By Martin LeFevre
For at least 100,000 years, since “modern man” first emerged from Africa, humans have been as we still are today—tribal, self-seeking, and dominated by the separative, alienating capabilities of “higher thought.”
During the tens of thousands of years of indigenous times, people lived in rough balance with nature. Even then however, man showed a propensity for ecological destructiveness evidenced by the extinction by prehistoric hunters of large fauna in North America and Australia using wood, stone and bone weapons.
The human adaptive pattern, which rests on the ability to consciously remove “things” from the environment, is appropriately separative in its utilitarian function. Carried over to the psychological dimension however, symbolic thought has fragmented the Earth to the present point of near collapse of the biosphere. Why?
As individuals and as a species we have not had sufficient insight into the nature of symbolic thought. Indeed, we project separation onto the universe itself with “the God particle.” Thus, thought has led inexorably to the present “polycrisis” which mirrors the crisis of human consciousness itself.
That a sentient, potentially sapient, species is denuding the planet that gave rise to it is not just an existential mystery; it poses basic questions about consciousness and evolution itself. Is man a monumental mistake of nature, as many now believe?
Many also take dubious refuge in the view that human beings are infinitesimal specks on a speck in space and that the evolution of brains like ours is a chance event against a background of chaos.
However, there is too much beauty in life and the universe, and the human brain has too much capacity for insight and expression of beauty, for that view to hold up to examination.
Even so, the very fact that man evolved along with all other life yet is a sentient species that has started the “Sixth Extinction,” raises existential questions. What place do thought-bearing, technological, species have in the universe? Are science and technology all the brain is for, or do brains such as ours have the capacity for communion and participation with the cosmic mind?
Social Darwinists insist that the previous five extinction events (defined as “a sharp decrease in the number of species in a relatively short period of time”) prove that nature itself is destructive, and that we should not expect man to be otherwise.
Does one really need to point out that there is a vast difference between a natural event, such as an asteroid impact wiping out most life on earth, and the present mass extinction event being generated by a supposedly self-aware species? Conversely, doesn’t our very destructiveness as planet-plundering primates attest to our potential as human beings?
It’s become fashionable to say that the human brain has no greater meaning than that of any other species. At the same time, New Agers talk about human consciousness as a manifestation of cosmic consciousness. It cannot be both.
The former view denies the human brain’s unique capacity on this planet for spiritual insight, while the latter papers over the contradiction between fragmenting humans and the seamless wholeness of nature.
Clearly the capability for high science and sophisticated technology do not confer the wisdom to use them intelligently. Do all potentially intelligent species possessing high science and sophisticated technology tend to fragment their planets’ ecosystems and decimate the diversity of life on their planets?
Astronomers have discovered thousands of “exo-planets” orbiting distant suns, a handful in “habitable zones” probably with liquid water. In the lifetimes of many people alive today, I believe we will find that single-celled life is quite common in the universe, multi-cellular organisms are uncommon, and sentient, potentially sapient species such as humans are rare.
Some scientists say there is there a “great filter” through which no technological creature can pass. That makes no sense to my mind. My hypothesis is that all creatures possessing symbolic thought that have achieved high science and sophisticated technology go through essentially the same crisis of consciousness that we humans are at present.
Other sentient species may not carry the unintelligent use of thought to the brink of ecological and self-destruction, as humans have, but all have to make the transition to a higher order of consciousness through their own lights or perish in their own self-made darkness.
Furthermore, I posit that species that make this transition have neither the desire to dominate other potentially sapient species nor the desire to interfere with the process of conscious transmutation in sentient species on other planets.
So it’s up to each potentially intelligent species to come up to the mark. I feel the question of extraterrestrial life will not be answered until and unless the crisis of terrestrial consciousness is resolved.
Neither science nor organized religion can resolve the human crisis; only the living generations can through transmutation. Like it or not, the ultimate existential question for humanity is in our hands—in the minds and hearts of people who still give a damn.
We can no longer fob off the urgently pressing question of the disastrously fragmenting nature of human consciousness onto the next generation. The human mind has fragmented the immeasurably layered wholeness of the earth’s ecosystems to the breaking point. In so doing, we have also divided ourselves to the breaking point.
In short, the fragmentation of the earth and humanity by the unwise use of symbolic thought has reached its limit, and evolutionary pressure is increasing for a transmutation of the human brain, which is a latent potential within all of us.
