For me personally, I used to have really bad heartburn until I started using straws pretty much exclusively. Rarely do I get heartburn anymore and I also don’t belch as much either, which I was doing a lot of as well.

I do use metal or glass straws exclusively though, even in the car I have some in a case in the cubby so I don’t have to use those awful paper straws if I am ever forced to grab food in the car.

I have some glass ones I found in my local dollar store, they’re wonderful

He’s also so so funny! I expected a dark humour but he is so sharp and witty.

Since you stipulated our species, to me, the answer is an external threat to the whole. Aliens, higher or lower dimensional creatures, cryptids, flame unicorns sharting lava, even angels or demons if we want to get real wild.

Even just the threat of an existential terror such as these and probably a lot I missed, (feel free to add to the list! Feed me your existential threats!) has the potential to bring the species together to fight on a larger scale.

However this doesn’t eliminate war just moves the focus. So I’m not sure if I’ve answered your question or not but I had fun doing it!

The mulch. We feed the trees and fungi.