We humans like to think we’re the epitome of the evolutionary process, but will humans 30,000 years from now (assuming we survive!) look back on us as incomprehensibly primitive the same way we look back on Cro Magnon man?
What might future humanity look like?
From higher apes to humans of today, perhaps the biggest change is the enormous increase in Consciousness and Cognition.
And there’s the standard observation that the growth of a human from embryo to birth repeats the evolutionary process—millions of years compressed into 9 months. Why limit that observation to our physiological development? In the growing infant we also see the dawning of Consciousness and the development of Cognition. And beyond that is…?
We tend to think of Reason as the end of the line for human development, but is it? It has certainly yielded a fantastic increase in our ability to manipulate (I hesitate to say ‘control’!) our environment. The jury is still out whether we will survive the Reign of ‘Reason’. (A deliberate conflation of “The Age of Reason” and “The Reign of Terror”.)
The Reign of ‘Reason’ has been accompanied by raging greed, raging materialism, and plenty of plain old rage—to hell with the consequences! Can we survive this?
Reason, the Rational Mind, is really yet one more faculty for comprehending the world—in much the same way that vision and hearing are faculties for comprehending the world. Each additional capability is a Good Thing—but do they exhaust our capabilities? In Cro Magnon man we see the first ‘green shoots’ of Reason—now blooming in our species. In the same way, are there yet other modes of cognition—of relating to and understanding the world—of which we are now seeing the first ‘green shoots’ here and there, and with time they too shall fully flower?
There have been men and women—we hold them up as unreachable icons—like Buddha, Gandhi, Francis of Assisi, Jesus. We even call them ‘advanced’ and ‘enlightened’ (which by implication suggests that the rest of us are primitive and benighted). I saw an interview of a Buddhist monk, and folks asked him all sorts of religious type questions. But then a young lady asked him: “I know this is rather personal, but how do you endure living without sex?” The monk thought for a moment, and replied: “When you’re ‘coming’ all the time, what do you need sex for?”
The Choice
There’s the old Zen saying: “Before enlightenment: chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.” They still take care of the necessities of life, yet now those so-called ‘chores’ are numinous.
These folks need next to nothing in the way of material things—and yet I’d venture to say they are happier and more fulfilled than Bill Gates with all his billions.
Perhaps they are the ones who are truly Living.
Why do we settle for materialism, etc.? When we know there are such better options? When, for example, Jesus and the Buddha teach us to avoid raging materialism, I wonder if they aren’t so much saying “That is ‘Bad’” but rather “You’re famished, and yet you settle for eating cardboard when you could have REAL food instead?”
Are these men and women examples, sneak previews, vanguards of what can some day be the normal mode of being for human beings? The next stage in our evolution? Is it really that huge of a leap?
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September 20, 2009 6:47 pm | 
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