While other big questions are also coming to bear fast and hard at this particular time in our history, conflict combined with some critical environmental questions are sufficient to make a point, the direction of human history is no more than a drift, blown along by events and whatever intellectual, ideological or economic fashion defines the times. Whatever ones idealism, we remain off course. And in the absence of defined progress, any assumption that progress is inevitable is looking as naive as thinking mankind capable of sustainable peace. There is obviously a considerable difference between what we aspire to be as a humanity and what we are?
Within that difference, the questions can only become more difficult and more personal. What are we as individuals and as a species? There are three predominant views, religious, cultural and scientific. As individuals we may well draw on any mix of the above. Ignoring the undeveloped notion of the Fall, the religious view is that we hold a special place and favor before God. Yet our excessive materialism exasperating environmental solutions hardly makes our stewardship of the planet look a convincing expression of divine will and the WMDs by which we defend that materialism probably negates those same spiritual aspirations.
And that begs two questions, on what grounds are we 'spiritual' if at all or as a species is human nature even morally competent? While some aspirational and moral potential must exist within the human condition for us to have evolved thus far, we appear just as lost in the moral maze as ever, and may have reached the limits of moral progress that natural reason is capable of constructing and sustaining by written laws? Even democracy, relying upon majority consensus, cannot claim any particular moral authority to itself. That is to say our cultural morality is only a relative morality which itself creates a perpetual source of friction between other nations and peoples who have woven different value assumptions into their cultural fabrics.
Within the secular scientific view, neuroscience sometimes speaks of the 'reptilian' brain, that link to a bestial, evolutionary past suspected of responsibility for the 'dark' side of human nature but are unlikely to 'enlighten' it. However we construct our human identity, the bottom line remains, we are without solutions to the increasingly grave problems facing both the earth and humanity itself. The path to enduring peace and sustainable values has proved beyond any historical or existing cultural construction.
If the imperative for our times is progress towards peace, a greater justice and sustainability, who or what has the authority to define the necessary changes and how much are we prepared to question ourselves in the quest to realize those goals?
There is an expression not heard often these days that goes something like: big things come in small packages. At one of the smallest sites on the net is an introduction to an extraordinary download, a free pdf typeset manuscript of 1.4 meg and a little over three hundred and fifty pages printed out. Yet the future of humanity may have already been defined by it.
Those looking for solutions so radical they can question the past to secure the future, who are looking for a measure of change beyond political boast or electioneering spin, the manuscript at the link below deserves careful study. It may very well represent the best shot humanity has for real progress and it appears to have been designed for purpose, to change the course of history. It is titled: The Final Freedoms.
http://www.energon.org.uk
