My brother, a long-distance truck driver, called me the other day. He wanted to know my take on a question he had been pondering over the years while driving through more towns than he can remember. As my brother traveled through different states, he read the various plaques that contained a brief history of a community. And he noticed a pattern in the messages found in the historical recaps - many of them commemorated battles and conflicts between groups and how one group prevailed over the other. After sharing his observation, my brother asked me, "Will people ever stop warring and fighting with each other? Will humanity ever rise above this?"
While driving his truck, he spends a lot of time thinking about such questions, and he wanted to know my answers to them. I'm no predictor of the future of humanity, but said that we have yet to write our destiny. The choices made individually and collectively will determine our future. Neither conflict nor harmony will roll on the wheels of inevitability. However, despite appearances to the contrary, there is hope. I read the book by Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he gathered data indicating that significant conflict and violence across time and geography have declined. He attributes this decline to several factors - economics, which makes it more valuable for people to be alive; more empathy due to increased literacy and communication; and a rise in rational problem-solving, to name a few. Pinker does go on to note that further progress is not inevitable and that we must continue to harness the better angels of our nature for there to be ongoing advancement.
Moreover, I shared with my brother that although the earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, and although a type of human creature existed 6 million years ago, human beings that resemble our current form have only been around for about 300,000 years. By most measures, we are in our infancy stage of development, particularly in consciousness. The good news is, often events that appear to be adverse - such as the collective witnessing of the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent worldwide protests - can serve as an awakening and trigger for our continued evolution as a species. These triggers serve as a wake-up call to help us rise in consciousness and reflect our potential as human/spiritual beings.
In some respects, such events spur us onward and upward to birth a new version of humanity and our world. The nature of the Universe is to progress. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. We are here to manifest a divine idea in the mind of the Universe. It is an idea that is always unfolding. It is a pull from our tomorrow. This pull is stronger than anything that has happened in our past. However, if we are to fulfill our potential and break free from humanity’s warring ways toward one another, we must consciously align with this pull. As is always the case, the choice is ours.
Peace and Blessings,
James