The end of WWI, Armistice Day, November 11, 1918 was to mark the ending of the war which was fought to end all wars. That is how it was billed. Sadly, rather than ushering in peace, the Armistice of WWI began the century of the greatest wars, destructions, massacres, maimings, killings, physical and mental combat injuries, miseries and sufferings ever known in any single 100 year period.
Evolution is ongoing; it effects everything in our lives. Biology has evolved. Society has evolved. Our institutions have evolved. Our science and technology have evolved. Most importantly, our weapons have evolved, from the sticks, stones, arrows, and spears of primitive humans to the power once mythically attributed only to gods, the energies of the universe and stars themselves.
Einstein said:
With the splitting of the atom, everything has changed save man's (sic) way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unimaginable peril.
Follow beneath the fold to explore this further.
According to the great anthropological biologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the process of evolution in which we are now engaged is the "Evolution of Consciousness." It is imperative, mandated by evolution that human consciousness evolve to more closely approximate the technical powers we have taken into our small hands and undeveloped ethical standards. By taking possesion of the primal energies of the universe, of the gods, we are required to become more god-like in our ethics, values, and consciousness.
It's not really very complicated; it's actually quite simple, difficult no doubt, but very simple. We need to live the values that have been attributed to gods in the higher evolutions of religion -- qualities like empathy, compassion, sharing, fairness. integrity, respect. Even though it is this simple, we have not managed to accomplish it in all our years of limited, rigid religious strictures and disciplines. Many indigenous cultures knew and lived these values, and tried to tell us; but we could not hear.
Now however, we have a mighty incentive for acquiring these traits. That incentive, or reason, is Death. The realization of death is both the trigger and the foundation for the evolution of consciousness. At the time homosapiens began to be aware of the death of the individual, we encounter numerous attempts to deny death, seek an escape from the finality.
The first piece of literature, "The Gilgamesh Epic" comes to us from Sumeria, Mesopotamia and dates from somewhere between 2750 and 2500 BCE. Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu set off in search of the "Fountain of Eternal Life." Gilgamesh is the more fully human, the more fully evolved while Enkidu is more animal like.
This is a tale of the evolution from animal into fuller humanity. They didn't find that fountain, but they were the first humans of which we know who were evolving in consciousness because of the awareness of death and the attempt to deny and escape.
The several millenia since have been marked by many ways of denying death. All of our religions seem to be based on this, from lesser to greater degrees of sophistication, from dying here to be born in a Heaven where your 'current' loved ones await you, to the more buddhist disolution into the cosmic all-there-is. Some have sought escape from death through acquiring great fame and wealth in order to live on in monuments or a continuing 'noble family.' And of course, there is science, science seeking to extend life, and in some cases, like Cryonics, the idea of surviving beyond death.
But, no matter how hard we have tried, we have not found a way to escape death on an individual level.
But how about as a species? Can the species homsapiens live on? The Einstein quote cited at the top gives a hint:
We must change man's way of thinking.
We must raise our consciousness because, with our older cosnciousness of war as a solution for our disagreements, combined with the Awesome Power of our weapons,
WE HAVE CREATED DEATH WRIT LARGE ACROSS THE PLANET
We have attempted to deny death, and as the psychiatrist says,
Whatever we deny is what is bound to come back to haunt us. What we deny is what is blocking our growth forward.
It must be assimilated into consciousness and understood.
Our friend smileycreek has the perfect sigline for what I am trying to say.
The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What's our excuse?
~~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
I suggest that we have no excuse. Many have seen the threats coming our way, be they nuclear war, climate change, pollution to the point of poison. Our consciousness must grow to see these 'asteroids,' these threats of Extinction Level Events (ELEs) clearly and work to keep our species and the planet alive beyond war and destruction.
Happy Armistice Day everyone. Work to manifest the blessings of peace and sharing.