EPIC OF EVOLUTION - COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS AND HUMANITY'S NEXT STEP FORWARD

Darwin, finches, HMS Beagle anchored offshore one of the Galapagos Islands. The processes of natural and artificial selection have created a bounty of diverse life on Earth, but what forces and factors will shape the continued evolution of human beings?

Our species will continue to evolve, of course. The first homo sapiens are only about 200,000 years old, a mere drop in the bucket of time. Imagining what human beings may look and act like in another 200,000 years is a daunting task, but it’s hard to imagine we’ll look exactly like the faces we see in the mirror today. Of course, I’m not trying to anticipate what people will look like in 200,000 years; I can’t predict that. But I can imagine a closer future.

The most important trend shaping humanity today is the avalanche of information created by the rapid advance of communications technology. Never before has so much information been so readily available, and with this information comes interconnectedness. This is the trend Thomas Friedman references in the title of his book, “The World is Flat.” Five centuries ago Europeans sought a sea route to Asia that would only take a few months rather than a year to travel. In 1873, Jules Verne imagined the excitement of making it around the world in only 80 days. But in February of 2015 as I write these words, I can book a ticket to travel halfway around the wold in about thirty hours, and if I want to, I can speak with someone halfway around the world right now, and hear them perfectly.

There is no turning back this clock, no unwinding this increasingly large and tangled web of interconnectivity. All we can do is grapple with the complexities, and try to steer the ship in the right direction. There are numerous ethical, economic, and cultural questions that the incorporation of technology into our lives present, but I think the combination of irrepressible information and increasingly high levels of interconnectivity and cooperation are destined to push humanity forward.

There are two major reasons I predict this. The first is the complexity of modern trends; 21st century problems are global, and no single individual, company, or country is going to resolve every issue that humanity faces. Cooperation is an essential component of 21st century progress. Those who are willing and able to tap into the knowledge and talents of others will be successful. The necessity of working together and collaborating will only strengthen our collective dependence and unity.

The second reason is the ubiquity and content of the information swirling around us. Social media in particular, exposes us to all sorts of fads, but never before have the injustices and crimes of our fellow human beings been on such worldwide display and subjected to such scrutiny. The worst of humanity’s many 20th century crimes against ourselves, the Holocaust, was not a secret when it happened, but the extent and scale of the horror was largely unknown until Soviet and American forces liberated the Nazi death camps in 1945. Today, the Islamic State films their atrocities and broadcasts them to the world. The images of dead in Syria and the Ukraine are not only shown in high definition on a 24/7 news cycle, but can be examined straight from the source if one knows who to follow on Twitter. Just one such image or video can stir outrage, and while we never know which image it may be, there is a never-ending supply of candidates. The truth, no matter how ugly, has become harder to suppress.

The deluge of information does not have to be a catalyst for positive change, but I believe we are already seeing indications that it is. It is easy to scorn hashtag activism, but when before have millions of people expressed simultaneous vocal outrage about the kidnapping of Nigerian women or the use of child soldiers by a Ugandan warlord? Would it have been possible at the beginning of Hosni Mubarak’s rule to imagine that an Egyptian monarch could have been brought down by protests started by mass media? What about the rapid shift in American attitudes towards gay marriage? In less than two decades the federal government went from defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman to rejecting that view. Could the connectivity and exposure to others that skyrocketed after DOMA was signed in 1996 have contributed to those changing attitudes?

These two trends overlaps. The need to collaborate not just to solve complex global problems, but to be economically successful in a world-wide supply chain will force individuals who want to have an impact to search out others who are working towards those ends or have the right skillset. As technology enables us to connect with each other more and more, the people with whom we connect will be more and more diverse. This exposure to people who act, look, speak, and think differently than we do will break down the barriers among us. A virtuous cycle is already developing alongside our fascination with celebrities and their every move.

Over time, the traits needed to survive and succeed in a 3rd millennium world will become more prevalent, and humans will develop a collective conscious — that is, a universal worldview that values the life and talents of every person no matter their ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or other factors. Whether this selection is natural — because we are responding to a phenomenon beyond our control — or artificial — because that phenomenon is still manmade — is irrelevant. Like any species human beings will adapt to our surroundings, are we are increasingly surrounded by information. What we do with this information is in the hands of each of us as an individual, but what this information does to us as a species is beyond our control, and if the tide of information is reversible, then I believe it will ultimately shape our view of ourselves as a species in a positive manner. Collective consciousness, if realized, will help us push past the barriers that currently divide us, and allow us to see how good we can really be when we put our best collective foot forward.