The Trajectory of Evolution and Its Implications for Humanity

Evolution's Arrow argues that evolution is directional and progressive, and that this has major consequences for humanity. Without resort to teleology, the book demonstrates that evolution moves in the direction of producing cooperative organisations of greater scale and evolvability - evolution has organised molecular processes into cells, cells into organisms, and organisms into societies. The book founds this position on a new theory of the evolution of cooperation. It shows that self-interest at the level of the genes does not prevent cooperation from increasing as evolution unfolds. Evolution progresses by discovering ways to build cooperative organisations out of self-interested individuals. The book also shows that evolution itself has evolved. Evolution has progressively improved the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to discover effective adaptations. And it has produced new and better mechanisms. Evolution's Arrow uses this understanding of the direction of evolution to identify the next great steps in the evolution of life on earth - the steps that humanity must take if we are to continue to be successful in evolutionary terms. A key step for humanity is to increase the scale and evolvability of our societies, eventually forming a unified and cooperative society on the scale of the planet. We must also transform ourselves psychologically to become self-evolving organisms - organisms that are able to escape their biological and cultural past by adapting in whatever directions are necessary to achieve future evolutionary success.

The evolutionary process has not been suspended or diverted but is still going ahead at full speed in the context of incessant change in the environment. The question of the evolutionary significance of human life is a necessary subject for human beings puzzled by the fact that they are born, live for a limited period and then all die. The implication is that there may be a significance in the life of human beings which is not shared by other species. Is this likely? With Thomas Huxley at St. Andrews, Herbert Spencer played the only game of golf he ever played; sitting on the cliff watching some boys bathing Spencer recorded: "We marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on earth." That this is so was surely only due to that evolutionary oddity, the large human brain. The role of the human brain has been an interesting evolutionary experiment -an animal body (emotions, sensations) with an advanced brain. The gain in knowledge achieved by trial and error by the genome results in the formation of an image of the material world within the living system. (Lorenz 1977: 23) But the growth in the size of the human brain has vastly extended and accelerated this process. Not only can the individual human being be seen as mapping his personal environment in his brain and body but humanity collectively can be seen as a great mosaic eye, a many-faceted eye opening on all time and all space, looking to the future as well as the past. It is from this ability to model and predict that we feel the urgency of the question about the significance of human life. A disadvantage of the evolution of foresight is that it also foresees death; how to include death in the model. Whether or not human life in general can be seen as having an evolutionary significance, there is the separate problem of the meaning or purpose of the individual human life. Evolution has had a direction, even if it has not had a purpose or meaning. The new element is our awareness of the direction. The direction has been towards greater complexity as a means of increasing adaptability to environmental change and towards increased ability to manipulate and modify the environment in the interests of survival. The significance of human life in general can be seen in this process, the significance of the individual human life as part of this process. If we are right in identifying the direction of evolution, then we can speculate about the future, extrapolating the direction of evolutionary change, considering the possibilities opening up for future human evolution.

2018

Today’s global crises are symptoms of planetary upheaval propelled by the unsustainable desires of human civilization, which have precipitated the planet’s 6th mass extinction event. The mechanisms driving evolution encode the characteristics that determine whether a species survives or becomes extinct. Since the 1900s, neo-Darwinian theory, with its emphasis on the "survival of the fittest in the struggle for life” and on genetic mechanisms as the metric determining species survival, has shaped the behavioral character of civilization by giving scientific legitimacy to the use of power, greed and violence to "advance" civilization. However, new insights from epigenetic science and the results of the Human Genome Project have completely undermined basic tenets of Darwinian theory. Epigenetics recognizes that the environment, and more importantly, our perception of the environment, controls genetic activity and behavior and thus shifts the focus of evolutionary theory ...

The Evolutionary Manifesto shows that evolution is directional and demonstrates that this has major implications for humanity. The Manifesto reveals that humanity must align its social syatems and behaviour with the trajectory of evolution if we are to survive and thrive into the future. The Manifesto goes on to show that humanity has an essential role to play in the future evolution of life on this planet. It demonstrates that life on Earth has reached a critical stage in evolution’s trajectory. Up to now evolution has moved along its trajectory blindly and unconsciously. But if evolution on Earth is to continue to advance successfully in the future, the process will have to be driven intentionally and consciously by humanity. In this way, a proper understanding of evolution shows us how we can live a life that matters in a larger scheme of things. An evolutionary worldview answers the fundamental existential question that faces us all: “What should I do with my life?” The Manifesto outlines in broad terms what humanity must do to advance the evolutionary process—how we will intentionally have to re-make our political, social and economic systems, and how we will need to develop our cognition and consciousness. As such, the Manifesto presents a detailed case for evolutionary activism--coordinated action directed at advancing the evolutionary process intentionally.

This paper tries to show that evolution is an outdated theory in human-social sciences; it has been applied in the past and is now set to become obsolete. This is because human agency, free-will, decision-making and intentionality are predominantly excluded from social-humanitarian evolutionary discourse, which leads to a dehumanizing effect. An updated, non-evolutionary (cf. post-evolutionary) view of human-social change(s) that suits the information-electronic age and ushers in a teleological perspective would offer a timely solution to this problem.

The New Evolutionary Age for Humanity -- A proposal for a new model of global governance and for solving global challenges. Imagine a perfect world. It would be the world of social harmony. Social harmony is not an artificial unification of humanity, nor a uniformity and monotonous equality of classless society— it is not unification or equalization. It is rather a social wealth—a peculiar composition of diversity, in which we find mutual complement and moral virtue. To address today’s global challenges is not enough to invent new institutions or to change the existing ones. The key to a positive world transformation does not lie in institutions but in ourselves. If people are corrupted, the best institutions will never work properly and the highest technological achievements will be used for our destruction. Therefore, in my proposal I include the question of virtue and of social harmony.

This paper seeks to demonstrate that given current trends towards the collapse of civilization and the Extinction of the human species and possibly all earthlife as is known, seeking to ensure individual survival for the entire human population is not credible while ensuring the survival of the species may be possible. It therefore explores transformative processes that may be required in order to manage the collapse of the currently global civilization of the human species, ensure the survival of numbers of human individuals sufficient and equipped to preserve the cultural, technological and perceptual knowledge that has been generated and generate a non toxic, less resource intensive, more sustainable, objective based and hence more credible civilization that is positioned in ways and in locations that minimize exposure to the hazards being generated.

Even more idiotic?

This is the follow-up to my Cry. My speculative bet, by hoping that my Idiot's Cry would yield some “Thinking with” discussions and “additive” feed-back from this scientific community was well below my hopes. Still, as I believe it is important to change the order of things and prevent Gaïas wrath to drive us to extinction, this new post elaborates both on Erich Jantsch "Evolutionary Vision", and Bruno Latour's foreword to the extraordinary work of Vinciane Despret in her book "“What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions” . Linking these ideas with Isabelle Stengers’ "Cosmopolitical Proposal" and Michael Thompson's "Theory of Plural Rationalities" seems to open up possibilities that I want to explore as an activist, perhaps even becoming a "civilised anarchist", but before everything a pragmatic doer!!! I understand and accept Edgar Morin quotes « La vie reconnaît comme penseurs ceux qui pensent leurs évidences, alors que penser est en rupture avec les évidences de la tribu» I am aware that I am an ugly duckling in your midst. But I am also convinced that on this scientific platforms many are "activists and possibly even tend to become "anarchists" (what's in the word). Maybe some are ‘scientific humanists’, or “consistent additive, empirical philosophers” Hence this post, prelude to another one, much shorter. But the two former-ones at least provides ME with a foundation for what I am intuitively and empirically sensing in the many wicked situations I have been, and still are (an surviving) in, whist keeping my compass on Evolutionary Vision, Ethics and Action... A stupid bet??? I hope not. Hope for me is expressed here Charles van der Haegen [email protected]

In this paper I challenge the idea that Evolutionary biology cannot adequately account for human moral motivation. In particular, that it cannot explain the persistence of genuinely unselfish or self-sacrificing behavior.