Forgiving Humanity

Subtitled ‘the curse of exponential change – how the most innovative species became the most dangerous’, this is a deeply challenging book. Readers can refer first to Pete’s article in this issue. Just over 100 years ago, Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture series about the elemental spirits of birth and death in relation to the development of technology. He explains that it is an iron necessity that the evolution of human cultures involves cycles of creation and destruction, rise and fall, birth and death, a process documented by a number of historians beginning with Gibbon and Hegel then moving on to Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin, Fernand Braudel, William Ophuls and Nicholas Hagger. Steiner writes that ‘the elemental spirits of birth and death are serving technology, industry and human commerce. It is important to let this truth enter into consciousness with all its power and intensity.’

Steiner draws parallels between our own time and Atlantis, which allegedly destroyed itself through its own advanced technology by gaining control of certain divine powers and misusing them for their own ends. At that time, he forecast that the commercial, industrial and technological civilisation harboured elements that will lead to decline, fall and eventual catastrophe. Interestingly, all the above historians identify the root cause of decline as moral. Ophuls quotes Gibbon was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness whereby prosperity ripened the principle of decay. Steiner stated that ‘civilisation cannot continue in an unbroken upward trend; it has to go through a succession of rising and falling waves.’

This brings us to Pete’s diagnosis of our condition, which is not moral but rather technological. The crux of his argument is the very nature of exponential growth, change and acceleration, whereby we spin faster and faster into the centre of an evolutionary spiral represented by a singularity or what Pete himself called a white hole in time. For him, this is ‘the inevitable destiny of any intelligent technologically-empowered species.’ The accelerating pace of innovation, growth and change overloads human and ecological systems whereby breakdowns and breakthroughs become two sides of the same coin. Pete advances his thesis as an evolutionary process that he regards as unstoppable – his version of Steiner’s iron necessity. Cyclical time has given way to linear time and now to exponential time, a perspective which he insists we must apply to our understanding of the future. All this is framed as progress, but of what kind? Albert Schweitzer reminded us that there are three forms of progress: progress in knowledge and technology, progress in socialisation, and progress in spirituality, which he regarded as the most important, indeed fundamental. Nowadays, it is easy to become narrowly fixated on technological progress, which Aldous Huxley argued had given us a more efficient way of going backwards.

Pete encourages us to view the future through the lens of exponential change, but I wonder if innovation and change always continue exponentially – there are many examples of curves flattening, for instance with respect to population, especially in economically developed countries. There is a general recognition that limitless growth on a finite planet is not feasible, even with a multitude of technical fixes. The mentality underlying even eco-modernism is itself an issue – see my previous review of Biocivilisations. Needless to say, exponential change is proving highly stressful. Pete defines stress as a failure to adapt to change brought about by acceleration, but we personally have to manage and cope rather than adapt. Indeed, the ‘slow’ movement is a cultural response to acceleration. In Pete’s view, this process will inevitably lead to collapse, so he and Steiner arrive at the same conclusion by different routes and for different reasons.

We can all agree that we are now living through a period of turbulence that threatens to bring the systems down. 50 years ago, E.F. Schumacher wryly commented that humanity is now too clever to live without wisdom, an insight also shared by Toynbee, who commented nearly fifty years ago that ‘Technology gives us material power - the greater our material power, the greater our need for the spiritual insight and virtue to use power for good and not for evil. The ’morality gap’ means that, since we first became human, we have never been adequate spiritually for handling our material power. Today it is greater than ever.’ His last sentence is now even more pertinent as we are generally reluctant to consider placing any ethical limitations on technological development, partly for military reasons.

We are indeed facing an unprecedented situation, and Pete argues that there is no feasible way to avoid collapse – a whole school of thought has now arisen around collapsology. There is both widespread grief and denial of the consequences of exponential growth, analogous to our cultural denial of death. Even now, we are witnessing the rise of authoritarian thinking and regimes in response to breakdown and uncertainty. We are living through the sixth Mass Extinction brought about by our own species. So how are we to handle this? Some place their hope in a transformation of consciousness, but Pete does not believe that this will affect the overall trajectory ‘leading us to mend our ways and live in harmony with the planet’ because the ever-tightening spiral of change will continue regardless.

So the onus on us to prepare for an uncertain future by cultivating greater resilience, flexibility, stability and compassion so as better to navigate the times ahead. The title suggests that we have to forgive ourselves as humanity. Pete poses the question: ‘Can we celebrate all that we are, while accepting that our species may be here for a brief flash in cosmic time?’ A further, perhaps critical, factor is entering the mix after the passing of the UAP Disclosure Act in the US. We may be about to learn collectively that we are not alone, and that there are other intelligences more advanced than ourselves and who have managed to combine wisdom and compassion with technology. Even so, great sages like Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov) have spoken of the need for a great purification and cleansing before a new culture of love and wisdom can emerge. It certainly looks like we are entering a period of deep transformation, but what will emerge on the other side? Extinction, a centralised and technocratic global surveillance state, or diverse, mutually supportive and flourishing cultures informed by love and wisdom? For me, it is an ethical imperative to work towards the third possibility, regardless of outcomes.