Not only did evolution for billions of years rise to higher complexity, higher order, and greater freedom of choice to destroy or create, but it was going somewhere that—if we got there and if that thinking layer of Earth were to be filled with love, innovation, and creativity—it would be like the nervous system of a newborn baby. It would connect the whole planetary organism, which is a living planetary organism, into a state—in [Teilhard’s] language—of the Christ-ification of Earth. And I’ve come to call it a planetary awakening, a planetary birth, a global brain turning on. There are many versions of it.
There’s absolutely no reason to assume that evolution stops here, with a self-centered, self-conscious genius of a species, great at overpopulating, polluting, and killing, and creating and inventing the powers of gods. Well, if I were God, I would say, “We’re just getting started, folks!”
We are the first species to begin to understand: not only are we aware of evolution, but we are evolution! We are evolution in person.
I/we are the universe in person. This is how cosmogenesis shows up as people! We’re the résumé of the entire story, and whatever impulse we have within us is the same impulse from that big bang and the flaring-forth, and what Andrew Cohen calls the continuous inner big bang. It hasn’t stopped, it’s right in every one of us.
As systems become more complex, they obviously become more interactive, with separate parts coming together to form radically new whole systems greater than the sum of the parts. So, in a way, the way nature does it is not only by individual organisms, but the coming-together of separate organisms—like our bodies with 50 trillion cells (not even counting the microbes)—organized as a body.
How many people on planet Earth does it take to connect through the Internet to co-create? We don’t know. But I think we have enough people already. I believe there are enough innovations and creative solutions—at least in part—to start solving every single problem we have on Earth. I think Buckminster Fuller was right.
