Today’s Post

Last week we saw how, although there are risks to the continuation of human evolution in our perennial break-fix-break cycle,  faith in our ability to manage this cycle is more important than the expertise we develop to invent fixes to those things we break.

This week we will take a second look at these ‘Noospheric’ risks from the perspective of our place in the sweep of cosmic evolution.

The Fragility of Evolution

Consider that the enterprise of cosmic evolution itself is a risky business.  Evolution occurs when the ‘stuff of the universe’ thumbs its nose at the basic nature of matter by which each unification of like matter may well contribute to evolution by an increase in complexity, but at the same time is accompanied by a small loss of energy (Entropy: The Second law of Thermodynamics).  By this understanding of Physics, the universe begins with a certain quantum of energy, and as soon as it begins it it starts running down.  In seeming opposition, not only do things evolve while this is happening, but they evolve from simple configurations to more complex ones.  As Steven Pinker points out in his book, “Enlightenment Now”,  since there are obviously many more ways for things to be ‘un-complex’, disorderly, than there are for things to be ‘complex’ or more orderly, the very existence of evolution seems counter to the Second Law.  According to Pinker, “Evolution occurs against the grain.”

Worse yet,  As Teilhard observes, while nature seems to have a built-in ‘coefficient of complexity’ by which such complexity increases over time, (and without which evolution could not proceed) this factor becomes secondary to continued evolution when it enters the realm of the human and now requires ‘cooperation’.  As Richard Dawkins sees it, “Genes are replaced by ‘memes’ as the agent of evolution”.  Once humans acquire the capability of ‘reflective consciousness’, by which they are ‘aware of their awareness’, the rules change once again.

Evolution must now be chosen if it is to continue.

So What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

But if evolution needs to be ‘chosen’  to continue, what’s involved in choosing it?  In a word, ‘faith’.   Restating and simplifying the Teilhard quote from last week:

“(we need) to be quite certain, … that the (future) into which (our) destiny is leading is not a blind alley where the earth’s life flow will shatter and stifle itself.”

   Such ‘choice’ requires ‘trust’.

We saw in the last three posts how common it is to engage in denial of progress and how such denial reflects a fear of the future.  We also touched on the fact that such fear can be (and has so often been ) seized upon by populists who offer themselves as bulwarks against the woes of the future if only we would trust them.  Their first move is to insist that there is much to be feared, then to begin to use this fear to undermine trust in the Western structures of freedom which they claim to have unleased such woes  as the free press, individual freedoms and open immigration.   Other Western liberal practices are also denigrated, such as the development of a global infrastructure by which every advance, such as those reported by Norberg, can be shared globally and contribute to progress across the globe.  While walling off the rest of the world may shut us in it is advertised as necessary to make us safe.

Once traditional Western norms can no longer be trusted, Teilhard’s  ‘psychisms’ identified last week as not only one of the fruits of these norms but an essential component of continued evolution, will  become less efficacious and over time will begin to fail to mitigate the negative effects that result from future inventions such as new sources of energy.

So, while Norberg’s quantification of human progress is in optimistic agreement with Teilhard, the risks are nonetheless substantial and cannot be overlooked.  Evolution is in our hands, and stewardship of its continuation requires a clear-headed knowledge of the past, a commitment to the energy of evolution as it rises in the human species and confidence in the future.  In the words of Teilhard:

“..the view adopted here of a universe in process of general involution upon itself comes in as an extremely simple way of getting past the dead end at which history is still held up, and of pushing further towards a more homogenous and coherent view of the past.”

The Next Post

This week we took a second look at the second and more serious category of risks to human evolution.  While we acknowledged the ongoing risks of fixing what we have broken, the greater risk lies in the possibility of losing faith in our historically proven ability to, as Teilhard says,

 “continually find new ways of arranging (our) elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space” by “a rise in interiority and liberty within a whole made up of reflective particles that are now more harmoniously interrelated.”

   In short, the interruption of this “rise in interiority and liberty” will stifle the flow of evolution in the human species.

Next week we will sum up where we’ve been in tracing Teilhard’s ‘articulation of the noosphere’ through Norberg’s enumeration of the articulations and arriving at the risks evolution undergoes as it enters into the realm of the human.