10

Evolving the Future

I began this book with the scientist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his book The Phenomenon of Man. Teilhard regarded humanity as not just another species but also a new evolutionary process, therefore as significant in its own way as the origin of life. He imagined human evolution leading to a single global consciousness called the Omega Point that could regulate the earth as a superorganism.

In the prologue, I described this book as an updated version of The Phenomenon of Man. While Teilhard’s book has a rich spiritual dimension, it can also be evaluated as a purely scientific thesis. Does our species represent a new evolutionary process? Can the concept of conscious evolution be justified? Do superorganisms exist? Is it theoretically possible to expand the boundary of a superorganism to include the whole earth?

These are some of the deepest questions that can be asked about evolution and the nature of humanity. Yet this book also has an immensely practical side. How do we avoid the epidemic of physical and mental illnesses that beset modern life? What are the best ways to raise our children? How can we achieve personal fulfillment? How can we cause our groups to be more effective? How can we create sustainable economies? How can we become stewards of the rest of life on earth?

For me, it is the combination of philosophical depth and practical relevance that makes an evolutionary worldview so compelling. It is easy to appreciate why Darwin was moved to write “There is grandeur in this view of life” in the final passage of Origin of Species. In this final chapter of my book, I will take stock of both the deep philosophical questions and the opportunities for rolling up our sleeves and employing Darwin’s toolkit to make the world a better place.

THE NEED FOR EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE

I doubt that anyone, upon serious reflection, can deny the need for scientific understanding to solve the problems of our age. Yet the attitudes of so many people about science are detached from their attitudes about evolution. A religious believer can be a science-friendly creationist. A politician can be a staunch supporter of science who doesn’t dare utter the E-word. Social scientists and humanist scholars can assume that their particular disciplines are consistent with evolutionary theory, even though it was absent from their own education.

One contribution of this book, I hope, is to reveal the problem with this detachment. For all aspects of humanity, to be a scientist requires being an evolutionist. Scientists who ignore evolution run the risk of creating stockpiles of information with no interpretative framework; of asking only some of Tinbergen’s four questions; or of employing interpretive frameworks that are not, in fact, consistent with evolutionary theory. Until science and evolution become more closely wedded to each other in the minds of scientists and laypeople alike, the Darwinian revolution will not be complete.

Once we consult modern evolutionary science, each of the deep philosophical questions given above can be answered in the affirmative. Taking them in order: Even though evolutionary biologists were gene-centric for most of the twentieth century, they have now gone back to basics by defining evolution in terms of variation, selection, and heredity, with genes as only one of several mechanisms of heredity. Cultural transmission represents another mechanism of heredity in many species, one that has become vastly more powerful in humans with the advent of symbolic thought. Teilhard was on the mark when he wrote that our species represents a new (or at least greatly expanded) evolutionary process.

Turning to the question of conscious evolution, it was dogma during most of the twentieth century that evolution is an undirected process lacking any kind of purpose. Specifically, the dogma held that variation is random with respect to the traits that are selected by the environment. Giraffes stretching to reach high foliage do not mysteriously cause their offspring to become taller. Their offspring are both taller and shorter, with differential survival and reproduction explaining why the giraffe population evolves to become taller over time.

Historically, it is easy to understand why this dogma became so strong, to reject fuzzy ideas of progressive evolution associated with Herbert Spencer and others. Also, at first it was difficult to see how the experiences of an organism could influence the genes in the organism’s reproductive cells. Today we know that this is possible after all—not by changing the presence of the genes in the reproductive cells, but by changing patterns of gene expression (epigenetics). In other words, the experiences of your parents resulted in some of their genes being up-regulated and others being down-regulated. To a degree, these patterns of gene expression were transmitted to you. The way you are can even bear the traces of the experiences of your grandparents and great-grandparents.

When we turn to individual learning and cultural transmission as evolutionary processes, there is obviously a strong directed component. Thus, the dogma that evolution is undirected is largely an artifact of gene-centric evolutionary biology. Also, learning and cultural transmission can radically alter the course of genetic evolution. Some human populations evolved the genetic ability to digest lactose as adults only because they had previously learned to domesticate livestock. In this fashion, the slow process of genetic evolution follows where the fast process of cultural evolution leads.

The bottom line for our purposes is that there is nothing wrong with the concept of conscious evolution. Consider the process of conscious decision-making. There is a clear objective for evaluating alternative options, which is the target of selection in evolutionary terms. The variation part of the evolutionary process includes both a directed and an undirected component. We don’t suggest options at random; typically, we are guided by one set of expectations or another. On the other hand, some options do appear to “come out of nowhere,” and these are often the ones that are chosen. That’s what brainstorming is all about. One way to demonstrate the importance of the random component is by giving the same problem to a number of decision-making groups. They usually come up with different solutions, just as the lines of E. coli in Richard Lenski’s experiment evolved different ways to digest glucose.

Evolutionary algorithms in computer science illustrate the same point. Some problems, such as how a traveling salesman should minimize the length of his path through different cities, are notoriously difficult to solve because there are so many combinatorial possibilities. One way to proceed is to represent different options (each path through the cities) as a string of information, like genes on a chromosome, and to select them on the basis of path length. Then variation is created by mutating the strings and recombining them with each other, emulating the process of genetic recombination. Numerous “generations” of this process do a good job of finding the shortest paths. The whole process is consciously designed to solve a specified problem, but it still counts as an evolutionary process.

Once we become comfortable with the concept of conscious evolution, then the need to design our personal and cultural evolutionary processes becomes clear, similar to designing an evolutionary algorithm on a computer. This is what biologists call “the evolution of evolvability.”1 If we don’t become wise managers of evolutionary processes, then evolution will still take place but will lead to outcomes that are not aligned with our normative goals. Selecting economic practices to maximize gross national product (GNP) is one of many examples that could be cited. Even if we manage to succeed, it turns out that GNP is not a good proxy for societal welfare. We chose the wrong target for selection and evolution became the problem rather than the solution. Examples like this can be listed almost without end.

Do superorganisms exist? The answer to this question is unequivocally “yes.” An entity counts as an organism to the degree that it is a unit of selection in multilevel evolution. Every entity that is currently described as an organism, such as a bacterial cell, a nucleated cell, or a multicellular organism, is a highly regulated society of lower-level units that behave as they do only because they were selected as groups. To the degree that selection also operates within groups, these same lower-level units can evolve to be cancerous. Eusocial insect colonies qualify as organisms because they are the primary units of selection, even when the colony members are physically dispersed. The fact that these ideas apply with equal force to human genetic and cultural evolution is a scientific breakthrough of the first rank.

Can the boundary of the human superorganism be expanded, even to embrace the entire earth? It already has expanded to a considerable degree over the last ten thousand years, resulting in the mega-societies of today. Every nation can improve its governance, but the degree of cooperation and coordination that takes place would be inconceivable to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. If we want the whole earth to become a superorganism, then multilevel selection theory tells us exactly what to do: make planetary welfare the target of selection. This is easier said than done, but clearly establishing the target of selection is the first step, especially given competing narratives that portray the unregulated pursuit of lower-level interests as the way to benefit the common good.

In light of recent developments in modern evolutionary science, we can now answer in the affirmative every deep philosophical question posed by Teilhard in The Phenomenon of Man. This book could not have been written twenty years ago. One reason that the Darwinian revolution is not yet complete is because evolutionary biologists became so restricted in their view of evolution, ceding the study of non-genetic evolutionary processes to other disciplines. That is now rapidly changing, but there is a lot of catching up to do.

FROM A THEORY TO A WORLDVIEW

In this book, I have used the phrase “evolutionary worldview” more often than “evolutionary theory.” The difference is that a theory can only tell us what is, while a worldview can tell us how to act. Teilhard described the Omega Point not only as a scientific possibility, but also as one worth working toward. This message was so inspiring that his book continues to be widely read, even after it was forgotten by most scientists.

We are usually so focused on our disagreements that we lose sight of our common ground. Nearly all of us think that it’s right to avoid disruptive self-serving behaviors and to cooperate with others to achieve common goals, at least within a defined moral circle. That is why I could invite you to describe a morally perfect individual in chapter 4, knowing in advance what you were going to say. We disagree on how we define our moral circles, on what needs to be done to achieve common goals, and also on the narratives that convey our moral ideals, but these are relatively superficial compared to our shared moral psychology, which is designed to help us work together in groups.

Not only do we have a shared moral psychology, but it is relatively easy to agree upon the whole earth as the ultimate moral circle, as strange as this might seem. The great novelist Joseph Conrad once said that he enjoyed writing books about the sea because life on a ship is so morally simple. It’s obvious to everyone on the ship that the common goal is to remain afloat. Space fantasies such as Star Trek and Star Wars have the same appeal. Get anyone to imagine the whole earth as like a single ship, and that person will start regarding the whole earth as the appropriate moral circle.

Religions are sometimes described as eternally at war with each other, but this is far from true. Religious wars, like all wars, are highly contextual. As cultural superorganisms, religious groups are capable of employing both aggressive and cooperative social strategies. Which strategy prevails depends upon the socio-ecological conditions. If you want to stop wars, think like an evolutionary ecologist by providing the right conditions for peaceful social strategies to win the Darwinian contest.

Moreover, the contemplatives of all major religious traditions—from Christian monks in their monasteries to Buddhist hermits in their caves—converge upon a common awareness of rich interconnectedness. Once life is seen as a vast interconnected system, certain ethical conclusions follow. Specifically, the futility of one part of the system attacking another part of the system is revealed. Systemic problems require systemic solutions. Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, On Care for Our Common Home, reaches out to all people. His Holiness the Dalai Lama even wrote a book titled Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World.

Environmental thinkers reach the same conclusion. They achieve their appreciation of rich interconnectedness through the study of nature, but the same ethical conclusions follow. This is why environmental philosophers such as Arne Naess, who coined the term “deep ecology,” have a spiritual quality without invoking any gods.

Even economists and politicians can achieve common ground on a whole earth ethic, as strange as this might seem. Those who preach “greed is good” aren’t saying that it’s OK to be greedy even if the world falls apart as a result. They’re saying that greed is good for society, including the global economy. The current U.S. president, Donald Trump, isn’t saying that he wants to put America first at the expense of other nations or the world. At least when he’s justifying his policies on the world stage, he’s saying that if every nation attempts to put itself first, then they will all strike the right kind of deals for the common good. He might be wrong about his strategy, but rhetorically he is not abandoning a whole earth ethic. Anyone who truly abandoned a whole earth ethic on the world stage would be properly regarded as just plain immoral.

Against this background, an evolutionary worldview makes two contributions toward actually achieving a whole earth ethic, as opposed to just wanting it when in the right frame of mind. First, it provides strong scientific support for the need to make the welfare of the whole earth the target of selection in the formulation of policies, which in turn can orchestrate the formulation of policies for all lower-level units. At the same time, it removes scientific support for the main alternative narrative, which is that the unregulated pursuit of lower-level self-interest robustly benefits the common good. To put it bluntly, when it comes to policy formulation, laissez-faire is dead.

The second contribution is to provide an alternative to centralized planning, which is also dead as a way of designing complex systems. Policy formulation must be a conscious evolutionary process that first chooses the right target of selection, then monitors planned and unplanned variation, and then replicates best practices, realizing that implementation might be highly contextual. Engineers have already reached this conclusion for the complex systems that they attempt to design.2 How could the whole earth and its many subsystems be any different?

Another insight from an evolutionary worldview is that change must be incremental. It must be possible to get there from here. Optimally, progress can be like climbing a mighty adaptive peak, where every step takes us upward, rather than needing to descend into adaptive valleys along the way.

WHAT WE CAN DO

We—the writer and readers of this book—are a diverse group. Some of us are in a position to make things happen at a large scale. All of us are in a position to make things happen at some scale, if only in our own lives and our immediate surroundings. Fortunately, acting upon a whole earth ethic is not a matter of sacrificing your welfare for the benefit of the planet. It can be done in a way that helps you to thrive as an individual by taking part in groups that are richly rewarding and powerful agents of change at a larger scale.

A remarkable example, with lessons for all of us, is an ecovillage called Dancing Rabbit located in rural Missouri.3 Dancing Rabbit does not strive to set itself apart from the rest of society. Instead, it models itself after a New England village, but one that consciously strives to provide a good life while using a tenth of the resources of the average American. Here is its mission statement.

To create a society, the size of a small town or village, made up of individuals and communities of various sizes and social structures, which allows and encourages its members to live sustainably.*

To encourage this sustainable society to grow to have the size and recognition necessary to have an influence on the global community by example, education, and research.

*Sustainably: In such a manner that, within the defined area, no resources are consumed faster than their natural replenishment, and the enclosed system can continue indefinitely without degradation of its internal resource base or the standard of living of the people and the rest of the ecosystem within it, and without contributing to the non-sustainability of ecosystems outside.

The Rabbits, as they call themselves, take their mission seriously. Newcomers are required to sign a covenant that regulates vehicle use, fossil fuel use, agricultural practices, building materials, electrical and water use, and waste disposal. They also commit to nonviolent conflict resolution and to contribute a portion of their time and income to the community. If they repeatedly break the covenant, the village has the right to exclude them.

These norms regulating sustainable living are as strict as can be. Yet, for all other aspects of their lives, the Rabbits are as tolerant as can be. Any religion (including none). Any sexual orientation. Any ethnicity. Any living arrangement. Also, the mission statement and covenant do not prescribe exactly how to abide by the sustainability norms. Instead, they encourage experimentation. They have designed the village as an evolutionary process with a clear target of selection that has the welfare of the whole earth in mind.

Dancing Rabbit illustrates one of the main take-home messages of this book: the importance of small nurturing groups for both individual well-being and efficacious action at a larger scale. I have visited the village and can attest to its high quality of life. The first thing I noticed was the absence of cars. The communally owned cars are parked on the edge of the village and the buildings are separated by walking paths. The second thing I noticed was that children were running around playing on their own without needing to be supervised. Who needs to be a helicopter mom or dad when there is no danger of being hit by a car or abducted by strangers? The third thing I noticed was the abundance of physical activities. People were doing things with their bodies, mostly outdoors, such as tending their gardens, building their houses, maintaining the common grounds. These things used to come for free in olden times but must be constructed in modern life. It’s nearly impossible to construct them as an individual but they can be constructed as a group.

Life at Dancing Rabbit is not easy. In many ways, the Rabbits suffer the hardships of pioneer life, but these can also be immensely rewarding. In their own internal assessment, 88 percent of the Rabbits responded either “good” or “extremely good” to the question “Do you think that Dancing Rabbit is a good place to live?” Many comment on the village as a great place for personal growth. Strict norms aren’t resented when they represent your own values and the norm for tolerance in all other respects provides room for experimentation.

So, as a strong nurturing group, Dancing Rabbit contributes to individual well-being. The village also contributes to efficacious action at a larger scale. The Rabbits are research-oriented and conduct a careful audit of their ecological footprint. Compared to national averages, they create 7 percent of municipal solid waste; less than 10 percent of car use; 5.5 percent of propane gas consumption; 17.7 percent of electrical use, generated almost entirely on site; 7.5 percent of water use. All on an average salary of about $10,000 per year, which gets you abject poverty anywhere else in America. Finally, not only do they provide a model for other groups, but they actively promote their model through their various educational and outreach activities. The group is far, far more powerful than any member could be on their own.

With two Norwegian colleagues, Bjørn Grinde and Ragnhild Bang Nes, and one of my graduate students, Ian MacDonald, I have conducted a survey of over a hundred intentional communities that belong to a consortium called the Fellowship of Intentional Communities (FIC).4 Some were rural, others urban. Some were religious, others secular. Some were ecovillages, others had different focuses, such as eldercare. As a sample, all of them illustrated the concept of small groups leading to both individual well-being and efficacious action at a larger scale. They scored near the top on measures of satisfaction and meaning of life that have been given to many sample populations around the world. They reported “community” as their reason for joining, their current satisfaction, and what they wanted more of by way of future change.

In addition to their high average values, the intentional communities in our sample also varied in how well they achieved their objectives. As we predicted, this variation was based in part on how well they had implemented the core design principles. The average intentional community performs well, but can perform even better with a little evolutionary know-how.

Can’t drop everything to join an intentional community? You don’t need to. You already participate in numerous group activities, and each one can benefit from the same principles illustrated by Dancing Rabbit. Here is a guide that all of us can follow.

1. BECOME MORE MINDFUL OF YOUR OWN VALUES AND GOALS. Changing the world begins with adopting a whole earth ethic for ourselves and translating it into what we can do locally. I highly recommend that you learn more about science-based mindfulness techniques such as ACT (described in chapter 7). You need to become more conscious about your own evolution to bring it into alignment with your normative goals! If you wish to consult with a therapist or a coach, visit the website of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science.5

2. BECOME A MEMBER OF WORTHWHILE GROUPS. We are designed by evolution to be members of small cooperative groups where we can be known and respected for our actions. We are also designed to participate in numerous such groups simultaneously, each oriented around a different set of activities. The societies of our hunter-gatherer ancestors were not so different from the way that we split our time between our various group activities. As much as you can, choose to participate in groups that reflect your values and goals.

3. MAKE YOUR GROUPS STRONG BY IMPLEMENTING THE CORE AND APPROPRIATE AUXILIARY DESIGN PRINCIPLES. Even though we are designed by evolution to live in small groups, that doesn’t mean that we instinctively implement the right design principles. Instead, groups vary in their implementation, and even when they do a good job, they are not necessarily consciously aware of what they are doing right. This leaves tremendous room for almost all groups to improve by becoming more mindful about their evolution, just as you need to become more mindful about your evolution.

4. MAKE YOUR GROUP A HEALTHY CELL IN A MULTICELLULAR SOCIETY. Becoming a participant in small and well-organized groups is likely to do wonders for your personal welfare, but those groups must also contribute positively to society at a larger scale. The fact that the core design principles are scale-independent provides a blueprint for how to proceed. As a cooperative superorganism, your group needs to seek out other cooperative superorganisms, avoid the hazards of more predatory superorganisms, and work to establish the core design principles at larger scales. You do not require the permission of any authorities to start doing this. The B Corp movement described in chapter 6 provides an example of enlightened businesses doing it on their own. However, you should be on the lookout for authorities (such as governments) that are also enlightened enough to provide the right kind of top-down assistance, as the city of Buffalo did for its block clubs as described in chapter 6.

How about if you are lucky enough to make a difference at a larger scale? What if you are a politician, policy expert, CEO of a business, or board member of a philanthropic foundation? Then you are in a position to provide the top-down assistance to which I just alluded. Avoid the temptation of centralized planning. You and your expert consultants are not smart enough to know how to improve the complex system that is under your care. You should implement the core design principles, which are fundamentally inclusive. You should also implement evolutionary processes that identify the right targets of selection, monitor planned and unplanned variation, and replicate best practices, knowing that their implementation will be highly sensitive to context. Everyone within the complex system under your care will need to take part, as in the examples of Toyota, the rapid results method, and innovation ecosystems that I recounted in chapter 9. You will have far more success, recognition, and personal fulfillment than you would pretending to be a Master of the Universe.

Here is something else that everyone can do: learn more about the evolutionary worldview. Think of this book as a portal to a world that invites much more exploration. The number of people who have already gone through the portal is large, although still a tiny fraction of the worldwide population. One of my greatest delights as a teacher and writer is to escort people through the portal. They repeatedly tell me how an evolutionary worldview has gotten “under their skin,” how they talk about it to their friends and apply it to all aspects of their lives. They are clearly seeing the world in a new way with no more than a basic introduction, which of course can be deepened with further study. This is not just my own experience but also that of others who teach and write about evolution in the same way. It is the theory presented in an appropriately general form, not the teacher or writer, that accomplishes the transformation.6

Speaking for myself, I have come a long way from my start as a graduate student in 1973, the year that Dobzhansky wrote “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” I’m proud to have played a role in expanding the concept of “biology” to include everything associated with the words “human” and “culture.” I am among the lucky ones in a position to make a difference at a larger scale, thanks to the Evolution Institute,7 which is currently the only think tank that explicitly draws upon evolutionary theory in its formulation of public policy. Two EI projects that are especially amenable to participation are Prosocial8 and the TVOL1000.9 Prosocial is a practical method for helping groups evolve their futures and take part in the construction of cooperative multigroup ecosystems, based on the ideas presented in this book. The TVOL1000 is a group that supports the EI’s online magazine This View of Life10 and forms into action groups on topics such as business, education, parenting, and health.

I have learned from my own efforts that no matter what topic is chosen for policy formulation, a rich array of best practices already exists—such as the Good Behavior Game for education, Buffalo’s West Side Neighborhood Association, evangelical cell ministries, and the rapid results method for businesses. Each of these best practices arose as a “cultural mutation,” often by happenstance, and spread on the basis of its success. That’s what cultural evolution is all about. However, their spread was often slow, requiring decades, and frequently came to a stop against various boundaries, similar to the geographical distributions of biological species. Also, many of the best practices work without a clear understanding of why they work. The explanations that exist are often expressed in terms of narrow domains of knowledge that are difficult to transfer to other domains.

As a result, while we should always be on the lookout for best practices and learn from their success, more is needed to solve the problems of our age as quickly as we need to and at a planetary scale. The main contribution of evolutionary theory is not to discover solutions that have never been tried before, but to provide a general explanatory framework that identifies why best practices work and how they can be spread across all domains of knowledge and policy applications. That was the synthesis that organized the biological sciences in my youth and is now in progress for everything associated with the words “human” and “culture.”

There is no question in my mind that “this view of life” is the wave of the future. The main question is how soon it will arrive and whether it will be in time to avert the potential disasters that confront us. I look forward to the day when the whole world will be saying, along with Thomas Huxley, how stupid of us not to have thought of that.