Today’s Post
Last week we began the last segment of the blog which looks into the huge body of objective historical data to put Teilhard’s highly optimistic vision of the future to the test. Does the data show that we humans are continuing to evolve, if so in what ways, how fast, and is the trend positive or negative?
Although Johan Norberg cites a ‘tornado of evidence’ in his book, ‘Progress’, before we begin to dig into his statistics I thought a good place to start might be a general approach to looking at the past which would illustrate this process without going into detailed statistics. That topic is ‘fuel’.
A Brief History of Fuel
Few issues are closer to our everyday lives than that of fuel. Every person on the planet uses fuel every day for such things as heating or cooling their homes, cooking their meals, transporting themselves and communicating. As the issue of fuel is so ubiquitous, its history provides a great metric for putting our evolution in an objective perspective.
The discovery of fire a few hundred thousand years ago was a monumental moment in human history. The availability of cooked food (rather than raw) led to improved health, and the ability to heat habitats led to an increase in habitable area. It is obvious that both led to general improvements in human life.
Following the many thousands of years in which wood was fuel, coal began to take its place, increasing in use as the Bronze age led to the Iron age, and continuing a key role to this day.
Today other types of fuel, principally gas but including nuclear, wind and solar extraction, provide fuel for the many applications of the modern era.
From Teilhard’s Perspective
So, how can we see this simple timeline as an example of Teilhard’s insights into human evolution?
The first is that of Human Invention. The history of fuel is also a history of first ‘discovery’, then ‘extraction’, then ‘application’ and finally ‘dissemination’. Some early humans discovered that certain stones would burn, and over time developed methods of extraction and dissemination that made it possible to use coal as an improved method of heat (more BTU per volume) but required improved methods of extraction and dissemination (mining coal vs gathering wood).
Each of these steps required an increase in complexity not only of the technology required by the first example but of an increasing development of Teilhard’s ‘human psychisms’ which are the core of the Inner Pull. By psychism Teilhard refers to the human groups which effect the “increase in mental interiority and hence of inventive power” required to find and employ ” new ways of arranging its elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space.” This does not only pertain to the management of fuel, but to the exponential rise in the uses of fuel: from cooking and heating, to such things as the smelting of ores and the powering of engines. Each such step required yet another ‘new way’ of thinking, an increase in the organization and knowledge depth of the ‘psychism’ and the need to draw on external resources (such as education) for their success.
The third example can be seen in the proliferation of the “new ways” over the face of planet. While coal, for example, was ‘discovered’ in China approximately in 4000 BC, humans required an expanding empire to spread the discoveries of the Romans far and wide, hence the third example of Globalization.
The fourth of Teilhard’s insights at play in this topic is his observation that compression of the noosphere not only results in Globalization, but also of the increase in speed of the spread of invention. Hundreds of thousands of years of wood burning, followed by a few thousand years of coal dependency followed by a few hundred years of transition to other sources of fuel.
The fifth Teilhard insight is the Timeliness of Invention, the recognition that humans invent as necessary. Had humans not discovered the advantages of coal, the dependency upon wood would have left our planet by now denuded and bereft of oxygen. We would be extinct. Had not new sources of fuel come available in the Eighteenth century, the exclusive use of coal would have doomed us to asphyxiation, choking on the effluvia of civilization. A poignant example can be seen in the ‘Great Smog’ of London which killed over twelve thousand people in 1952.
The sixth Teilhard insight is the recognition of the failure of forecasts that do not take into account the phenomenon of continued human invention. Such an example is Thomas Malthus, whose dire predictions from the early 1800’s are still read today. Malthus depended on historical data for his end-of-times predictions (increase in population outstripping production of resources) but failed to recognize the basic human capability of invention, by which production would rise exponentially. Malthus provides an example of the failure of a forecast which uses past history to predict the future without taking human invention into account.
The seventh insight is that of Change of State. As Teilhard notes, the journey of evolution from the big bang is not a linear one. At key points, not only does the “stuff of the universe” change, but it changes radically. The transition from energy to matter, from simple to complex atoms, from molecules to cells and from neurons to conscious entities, are profound. Further, the energies through which they continue to the next step are profoundly different as well. In our simple example of ‘fuel’, this can be seen to be happening literally before our eyes. The result of each step from wood to coal to gas and onto future sources could not be predicted from evidence of the past. The changes are highly nonlinear. With each step:
- The extraction and proliferation become increasingly complex
- The discovery and development of methods to extract and manage are vastly more technical
- Delivery methods require higher levels of technology and globalization
- The applications of more efficient energies (eg BTU per volume) both increase and become more complex
The last Teilhard insight is that of Risk. Human evolution is not guaranteed to continue. Continued innovation and invention, deepening insight into the structure of the noosphere provided by new human ‘psychisms’ and improvements in globalization which tighten communications all require closer cooperation. None of these will happen unless humans continue to have faith in their future.
Love as the Energy of Human Psychisms
As Teilhard understands it, love is the manifestation of the continuation of the energy of evolution as it rises through the human. It is less an emotional connection than it is the energy that connects us in such a way that our persons are (as Confucius sees it) ‘enlarged’. He notes that it is the necessary ingredient of the effecting of the human ‘psychisms’ which are at the heart of
“…the increase in mental interiority and hence of inventive power”
required to find and employ
”..new ways of arranging its elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space.”
Such ‘psychisms’ go far beyond the simple unity effected by emotion; in fact emotion might not be a factor at all. To be able to foster the personal growth of each individual in the ‘psychism’ (eg a research group), all that is necessary is for the individual to open themselves to the personal ‘enlargement’ which is offered by inclusion.
The economy of ‘centration’ and ‘excentration’ that so well describes emotional human connection applies here as well. The individual must be open to the ideas and insights of the group at the same time that his or her ideas and insights are provided back to the group. In this exchange, these ideas and insights are sharpened and clarified in a spiral in which not only can the group be led to a completely new understanding of the problem under scrutiny, but each individual person is ‘enlarged’ as well.
The Next Post
This week we took a simple look at how an understanding of the history of ‘fuel’ illustrates Teilhard’s basic insights into the future.
Next week we will take up Johan Norberg’s nine topics of human evolution, and using the same approach that we used this week (with much more specific statistics) continue to see how Teilhard’s insights can be seen to ring true.