The Greater Crisis and Opportunity
Human aspirations and human instincts at war over our future
I don’t think we take seriously enough the extraordinary challenges that sentient humans have faced as they transitioned from pure instinct to a being with the ability to envision a future and make choices for self and community that transcend immediate desire.
It has been a heroic struggle and we are only beginning to appreciate the remarkable achievements that have been made. It is not, however, near over. We call the moral life, the ethical life, the compromises humans make with their complex biological natures.
Group identity and territorial drive are no longer that valuable in the world of social knowledge and productivity that we have made possible. Nor does personal freedom and community order fit neatly into compacts of law and authority.
Clearly, we have not come to terms with our most basic drives, especially sexual desire and parenting instincts. Doesn’t the extraordinary popularity of pornography on the web and the efforts put worth to guarantee my child advantages over your child in an extremely competitive environment testify to the ongoing nature of our struggle to create new societies that recognize and then accommodate both our genetic heritage and our growing aspirations for a sustainable and abundant future.
Don’t for a moment, I would argue, believe that we have reached the best that we can achieve. We are new at this struggle, as technology is fundamentally altering all aspects of our environment. Massive structure of wealth and power, in themselves neutral to the struggle but controlled by minds and hearts that are frighteningly human, stand against ideas and dreams for the future.
The best we can do, it seems to me, is resist as much as we can the destructive nature of our present institutions and at the same time provide an education for coming generations that will empower them for the larger struggles that lie ahead.
And what indeed does lies ahead for this sentient, self-conscious, being that has awakened from natural bounds of instinct and appetite?