Galileo, Abraham Lincoln, Vincent Van Gogh, Walt Whitman, Rachel Carson — our history is filled with a familiar tale. It is the story of the progressive leaders and innovators of our species and the resistance to every step in human advancement by those with a strong vested interest in regression and the status quo.
Still almost wholly unknown even today, this is what happened to the greatest scientist of modern times. It is what happened to every attempt by Charles Darwin to write or tell of the progressive
completion or "top half" for his theory of human evolution — and the difference it could have made, and still can make, in our lives. |  |
This is how the story of
Darwin's Unfolding Revolution
begins....
PROLOGUE
THE TRUTH ABOUT DARWIN--AND US
After 100,000 years of edging our way forward since our emergence on this planet, the global ramifications of the Bush presidency in the United States at the outset of the 21st century has raised two very large questions for our species:
Is human evolution moving backward?
And to what extent has the wrong kind of science been a cause?
What would Darwin say were he living today?
What would he think, for example, on finding out that the rain forests of Brazil, about which he rhapsodized in The Voyage of the Beagle -- seemingly eternal in their wonder then, with their central function as “the lungs of the planet” widely known today-- were being clear cut to run cattle to provide hamburgers for the mushrooming of quasi-lethal fast food outlets all over the face of this earth?
What else should we tell him of what presently seems to check or drive us backward in human evolution?
Environmental devastation would generally head the list of global threats to the wellbeing of our species.
Next, many would list the devastation of war --or the unchecked and continuing use of violence to resolve disputes or extend one's power.
Widening of the gap between rich and poor in countries and between nations.
Many experts would say we're checked or being driven backward by the continuing valuing of the stereotypical violence-oriented male or “macho” values and the devaluing of the more peaceful “feminine” values.
Despite new optimism, many would also insist on the threat first raised by Malthus of over-population, or the “population bomb.”
Above all for many would be the threat of terrorism and the fearful perpetual presence of nuclear overkill -- both the products of the unholy mix of 20th century science, religion, and politics at its worst.
So the mournful eyes widen and the face embedded within the magnificent beard drops in dismay. But what do you suppose Darwin would say if he was told that to a newly alarming degree he was personally responsible for this mess?
What do you think he would say if he was told that over 100 years these roadblocks to the better world were rolled in place by the mindset of “survival of the fittest” and “selfishness above all” that his theory of evolution had popularized?
If he was told that for over a century, via all fields of science, all levels of schools, and the ever more rampant new power of the media, the Darwinian idea that “survival of the fittest” was the essential driver for all levels of evolution was locked in place throughout America, Europe, and Western culture more generally.
That thereby heralded as the champions of progress by scholars, as well as by themselves, a loose global alliance of regressive economic and political interests and oligarchies had gradually circled the earth?
That by the end of the 20th century this alliance was so powerful it could seize the leadership of the richest and militarily most powerful, thereby hypothetically “fittest” nation on this earth, i.e., the United States?
And what would Darwin say if he was told that now -- whether voted in or out of office, behind scenes remaining in power and blinded by greed to the consequences -- this alliance was the implacable super-driver of industrial, governmental, religious, and scientific policies that were steadily increasing all of these threats to global well-being, and indeed threatened the very survival of our species.
What would he say?
Darwin was a mild and genial man whose rage seldom flared. But when it did it was said to be like the lightning bolt and rolling thunder of a storm at sea.
You may gauge for yourselves the explosion by knowing something of the degree to which we have been-- in plain, old, down-to-earth American terms-- snookered and bamboozled for over a century.
For what Darwin actually believed -- and, as we are to see in this book, wrote out at length -- has been twisted by a century of economic, political, and scientific “business as usual” to lock in the exact opposite of his original intention.
Today the focus is mainly on Darwin's Origin of Species. But in the 828 page sequel in which he tells us he will now deal with human evolution, The Descent of Man, Darwin writes only twice of “survival of the fittest,” but 95 times of love.
He writes of selfishness 12 times, but 92 times of moral sensitivity.
Of competition 9 times, but 24 times of mutuality and mutual aid.
And of what so often everywhere today seems to be missing in global political, economic, and religious leadership -- that is, of mind and brain -- he writes 200 times.
What lies behind these word counts?
Go behind them and you find this mind-boggling fact. While most of his scientific successors still remain bogged down in what has become the status quo and regressive science of where Darwin was 150 years ago, the man himself -- as in this book we are to see--actually went on in Descent to leap 100 years and more into the future to write of where the most advanced, i.e., progressive, science is today.
What eventually comes across, however, is beyond mind-boggling.
It is the awesome, lumbering , howling, and dumbfounding possibility that we've lost a century and endangered the future of our species because Darwin's voice was cut off and silenced at the mid point.
Long before I put in the long years to become a psychologist, systems scientist and evolution theorist myself, I was a journalist and investigative reporter.
I was, in fact, one of the earliest handful of television newsmen who set out after World War II inspired by the tradition of getting at the “story behind the story” being established by the great Edward R. Murrow.
I was there during the swaggering years of Senator Joe McCarthy, whose expose in a television special by Murrow was the boldest and most effective in ending McCarthy's reign of terror.
On a much smaller scale, I did the kind of “on the road” feature Charles Kuralt later became famous for.
One of the main things a good journalist learns early on is to question the word of authority.
No matter who says it, double-check it. Nose around behind the scenes for what others are saying. Put it all together and come up with the real story.
This book is about what I found out about the real Darwin.
It is about the rest of the “fully human” theory of evolution he set out to construct almost wholly lost to us now for over 100 years.
It is about how this “top half” for his theory was buried, the cataclysmic consequences of this loss, and -- rising out of the smothering clasp of status quo science and against the drag of regressive science --it is about the hopeful new progressive science that corroborates and advances the enduring majesty of Darwin's full original vision.
Beyond the neoDarwinism that has imprisoned our species for a century, it is about postDarwinian or holoDarwinian theory and story and greater mind.
It is also, most crucially and urgently, about how by understanding, telling, teaching, and living by this new saga of who we really are, and where we can and should be going, we can ring out the old century of being checked or moving backward.
It is about how, through Darwin's unfolding revolution, we can gain the world we should have reached 100 years ago.
It is about how we can ring in the centuries of, at the very least, much better news.
The Secret Meeting in Budapest
The fall of the Berlin Wall that signaled the end of the Cold War in 1989 opened a window in time foreshadowing the “might have been” world of the rest of Darwin and how I came to find it.
With that lifting of the doomsday prospect from our lives, you may recall, came much talk of the “peace dividend” that was to transform our world. It was to do this by . . . MORE.
Shortly we will publish Darwin's Unfolding Revolution in its entirety for reading online and free PDF download.
Its author is evolutionary systems scientist David Loye, a co-founder of The General Evolution Research Group and author of the award-winning American psychohistory The Healing of a Nation.
He is also the author of The Leadership Passion, The Knowable Future, The Sphinx and the Rainbow, and An Arrow Through Chaos.
He is the editor of The Evolutionary Outrider: The Impact of the Human Agent on Evolution, and The Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution.
For more information about his life, books, and scientific background, see Loye's Page.
Here's the rest of our menu for reading and free PDF downloads for Darwin's Unfolding Revolution. . .
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