Evolution at a Glance: Part II – Into the Future
Darwin (and now E. O. Wilson) considered that our virtue derives from cooperation within groups because it has been advantageous in competition between groups. At the heart of Darwin’s paradigm is that evolution is an unending Malthusian struggle that is most severe between individuals (or groups) of the same species. Under this dark vision of social evolution, in which the virtue within our groups was nurtured by the enmity between them – the cynical assumption of our time – our Homo sapiens species is not just fallen but forever shackled to the evil at our core.
The reader is urged to consider the newly evolved eccentricities of our Homo sapiens species as only the most recent act in a far larger drama which continues to unfold. The vision presented in this blog looks back 6 million years to the unique establishment of the hominid family on a foundation of justice and morality (a Holy Spirit) on account of its inherent bounty. The evolutionary adaptation rendered by the human ego-mind from the very beginning, set in motion by its interaction with the older communal mind, has been the painful amalgamation of small groups into progressively larger ones. Thus our own human species is engaged in a different kind of epic struggle to forge the destiny willed by (God through the agency of) a Holy Spirit to fulfill Isaiah’s prophesy of uniting us into a single family with peace on earth.
* Thomas Seeley’s Honey Bee Democracy: The decision as to where a colony will move is made by many bees assessing the “authenticity” of scouts’ waggle dances. Just as bees are genetically programmed to “know” the right decision for the group, we also are so programmed by a Holy Spirit.
* Early hunter-gatherer humans’ social behavior is the “gestational prologue” of our species.
* Transitional “Age of Usurpation:” vainglorious individuals seize the Holy Spirit’s power to coordinate large post-agricultural states rendering them into unstable ape-like hierarchies.
* The Myth predicts that the collective Holy Spirit will reemerge to rule a Heaven on Earth.
1. Constitutional Democracy transforms strife caused by primate politics and human avarice within groups into two games with rules, which ultimately prevails for the same reason that hominids have always prevailed—its superior productivity.
2. Again, driven by productivity, democratic groups of groups ultimately unite under a single constitution producing an open-ended creative network of global games.
