image courtesy of Cara_VSAngel

On his blog about American philosophy and evolution, Jeff Carreira recently wrote about humanity’s evolutionary crisis—our inability to adapt to the rate of change we have created—and the two primary shifts we have to make to adjust our ideas about reality to reality.

The first shift concerns unity, so that we go from seeing the universe as a bunch of different things interacting with each other to understanding it as a single whole comprised of many parts. The second involves recognizing the ever-changing nature of reality. Things are not as stable and static as we think they are. In fact, every part of this whole is constantly moving around, bumping up against other parts, and both changing and being changed by the friction generated.

Understanding these ideas cognitively is one thing—and it is a big thing. And yet there is much more to it than that. What does it mean to live as part of one comprehensive, ever-evolving process?

We have all had the experience of standing in a beautiful landscape and feeling awed and humbled in the presence of something unspeakably good. The first environmentalists saw humankind as separate from this immensity, and therefore as a danger to it. But we aren’t separate—we’re part of the same whole. The same processes gave birth to every object, creature, and system in existence. The glory of an unfathomable landscape is in us, too.

The difference is that a mountain doesn’t have a choice in where it emerges, or when or how. But we do. We also have egos and self-identities and ideas about being separate from one another and nature. All of those are constructs of our consciousness, and they have served us well through the centuries—how could we learn to see and understand the different parts of reality without seeing ourselves as another independent part of it? But at this point, those constructs are obviously breaking down. As Jeff says it in his post, “I often feel like I am still working on yesterday’s problems only to realize that today’s are already upon me.” We need to do something else.

The shift Jeff is talking about is a big one—maybe the biggest ever. And though it depends upon individuals making a personal decision to develop, it’s much bigger than what is typically called personal development. All the reaching that we do—to think bigger, become stronger, get smarter, and inquire more deeply—this is what it’s really getting at. It’s not merely about getting really good at life as we know it. It’s about changing our understanding of what life is.

Can we take the leap into recognizing our contiguity with all of nature? Can we let go of our historical baggage and lean into the future like the goddess on the bow of a ship? Can we learn to steer?

I think we can, and that the more we look into our own personal willingness to do this—to courageously develop past everything we know right now—the more the bright green mirage on the horizon will shimmer into clearer and clearer focus.