Stranger Things Have Happened

Evolution, History and Stranger Things

By Jonathan Cole

Why should we have history, a compilation and study of the past. If we live in a world whose design can, in large part, be described and predicted by the tenets of evolution, then how does our interest in history fit in? How are we better adapted to our circumstances because of history. What does history do for us? How are we enabled by its understanding?

One very obvious reason for our culture of history comes to mind. We are compelled to look at history, in order to not be imprisoned by it. In other words, we study and analyze history so that we can make history. Only if we learn to make history do we gain the control that helps us to avoid becoming a victim of fate. Historically, humans have often lost the survival sweepstakes by being unable to extricate themselves from the cycle of victimization. Therefore, adaptivity for survival favors enormously, those who can understand the cycles and patterns of history, sufficiently, to be able to change them - or to at least be able to survive the inevitable ebbs and flows.

To make history requires a purposeful creative process. This process allows us to evaluate the past and apply analysis to the means and methods to inject intention into history. Humans have been working on doing exactly this, since reason and the scientific method arose in human culture. We seem to be inexorably driven to a destiny which is more fully integrated with the unfolding of existence. In other words we become instrumental in the specifics of precisely what it is that unfolds. We are driven by our adaptive nature to become the creators of our environment. For better or for worse, the intentional interventions of humans in the course of the unfolding of existence is becoming an ever greater force.

In past eras the very few elite members of the power seeking castes were the only ones whose intentionality could become instrumental. Now with the communications and information revolutions we are on the threshold of an era of wider participation. That is unless we self destruct before we learn to wield these powers with benevolence and finesse.

Therefore it appears evident that unless the human race tackles, head on, the issue of transforming our actions from petty, short sighted folly into something more highly evolved and survival oriented, that it is likely that we will go the way of the dodo bird.

Interestingly, just as we are called upon to meet the greatest challenges ever, so to do we seem to find new tools and new understandings with which to create or perhaps co-create a world made of finer yet more robust stuff. Tools such as quantum mechanics which demonstrates conclusively that our intentionality governs important aspects of physical reality in the atomic scale piece of the energy continuum.

We seem to be making a science of magic. We are finding in quantum reality, the magic incantation which brings to us, the power of the creator. We also newly come to see the energy universe in which matter is just a field of energy having it's own rules of geometry. While These geometries are internally self consistent, they are much different than the rules of the macro field in which we reside. Yet through the mind we bridge the macro- and microscopic world. It is as if, through our intentionality, the glue that holds the micro and macro worlds together comes into being.

So it could be postulated that we are on the threshold of a new era and a new and powerful phase of our evolutionary adventure. In this phase we come to learn to be co-creators working in a garden of many wonders, empowered by our newly rising confidence of the inevitability of our instrumentality in the emerging flow of existence. Perhaps we mature and come to understand both the power and responsibility inherent in what it means to be human. Perhaps we survive to find the meaning behind the understanding, thoughts and words of history's greatest teachers. Maybe we become one with the world and a force for delight and enlightenment and the healers of suffering and sorrow. Perhaps we emerge as a blessing to the earth. Hey, stranger things have happened!