image by Aoife city womanchile

This weekend, I attended a short retreat with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen, who has developed the teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment. As our conversations unfolded, several participants expressed their sadness and anger about how, in the modern world, we’ve turned our backs on nature and each other. How can we see anything we do as “evolved,” they asked, when there’s so much suffering in the world?

Andrew’s response to this line of inquiry surprised and delighted me: “There’s no where to go back to. There’s no time in history when things were better than they are now.”

Although many of us like to point the finger at the Industrial Revolution as the great villain that ruined everything, he said, modernism has also been a great liberator—of slaves, of women, of reason. As our capacity to create material wealth grew, so did our sense of right and wrong. And although industrialism has caused enormous problems, it’s not like Carnegie or Rockefeller had some great plan to destroy the planet. We didn’t create this environmental crisis maliciously—we created it out of ignorance. And now that we are a bit more knowledgeable, it’s up to us to figure it out.

Notice I say “us” not “them.” We all created this world, and in every moment, with the choices we make, we create the future.

No matter what your spiritual beliefs, I think it’s clear that Andrew has a point, and the importance of this point cannot be overstated. So often, those of us who long to see a different world get lost in anger and despair over how terrible things are. And while evil and greed and wrongdoing do exist, the larger picture shows that, as we know better, we do better. At this moment, even with all the evil and greed and wrongdoing in the world, life has never been so good for so many. Although evolution doesn’t go in a straight line—it’s messy, and there are setbacks—it’s clear that the trajectory is up.

Now that we can see the developmental nature of life and culture, our task is to participate as fully as we can in that trajectory, to make our lives into courageous expressions of growth and change and ever-increasing morality.

When we do otherwise—when we get angry or accusatory or despondent—we simply waste time and energy. What is the point of being mad at people who did not know the problems they were causing? You may as well scream at a 2-year-old for being selfish.

Thinking about this, it occurs to me that when Jesus said, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do,” he wasn’t really talking about forgiveness. He was talking about development. When we don’t know what we are doing, how can we be blamed?

But now, with the unfolding of time and consequences, we are starting to see what we have done. So no more free rides. Now that we know better, it’s up to each of us to do better.