Galileo, Abraham Lincoln, Vincent Van Gogh, Walt Whitman, Rachel Carson — our history is filled with a familiar tale. It is the story of the progressive leaders and innovators of our species and the resistance to every step in human advancement by those with a strong vested interest in regression and the status quo.
Still almost wholly unknown even today, this is what happened to
the greatest scientist of modern times.
It is what happened to every
attempt by Charles Darwin to write or tell of the progressive
completion or "top half" for his theory of human evolution
— and the difference it could have made, and still can
make, in our lives.
|
|
This
is how the story of
Darwin's Unfolding Revolution
begins....
PROLOGUE
THE TRUTH ABOUT DARWIN--AND US
After
100,000 years of edging our way forward since our emergence on this
planet, the global ramifications of the Bush presidency in the United
States at the outset of the 21st century has raised two
very large questions for our species:
Is
human evolution moving backward?
And
to what extent has the wrong kind of science been a cause?
What would Darwin say
were he living today?
What would he think,
for example, on finding out that the rain forests of Brazil, about
which he rhapsodized in The Voyage of the Beagle -- seemingly
eternal in their wonder then, with their central function as “the
lungs of the planet” widely known today-- were being clear
cut to run cattle to provide hamburgers for the mushrooming of quasi-lethal
fast food outlets all over the face of this earth?
What else
should we tell him of what presently seems to check or drive us
backward in human evolution?
Environmental
devastation would generally head the list of global
threats to the wellbeing of our species.
Next, many
would list the devastation of war
--or the unchecked and continuing use of violence to resolve disputes
or extend one's power.
Widening
of the gap between rich and poor
in countries and between nations.
Many experts
would say we're checked or being driven backward by the continuing
valuing of the stereotypical violence-oriented
male or “macho” values and the devaluing of the
more peaceful “feminine” values.
Despite new
optimism, many would also insist on the threat first raised by Malthus
of over-population, or the
“population bomb.”
Above all
for many would be the threat of terrorism
and the fearful perpetual presence of nuclear
overkill -- both
the products of the unholy mix of 20th century science, religion,
and politics at its worst.
So the mournful
eyes widen and the face embedded within the magnificent beard drops
in dismay. But what do you suppose Darwin would say if he was told
that to a newly alarming degree he was personally responsible
for this mess?
What do you
think he would say if he was told that over 100 years these roadblocks
to the better world were rolled in place by the mindset of “survival
of the fittest” and “selfishness above all”
that his
theory of evolution had popularized?
If he was
told that for over a century, via all fields of science, all levels
of schools, and the ever more rampant new power of the media, the
Darwinian idea that survival of the fittest was the essential
driver for all levels of evolution was locked in place
throughout America, Europe, and Western culture more generally.
That thereby
heralded as the champions of progress by scholars, as well as by
themselves, a loose global alliance of regressive economic and political
interests and oligarchies had gradually circled the earth?
That by
the end of the 20th century this
alliance was so powerful it could seize the leadership
of the richest and militarily most powerful, thereby hypothetically
“fittest” nation on this earth, i.e., the United States?
And what
would Darwin say if he was told that now -- whether voted in or
out of office, behind scenes remaining in power and blinded by greed
to the consequences -- this alliance was the implacable super-driver
of industrial, governmental, religious, and scientific policies
that were steadily increasing all of these threats to global well-being,
and indeed threatened the very
survival of our species.
What
would he say?
Darwin was a mild and
genial man whose rage seldom flared. But when it did it was said
to be like the lightning bolt and rolling thunder of a storm at
sea.
You may gauge
for yourselves the explosion by knowing something of the degree
to which we have been-- in plain, old, down-to-earth American terms--
snookered and bamboozled for over a century.
For what
Darwin actually believed -- and, as we are to see in this book,
wrote out at length -- has been twisted by a century of economic,
political, and scientific “business as usual” to lock
in the exact opposite of his original intention.
Today the
focus is mainly on Darwin's Origin of Species. But in the
828 page sequel in which he tells us he will now deal with human
evolution, The Descent of Man, Darwin writes only twice
of “survival of the fittest,” but
95 times of love.
He writes
of selfishness 12 times, but 92
times of moral sensitivity.
Of competition
9 times, but 24 times of mutuality
and mutual aid.
And of what
so often everywhere today seems to be missing in global political,
economic, and religious leadership -- that is, of
mind and brain -- he writes 200 times.
What lies behind these
word counts?
Go behind
them and you find this mind-boggling fact. While most of his scientific
successors still remain bogged down in what has become the status
quo and regressive science
of where Darwin was 150 years ago, the man himself -- as in this
book we are to see--actually went on in Descent to leap
100 years and more into the future to write of where
the most advanced, i.e., progressive, science
is today.
What eventually
comes across, however, is beyond mind-boggling.
It is the
awesome, lumbering , howling, and dumbfounding possibility that
we've lost a century and endangered the future of our species because
Darwin's voice was cut off and silenced at the mid point.
Long before I put in
the long years to become a psychologist, systems scientist and evolution
theorist myself, I was a journalist and investigative reporter.
I was, in
fact, one of the earliest handful of television newsmen who set
out after World War II inspired by the tradition of getting at the
“story behind the story” being established by the great
Edward R. Murrow.
I was there
during the swaggering years of Senator Joe McCarthy, whose expose
in a television special by Murrow was the boldest and most effective
in ending McCarthy's reign of terror.
On a much
smaller scale, I did the kind of “on the road” feature
Charles Kuralt later became famous for.
One of the main things
a good journalist learns early on is to question the word of authority.
No matter
who says it, double-check it. Nose around behind the scenes for
what others are saying. Put it all together and come up with the
real
story.
This book
is about what I found out about the
real Darwin.
It is about
the rest of the “fully human” theory of evolution he set
out to construct almost wholly lost to us now for over 100 years.
It is about
how this “top half” for his theory was buried, the cataclysmic
consequences of this loss, and -- rising out of the smothering clasp
of status quo science and against the drag of regressive science
--it is about the hopeful new progressive science that
corroborates and advances the enduring majesty of Darwin's full
original vision.
Beyond the
neoDarwinism that has imprisoned our species for a century, it is
about postDarwinian or holoDarwinian theory and story and greater
mind.
It is also, most crucially
and urgently, about how by understanding, telling, teaching, and
living by this new saga of who we really are, and where we can and
should be going, we can ring out the old century of being checked
or moving backward.
It is about
how, through Darwin's
unfolding revolution, we can gain the world
we should have reached 100 years ago.
It is about
how we can ring in the centuries of, at the very least, much better
news.
The
Secret Meeting in Budapest
The fall
of the Berlin Wall that signaled the end of the Cold War in 1989
opened a window in time foreshadowing the “might have been”
world of the rest of Darwin and how I came to find it.
With that
lifting of the doomsday prospect from our lives, you may recall,
came much talk of the “peace dividend” that was to transform
our world. It was to do this by . . . MORE.
Shortly we
will publish Darwin's Unfolding
Revolution in its entirety for reading online
and free PDF download.
Its author
is evolutionary systems scientist David Loye, a co-founder of The
General Evolution Research Group and author of the award-winning
American psychohistory The Healing of
a Nation.
He is also
the author of The Leadership Passion, The Knowable
Future, The Sphinx and the Rainbow, and An Arrow
Through Chaos.
He is the
editor of The Evolutionary Outrider: The
Impact of the Human Agent on Evolution, and The
Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution.
For more
information about his life, books, and scientific background,
see Loye's Page.
Here's the rest of our menu for reading and free PDF downloads for
Darwin's Unfolding Revolution.
. .
back to top
|