A work in progress: Howard Grace looks for the next step in human evolution

‘Where is this conscious process heading?’

I recently watched the thought-provoking film Oppenheimer. It’s based on the life of J Robert Oppenheimer, the man who led the Manhattan Project – the scientific scheme that eventuated in the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. At the end of the film, after the bombs have been dropped, Oppenheimer talks to fellow physicist Albert Einstein, reminding him of a time in the process when he had asked him to check some calculations. Oppenheimer’s team had worried that using an atom bomb might start a chain reaction that could destroy the entire world, but then believed they had (theoretically) proved otherwise. ‘When I came to you with those calculations,’ says Oppenheimer, ‘we thought we might… destroy the entire world.’

Oppenheimer was by now referring to a different chain reaction, one in which people strive for security, superiority and dominance, and which would lead to the nuclear arms race.

This is a bleak view of humanity. To counter it, we might consider other ways in which humans might evolve, to show a possible way ahead.

Let us first consider how the evolutionary process has developed, emerging from the beginning of time as we understand it. There seems to be a large consensus on four distinctive steps.

The first step takes place when, about 13.7 billion years ago, the universe started with a big bang. How this happened is still something of a mystery. The Milky Way galaxy, of which we are part, is thought to have evolved about 10 billion years ago, and the earth about 4.6 billion years ago. The exact figures may be debatable but we are clearly talking about huge periods of time.
In the second step, about 3.5 billion years ago (10 billion years after the big bang), life on earth begins to evolve. From this, an immense variety of more complex plants and animals eventually evolved.

In the third step, the great majority of life on earth is not conscious. But at some recent stage, consciousness arose. Some animals developed with the ability to think and be aware of what was going on around them. They had brains. This for me is a distinctive step. It is now widely agreed that some mammals (before ourselves) also developed a form of consciousness. But this consciousness was not of a kind where they were able to ponder the origins of the universe, the nature of love, or the purpose of life. It is worthy of note, though, that, at the end of their lives, bees, salmon and many other species, by instinct, relinquish their personal existence for the ongoing propagation of their species. Also, many parent animals have an instinctual defence of their young.

In the fourth step, hundreds of thousands of years ago, human beings came on the scene. This is about 100,000 times more recent than the beginning of the universe. In this extremely short time, however, we have evolved into beings who can think about, and question, so many things, including the origins of the universe and our own being.

How has ‘matter’ evolved to be able to think about itself? To me, this fourth step in evolution, which has led to self-consciousness about our own place in the universe, and our desire to survive, is as remarkable as the first step. This questioning ability has led to an extraordinary acceleration of scientific achievement, especially in the last 200 years. So, although human beings are only a minute part of life’s story, we are having a huge impact on this planet. It is this that is worthy of focusing on now.

As self-consciousness emerged, becoming self-centred also seems to have been a natural part of the evolutionary process. In recent millennia, however, as humanity has further evolved, some people have sensed that we should develop beyond being so egocentric. Concepts such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ have emerged. Religions have developed to suggest that all human beings are brothers and sisters, and in some circumstances the common good should even come before our own lives. Great people like Gautama Siddhartha, who was given the title ‘Buddha’, wrestled with the need to embody ‘non-self’. I suspect that his inner struggle, which came from a totally different context and culture, was of a similar nature to what Jesus ultimately experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane. Both Siddhartha and Jesus were set free from the personal survival mentality. Many other human beings have struggled with this development in our spirit, which puts humanity above our own lives. Some succeed more than others. But where is this leading us? Where is this conscious process heading?

Over history we have wrestled with questions of meaning and purpose, and the source of this stirring in our spirits. Whether religious or not, could it be that the human quest away from self-centredness is the next step in this process? Such a step would be distinguished from earlier evolutionary stages, in that it is a conscious one. I am nowhere near the stage of crossing out the ego that some people have reached. But, like many others, I wrestle with it as an aspiration.

This understanding of evolutionary development has a number of moral and spiritual implications. Our self-consciousness, for example, enables us to make decisions that could affect the next stage of the evolutionary process. We can decide that we do not want to take the path of the survival of the fittest and strongest, but one of compassion and selflessness.

Already, these choices are affecting our attitude towards issues like global warming. In varying degrees, we are thinking more seriously for future generations. To be realistic, though, the picture is not all rosy. A biologist friend of mine pointed out that, ‘For 99.99 per cent of the time that there has been life on this planet, there were no humans and everything got along OK. Now this experiment by Nature, with this clever, self-conscious being, is leading to countless thousands of other species being driven to extinction. If the other ten million or so species could vote, we’d be sent packing.’

Focusing on the positive impulse, however, leads towards a total giving of self for the needs of our shared humanity, as well as for the living world and the environment. As a Christian, I sense that this was what Jesus was embodying. And, to me, it was his living and dying challenge to the whole of humanity to follow the path of self-giving.

To be part of fostering such a chain reaction in the evolution of humankind may be a big step in faith. But, whatever our beliefs about the source of that inner impulse, the implications go far beyond the nuclear weapon issue. For each of us, the next step in our lives involves a moral and spiritual choice.

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