change the world is hungry for.
“Restoring critical habitat to save chimpanzees from extinction; improving health for women and education for girls; cultivating local livelihoods in harmony with nature; and helping young people become the informed generation of conservation leaders the world so urgently needs through our roots & shoots youth programs in nearly 65 countries.”
Jane has led her storytelling more recently around the word hope. This message has been relayed to everyone and anyone, a relentless schedule of interviews, tours and appearances… she is always looking to find as big an audience for her message as possible. To Jane there are four things that give her hope: human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power of young people and the “indomitable” human spirit.
I would add something that Laurene Powell said – which is one needs hope and work.
So, the final word to say, taken from the JGI website is an important take away:
“SHE BLAZED THE TRAIL. The next steps are up to us.”
