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2. Humanity's Initiation: An Evolutionary Wall
Here is how William D. Ruckelshaus, the former director of the Environmental Protection Agency, describes the evolutionary task that we are facing:
Can we move nations and people in the direction of sustainability? Such a move would be a modification of society comparable in scale to only two other changes: the Agricultural Revolution of [of 10,000 years ago] and the Industrial Revolution of the past two centuries. Those revolutions were gradual, spontaneous, and largely unconscious. This one will have to be a fully conscious operation . . . If we actually do it, the undertaking will be absolutely unique in humanity's stay on the Earth. 9
To accomplish this unique task will likely require a combination of the push of necessity and the pull of opportunity. If humanity feels the pull of realistic visions of a sustainable and meaningful future and, simultaneously, feels the push to respond to mounting difficulties, the combination could move us forward with breathtaking speed. That seems to be our potential as we push up against an evolutionary wall, or an unyielding barrier to historical patterns of development. The time we are entering will be a unique period of initiation where human evolution becomes conscious of itself as a planetary-scale process, and we confront the decisive choice of whether to shift from a path of separation to a path of reconciliation and common enterprise.
We can clarify this time of initiation and turning by distinguishing between an "ecological wall" and an "evolutionary wall."
- An ecological wall refers to the physical limits of the global ecosystem to support our species. We are fast approaching these limits because we are consuming more resources than the Earth can renew and polluting the environment with more than it can absorb. Nearly every organism will exploit its ecological niche to the fullest extent; thus, overshoot and collapse are a common occurrence in natural systems. We learn through experience, and since we have never encountered this situation before it seems only natural that humanity would reach, and then extend beyond, the limits of the Earth's ecosystem. Since we have never before had such powerful access to the entire planet as our ecological niche, we have no experience exercising restraint as a species and caring for the overall biosphere.
- An evolutionary wall refers not only to the physical limits of the Earth's ability to sustain humanity, but also to our own social and spiritual limits to sustain dysfunctional and destructive behaviors. Modern, industrial civilization is breeding pathological behavior-alienation from others and from nature, extreme competitiveness and greed, cynicism in politics, and despair for the future. How much poverty, alienation, and misery can humanity experience without eventually damaging our collective psyche and soul? An evolutionary wall presents humanity with an identity crisis at least as great as our ecological crisis: Who are we as a species? What is our larger story? What is the journey we are on, and where are we going? What is the relationship we want with one another and with the larger web of life?
We are not simply headed toward an ecological wall of physical limitation, but toward an even more demanding evolutionary wall that will test the invisible factors of humanity's consciousness, compassion, and creativity. We will hit the ecological wall when we run up against nature's out limits, and we will hit the evolutionary wall when we run up against humanity's inner limits.
This report is focused on the evolutionary wall that humanity faces and on our challenge not only to maintain ourselves (by avoiding a destructive crash) but to surpass ourselves (by deliberately creating an evolutionary bounce). An evolutionary bounce could be viewed as a leap forward in the unfolding of humanity's potentials. Given the challenges we are facing, an evolutionary bounce would probably involve working together to build a way of life that is:
- Sustainable-- in harmony with the Earth's biosphere (the physical ecosystem)
- Satisfying-- in harmony with others humans (the social-cultural ecosystem)
- Soulful-- in harmony with the "life force" (the spiritual ecosystem).
To develop our lives harmoniously in these three areas, the human family would be doing much more than reacting to an ecological wall. We would be making a conscious turn toward a higher level of maturity, community, and evolutionary opportunity. There are two compelling reasons for making this turn, and these are explored below. First, it is eminently desirable and leads to a higher quality of life. Second, it is necessary if we are to avoid creating a planet that is hotter, hungrier, poorer, more polluted, diseased, and biologically impoverished.10
If we do get through these difficult times and grow into our early adulthood as a species, how long might we then survive? We can gain some perspective by looking at the longevity of early humans and other animal species. The typical life span of a species is estimated to be between one and 10 million years.11 For example, our early human ancestor Homo erectus survived more than a million years before becoming extinct. Some species live far longer. Dinosaurs survived roughly 140 million years before a natural catastrophe wiped them out. If humanity is as capable of survival as the dinosaurs were, our species should be able to endure for more than 25,000 times the span of recorded human history. If we can make it through this evolutionary initiation and begin building a sustainable, compassionate, and creative planetary civilization, we have the prospect of a long and promising future.
Just as every child makes missteps on the path to adulthood, humanity has made and will continue to make painful mistakes as we evolve. We learn through our mistakes, however, and have moved ahead step by step. We are ever more experienced, ever more seasoned, and ever more mature.
Although our future is uncertain, we already have all the resources and capacities we need for a successful journey. The biologist Lewis Thomas describes the promise of our species beautifully:
We may all be going through a kind of childhood in the evolution of our kind of animal. . . . We have not yet begun to grow up. What we call contemporary culture may turn out, years hence, to have been a very early stage of primitive thought on the way to human maturity. What seems to us to be the accident-proneness of state craft, the lethal folly of nation-states, and the dismaying emptiness of the time ahead may be merely the equivalent of early juvenile delinquency. . . . If we can stay alive, my guess is that we will someday amaze ourselves by what we can become as a species. Looked at as larvae, even as juveniles, for all our folly, we are a splendid, promising form of life and I am on our side. 12
In the next sections, Parts 3 and 4 of this report, we shall consider two sets of trends that will create the context for our initiation into a new level of maturity. Both sets of trends involve circumstances of our own making. The first set reveals humanity's vulnerabilities and are called "adversity trends" because they present unyielding challenges to further growth along historical lines (for example, global climate change). The other set can be called "transforming factors" as they reveal our strengths and present humanity with extraordinary opportunities for development along new lines (for example, the global communications revolution). In Part 5, the convergence of these two powerful sets of forces is considered, and in Part 6 two contrasting outcomes or scenarios for humanity's future are explored. Part 7 presents a range of constructive actions to illustrate opportunities for building a sustainable and meaningful future.
© Copyright 1999, Duane Elgin
duane@awakeningearth.org
and by
© Campaign 2020 Initiative
Hosted by the Union Theological Seminary
Co-founders: Holland L. Hendrix, PhD and Deborah E. Stern
515 Madison Avenue Suite 725
New York, NY 10022
Posted with permission of Duane Elgin
New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org
E-mail: info@newhorizons.org