Freedom From Fear: The Next Step in Human Evolution

An Opinion

I balk at people who raise the blood banner of ‘survival of the fittest’, who genuinely believe their DNA gives them a superior edge and the right to pave their path to success, personal or national, over the bones of weaker and poorer peoples, whether in business or government but especially in relations with other nations and peoples. The zero-sum diplomacy we see today, the blood sport of “gloves off”, “bare knuckles dipped in glue and glass shards” approach to talking to other nations being promoted by the very nations that gave us the enlightenment, humanism, human rights enshrined in law and liberal democracy, makes me worry for our future as a species.

There are those who talk of “natural law” and how “natural law” should be the bedrock of human rights and laws, basically they want us to regress back to our primate origins, to fight and kill each other for primacy and for the strong to exercise dominion over the weaker of the species, exploit them to the point of enslavement, basically, a radical right wing conservative approach. The word conservative has its roots in ‘to conserve’, but conserve what? Simply, the living standards of the top one percent in the first world which relies on the exploitation of the vast majority of humans on this planet.

At some point in our evolution as a species we accepted that our survival as individuals shall from now on depend on the survival of the many, we moved away from small bands of wandering nomads surviving on what we could gather in the forests or kill with primitive tools and eat, into a species of farmers and builders working together in large groups instead of against one another. That was ten thousand years ago and we have been thriving ever since and growing our numbers. How good or bad that has been for the planet is a matter for debate and discussion in another article. 

Our human groups have grown from villages to towns, from city states to nation states and to continental unions and now we can say we are one global group. We are deeply interconnected, financially and economically reliant on each other, we are intimately aware of people across the globe, we communicate constantly, we are one global community. But fear has caused some of us to pull away and attempt to dismantle this global community which would be catastrophic.

We now stand at another threshold of our evolution, that of freedom from fear, to think and express ourselves freely, unafraid, ready to abandon ancient ideas and dysfunctional cultural expressions and move forward into a bright new age where facts and evidence come first, and where cooperation rather than competition, environmental conservation rather than consumption dominate. 

To take that new step forward in our evolution we need courage, and yes I accept evolution as the scientific explanation for our existence, why our DNA and that of Chimpanzees are so similar, why when we look in to the eyes of these creatures we recognize something human and familiar, why when they use tools we recognize the same behavior. Deny it all you will, hold on to your ancient ideas if you like, I may not agree with you but I respect your right to hold a different opinion, because that is what it is, an opinion, it’s not my truth and you need to accept that. You can choose to close your eyes to science and deny that we are in fact all alone in this vast universe, that we are not going anywhere better, and that this life and brief consciousness are all we have, but it doesn’t make it any less a scientific fact or make science any less real or any less the bedrock of our human civilization.

I would like to think that the growth in global religious extremism and xenophobia and nationalist right wing politics is but an aberration that will soon give way to a new age of enlightenment. But, I am a realist, I understand now what I couldn’t before, that humans will not think rationally if it’s too painful or frightening. So, some maybe even the majority will cling to magical thinking and continue to stand still and hope for miracles and believe their patience will be rewarded in the end. I have genuine pity for such people and compassion as well because as Richard Dawkins said: “Those of us who are going to die are the lucky ones, for in order to die you first have to live.”

I do not wish to anger or offend anyone with what I write, but I also refuse to be silenced out of fear of offending, because frankly, irrational ideas are offensive to me and sometimes strongly felt ideas need to be expressed out loud in a free society, and contradictory ideas and their relation to one another needs to be delineated, and we need to find a way for these ideas and those who hold them to coexist. Sadly, we do not as yet live in such a world, less so in fact than ten years ago or even 20 years ago, which is a worrying trend and a sign that intolerance and anger and hate are growing globally fueled I am sorry to say by social media.

The breathtaking ignorance and dull wit of so many humans unfold second by second online like a cascade of shit, and it covers us all! All I can do is be honest and continue to pursue scientific facts and hope my species does the same and that we continue to move forward beyond this Demon Haunted world, as Carl Sagan characterized it.

This life is worth it, believe me when you know you have no other it becomes so much more urgent to protect it and preserve it.