Human Evolution

Will Humanity Evolve Past Avarice, Violence, and Domination?

I’m beginning to doubt it.

Humanity has had hundreds of thousands of years to claw its way toward something resembling higher consciousness. Instead, we’re still the same hairless apes fighting over shiny rocks and territory, just with better marketing and weapons.

If we haven’t evolved past base greed and brutality by now, another thousand years, or even a hundred thousand years, isn’t going to magically fix us.

So where does that leave those of us who prefer peace, decency, and not living like animals? Do we cluster in little enclaves—quiet neighborhoods, gated pockets of sanity—drawn to be with others who refuse to surrender their humanity to the mob?

If we are able to somehow hide from the uncivilized world, will it eventually force its way in, dragging its chaos with it like a horrible smell that sticks to everything? Will we have to become rich and powerful enough ourselves, to buy our way out of the madness, living in secure compounds, using proxies to go out into the chaotic fray, traveling with private security forces? Is it possible to live in a bubble where the ugliness of the world is kept outside?

Here’s the rub: once some of us get rich and powerful enough to escape, how many of us will inevitably succumb to the very corruption we fled? How long before we start infecting our own safe havens, turning them into just another layer of the same rotting pyramid?

The “good” of humanity has never managed to organize with any real conviction or staying power. We’re too scattered, too polite, too busy believing that civility will be effectively contagious as humanity quickly evolves — a kind of consciousness revolution.

Perhaps the world simply belongs to the powerful, and the powerful are almost invariably corrupted by lust and greed. In that case, the rest of us would become serfs in their insidious game.

I doubt that such would be enough for them. They would claw at each other until only the most ruthless would sit atop their constructed pile of corpses. Then they would look down at the surplus population and decide the masses would be no longer useful, except for the few who service their insanities.

But maybe nothing so dramatic will happen. Maybe life will simply continue its slow, numb slide toward the lowest common denominator: twerking in the streets for likes, beating each other senselessly over nothing, shoplifting with impunity, and spawning humanoid creatures who grow up to repeat the same tired horrors. Then, civilization will be background noise to an endless reality show of degeneracy.

Let’s just say that instead of doing nothing, we the civilized, finally get fed up. We go rogue, having learned from their methods. We unapologetically dismantle the systems that coddle unchecked cretinism. We impose real civilized standards: prisons, mental institutions, and elimination of those who cannot be saved.

If some of humanity cannot or will not be civilized, we will make civility that law of the land, with zero tolerance for violations.

Imagine walking on clean streets, nicely dressed, nodding politely to one another, interacting with civility, reason and compassion. Rape, murder, and theft will be relegated to dusty history books. Children will look up from their devices and ask, “Was it really like that once?” And we’ll smile and say, “Yes. It was like that, before we realized that humans would remain unevolved, and we were forced to take control of civilization.