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EXCERPTS FROM "EVOLUTION'S ARROW"
By John Stewart
Full summary:
http://users.tpg.com.au/users/jes999/EvVision.htm
Book:
http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/jes999
............
A major evolutionary transition is beginning to unfold on Earth.
Individuals
are emerging who are choosing to dedicate their lives to
consciously
advancing the evolutionary process. They see that their lives
are an
important part of the great evolutionary process that has
produced the
universe and the life within it. They realise that they have a
significant
role to play in evolution.
Redefining themselves within a wider evolutionary perspective is
providing
meaning and direction to their lives -- they no longer see
themselves as
isolated, self-concerned individuals who live for a short time,
then die
irrelevantly in a meaningless universe. They know that if
evolution is to
continue to fulfill its potential, it now must be driven
consciously, and it
is their responsibility and destiny to contribute to this.
...
"The most meaningful activity in which a human being can be
engaged is one
that is directly related to human evolution. This is true
because human
beings now play an active and critical role not only in the
process of their
own evolution but in the survival and evolution of all living
beings.
Awareness of this places upon human beings a responsibility for
their
participation in and contribution to the process of evolution.
If humankind
would accept and acknowledge this responsibility and become
creatively
engaged in the process of metabiological evolution consciously,
as well as
unconsciously, a new reality would emerge, and a new age would
be born." --
Jonas Salk
...
At the heart of this evolutionary awakening is the understanding
that
evolution is directional. Evolution is not an aimless and random
process, it
is headed somewhere. This is very important knowledge -- once we
understand
the direction of evolution, we can identify where we are located
along the
evolutionary trajectory, discover what the next steps are, and
see what they
mean for us, as individuals and collectively.
Where is evolution headed? Contrary to earlier understandings of
evolution,
an unmistakeable trend is towards greater interdependence and
cooperation
amongst living processes. If humans are to advance the
evolutionary process
on this planet, a major task will be to find more cooperative
ways of
organising ourselves.
The trend towards increasing cooperation and interdependence is
well
illustrated by a short history of the evolution of life on
Earth. For
billions of years after the big bang, the universe expanded
rapidly in scale
and diversified into a multitude of galaxies, stars, planets and
other forms
of lifeless matter. The first life that eventually arose on
Earth was
infinitesimal -- it was comprised of a few molecular processes.
But it did
not remain on this tiny scale for long. In the first major
development,
cooperative groups of molecular processes formed the first
simple cells.
Then, in a further significant advance, emerging in response to
Earth's
first major pollution crisis, communities of these simple cells
formed more
complex cells of much greater scale: eukaryotes, or cells with a
nucleus.
A further major evolutionary transition unfolded after many more
millions of
years. Evolution discovered how to organise cooperative groups
of these
complex cells into multi-celled organisms such as insects, fish,
and
eventually mammals. Again the scale of living processes had
increased
enormously. This trend continued with the emergence of
cooperative societies
of multi-celled organisms, including ant colonies, bee hives,
wolf packs and
baboon troops. The pattern was repeated with humans -- families
joined up to
form bands, bands teamed up to form tribes, tribes joined to
form
agricultural communities, and so on. The largest-scale
cooperative
organisations of living processes on the planet are now human
societies.
This unmistakable trend is the result of many repetitions of a
process in
which living entities team up to form larger scale cooperatives.
Strikingly,
the cooperative groups that arise at each step in this sequence
become the
entities that then team up to form the cooperative groups at the
next step
in the sequence.
It is easy to see what has driven this long sequence of
directional
evolution -- at every level of organization, cooperative teams
united by
common goals will always have the potential to be more
successful than
isolated individuals. Self-interest and competition drive
organisms and
systems towards unification and cooperation over greater and
greater scales.
As life increases in scale, a second major trend emerges -- it
gets better
at evolving. Organisms that are more evolvable are better at
discovering the
adaptive behaviours that enable them to succeed in evolution.
They are
smarter at finding solutions to adaptive challenges and at
finding better
ways to achieve their goals.
Initially living processes discover better adaptations by trial
and error.
They find out which behaviours are most effective by trying them
out in
practice. Initially this trial and error search occurs across
the
generations through mutation at the genetic level. An important
advance
occurs when this gene-based evolution discovers how to produce
organisms
with the capacity to learn by trial and error during their
lives.
In a further major transition, organisms evolve the capacity to
form mental
representations of their environment and of the impact of
alternative
behaviours. This enables them to foresee how their environment
will respond
to their actions. Rather than try out alternative behaviours in
practice,
they can now test them mentally. They begin to understand how
their world
works, and how it can be manipulated consciously to achieve
their adaptive
goals.
Evolvability gets another significant boost when organisms
develop the
capacity to share the knowledge that they use to build their
mental
representations. Imitation, language, writing and printing are
important
examples of processes that transmit adaptive knowledge. These
processes
enable the rapid accumulation of knowledge across generations
and the
building of more complex mental models.
Eventually organisms with these capacities will develop a theory
of
evolution -- they will acquire the knowledge to build mental
models of the
evolutionary processes that produced the living processes on
their planet,
including themselves.
...
"None of the scientists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, or
nineteenth
centuries knew the larger implications of what they were doing
or the
discoveries they were making. Yet each of the major figures was
contributing
something essential to a pattern of interpretation that would
only become
clear in the mid-twentieth century. Only now can we see with
clarity that we
live not so much in a cosmos as in a cosmogenesis, a
cosmogenesis best
presented in narrative; scientific in its data, mythic in its
form." --
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry
...
As life on earth reaches this stage, some individuals will begin
to undergo
a critical shift in consciousness. Increasingly they will cease
to
experience themselves primarily as isolated and self-concerned
individuals.
Instead, they will begin to see and experience themselves as
participants
and actors in the great evolutionary process on their planet.
The object of
their self-reflection will change. When they think of
themselves, they will
tend to see themselves-as-part-of-the-evolutionary-process.
Their conscious
participation in evolution will increasingly become the source
of value and
meaning in their lives. Key realisations that will contribute to
this shift
in consciousness are:
** A life dedicated to the pursuit of narrow desires and
pleasures cannot be
worthwhile. They will see that their desires are evolution's way
of
programming them to be adaptive and successful in past
environments. In many
cases their desires and pleasures no longer serve evolution's
interests --
they often produce behaviour that is now maladaptive, and
motivate actions
that will undermine rather than advance the evolutionary
process;
** They have the opportunity to be conscious participants in the
evolutionary processes that will shape the future of life on
their planet.
They can play an important role in the actualisation of the next
great steps
in evolution;
** The successful future evolution of life on their planet
depends on their
conscious participation. Unlike past great evolutionary
transformations, the
steps to a unified and sustainable planetary society and beyond
are too
complex to be discovered by trial and error. They will be
achieved only
through the conscious efforts of organisms, and not otherwise.
Conscious
organisms will need to envision the planetary society and design
strategies
to get there. If it is left to chance, it will not happen -- in
the past,
chance took millions of years and many false starts to produce
cooperative
organizations such as complex cells;
** Their actions can have meaning and purpose insofar as they
are relevant
to the wider evolutionary process. To the extent that their
actions can
contribute positively to evolution, they are meaningful to a
larger process
outside themselves that has been unfolding long before they were
born, and
that will continue long after they die;
** The evolutionary perspective therefore provides them with an
answer to
the great existential question that confronts all conscious
individuals:
What should I do with my life?
** Their awakening to the evolutionary perspective and the
awakening of
others like them is itself a critically important evolutionary
event on
their planet.
The emergence of individuals that undergo this shift in
consciousness is the
evolutionary process on the planet becoming aware of itself.
Through these
individuals, the evolutionary process develops capacities for
self-reflection, self-knowledge, and foresight. It will use
these abilities
to continually redesign itself to accelerate its own
advancement.
...
"As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the
universe is
becoming conscious of itself, able to under-stand something of
its past
history and its possible future. This cosmic self-awareness is
being
realized in one tiny fragment of the universe -- in a few of us
human
beings. Perhaps it has been realized elsewhere too, through the
evolution of
conscious living creatures on the planets of other stars. But on
this our
planet, it has never happened before." -- Julian Huxley
...
Individuals that develop the psychological capacity to transcend
their
pre-existing motivations and needs will actualise a further
major transition
in evolvability. They will be self-evolving beings
-- organisms that have the ability to adapt in whatever
directions are
necessary to advance the evolutionary process, unrestricted by
their
biological and social past. Comparable transcendence of old
patterns will
occur in groups, organizations, communities and societies.
Individuals and groups that embrace the evolutionary perspective
will also
work to encourage all other groups within society to reframe
their goals and
mission statements to align them with evolutionary objectives.
Social,
political, governmental and economic organisations will begin to
re-evaluate
their activities and goals to ensure they are consistent with
the
advancement of the evolutionary process.
As more and more individuals and groups make this transition to
an
evolutionary perspective, a wave of evolutionary activism will
emerge,
directed at the unification of living processes on the planet to
form a
cooperative planetary society.
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Published by David Sunfellow
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