A New Edition 2010 Surviving Human Nature

From the Introduction: The 20th Century was the century of domination of planet earth by a single species. Human activities have become all pervasive and clusters of human constructions have replaced the natural world in all habitable regions of the planet.

Human events are deeply troubling overall but at the same time, much has been accomplished in reaching for a sustainable, good life.

The 20th century will be remembered as the century of waking up to the universe as it is. We woke up to our own nature and responsibility and can no longer plead ignorance   We have changed the face of planet, driven animals and plants into extinction, invented hydrogen bombs and other sophisticated killing machinery. We have fought wars, experimented with different social, political and economic models of society. We survived two world wars the great depression, and some of us now enjoy unprecedented security and prosperity.

We have experimented with international coalitions and dreamed of a benevolent world government. We understood that persistent and unreasonable conflict is characteristic of Homo sapiens. The end of the 20th century is characterized by shifts in wealth, power and influence.

Most reasonable people now know that we can no longer rely on our instincts and let nature take its course. Nor can we carry on with outdated social, religious and economic ideologies based on misunderstandings of human nature and planet ecology. We have to become better informed and more deliberate.  We have to think ourselves out of some dangerous predicaments and we need new ideas of social organization. We need to teach each new human that arrives on the planet how to transcend innate behaviors that are self-destructive and harmful to our species.

The 21st century philosopher's task is to update our descriptions of ourselves to accommodate burgeoning scientific knowledge and an increasingly sophisticated understanding of human behavior, the brain and complex systems in general. We suddenly have new and revolutionary knowledge about human beings, their languages, arts and culture; about information gathering, storage and retrieval; about computation, communication; about the transformation of energy and materials; about molecular biology, genetics and the evolution of life on earth.

We have to re-examine what we care about and advance new vocabularies that allow us to proceed into new domains of thought and understanding. There seems a critical lag in the assimilation of new knowledge into the culture and a rapidly widening schism separates the few who know how things really work and the majority who do not.

In this century the rapid development of science, communications and culture exchange is unprecedented in the history of the planet. The smart, kind-hearted subtype of humans has flourished despite the persistent presence of crude-thinkers and killers. The smart kind-hearts have powerful tools to shape the future in a constructive manner.

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