Human beings evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and about 50,000 years ago during the upper Paleolithic period we evolved into what we would recognize as modern human beings.
We possessed language, music and creative cultural expressions, such as art and religion, that are still significant for our species. We had migrated out of Africa and about 10,000 years ago human beings moved from being predominantly made up of small hunter and gatherer bands to agriculturalists. This so-called Neolithic revolution moved the evolution of human beings from existing in a somewhat balanced relationship with the environment to one of controlling it.
Prior to the Neolithic period we lived, for the most part, in harmony with the world around us. We moved with our prey just as other hunting species do. Though we utilized tools and weapons, making us highly efficient compared to other animals, we still existed in a delicate ecological balance with the earth, even as we created culture around our hunting and gathering lifestyles.
We reflected on the meaning of our lives and we created stories and myths to give our intellectual curiosity some sense of purpose. Yet, even as we danced around our campfires, we were still a part of nature. Not until we learned how to control the environment did we move from being a species in harmony with nature to being one estranged from it. The biblical story of the Garden of Eden and humanity’s fall expresses this transformation symbolically.
Agriculture allowed for the development of civilization. The population of our species began to grow and flourish. We formed cities, and states and nations. Likely, because of our 200,000-year experience of fearfully being the victim of nature’s whims, we became determined to control nature as much as possible.
Also, because we experienced malevolence, real or imagined, among other human bands we were programmed to look upon other peoples with suspicion and fear. Almost always siding on the side of our fear and mistrust, we have been a species continuously at war.
As our technological expertise grew so too grew our power to wage war with ever more devastating results. The human evolutionary experiment has been so successful that we now control or affect nearly every aspect of the natural world.
Our population, in spite of our wars and because of our agricultural and scientific advances, continues to grow exponentially. We are now so far removed from living in harmony with the natural world that the world, the earth herself, is straining to survive our success.
Most serious environmental scientists understand we are at a turning point: we must evolve to a new way of life that is in harmony with the earth’s ecological systems. If we don’t, either the earth will suffocate beneath the weight of our presence or she will destroy us.
Thomas Berry in his 1988 Sierra Club publication of 'The Dream of the Earth' wonders about what might be done to reverse the devastating affects human behavior has had on the planet, a planet that we need for our sustenance.
He writes there must be a “re-enchantment with the earth as a living reality” if we are to rescue the earth “from impending destruction…. To carry this out effectively, we must now, in a sense, reinvent the human species within the community of life species. Our sense of reality and of value must consciously shift from an anthropocentric to a biocentric norm of reference.”
A transformation of human consciousness is necessary if we hope to survive on planet earth. We must begin to think of ourselves not as separate from the web of life, but as a part of it. It will be difficult because we will need to let go of our desire to be the exceptional species and the only one that really matters.
We will need to see ourselves, and other species for that matter, as not distinct, but as a part of the continuity of life’s ongoing evolution. Consciousness will need to move from the “me” and the “I” to the “we” and the “us.”
Just as "me," this distinct human being that I am, is really meaningless outside of the context of the human society in which I find myself, so, too, our species is meaningless outside of the context of the whole biosphere.
We have a long way to go. The transformation to a biocentric mode of reference will be difficult so long as we hang on to our sense of exceptionalism. Over 2,000 years ago, in what has been termed the Axial Age, religious and philosophical systems throughout the world proposed a consciousness of the brotherhood and sisterhood of all human beings. We have yet to fully integrate that consciousness into the reality of life.
Now, in a new Axial Age in which we are called to experience ourselves as being deeply related to all of life, we do not have another 2,000 years to try and “get it.”
The future of life on earth will be affected and defined by our willingness and ability to transform the way we understand the reality of who we are. The time in which we now find ourselves is perhaps the most consequential time in the history of the evolution of life. For the first time, that evolution depends on a conscious choice.
