The Next Evolution
Humanity is living in a new age...get down with it.
The world is changing. The next evolutionary phase of human kind is unfolding at this very moment. It's unfolding right before our eyes at such a rate, that most of us cant even see it happening. Or perhaps, we all see it happening, but some of us just choose to ignore it?
Looking back over the major ages of civilization, Western historians tend to highlight the following as major turning points: The Agricultural age/ The Copper Age/ The Bronze Age /The Iron Age/ The Industrial Age and more recently with the invention of the microchip and modern computing; The Information Age.
What I find most interesting about these so called 'ages' is not necessarily the achievements themselves, but the length of time that separated each new discovery. Scrutinize these evolutionary time frames and you begin to note the incremental decreases; 100 000 years,10 000 years, 5000 years, 1000 years,500 years, 100 years, 50 years, etc, etc.
Equally interesting is the idea that these so-called turning points also came to represent a new era of empirical domination. Empires come and empires go and most often you can witness their rise and fall coinciding with a new evolutionary paradigm. A contemporary example: when the US wielded the first cache of nuclear weapons. Enter the age of Americana or the nuclear age. But what does US hegemony have to do with human evolution? Well, there are those who would argue humanity evolved after World War II. The same way we evolved after the personal computer, or the internet or after Myspace. For better or for worse is beside the point; the point being that every age is preceded by the same thing that created the previous age: someone making an interesting discovery and humans evolving to adapt to that new discovery.
It should be noted that we're not discussing evolution in the biological sense but evolution in the social sense;The gradual development of something to a more complex form
How would you describe the current age? When I posed the question to myself all kinds of things come to mind like The Genetic age, or The Space age. After thinking about and building with different heads I've come to realize that our age is an age like no other, because its a combination of ages, rather, the culmination of ages. History has given us a distinct privilege. I once heard one of my boys referencing Einstein to describe what we have today, in terms of our collective knowledge, as the ability to “stand on the shoulders of giants”.
So...What if this new evolution wasn't technological, or even social but rather... mental? Consider the possibility that humans are poised to enter a new age, the age of...? An age where the ideas of truth, justice, freedom and equality are not just adjectives but feasible realities. But I did say that each age is ante ceded by a discovery, so in the case of the mental evolution what would this new discovery be? That my friends, is what we call 'self-discovery'. Or, call it 'self awareness' or call it 'knowledge of self' regardless of what you call it, recognize that it's essential next step in our evolution. Finding out who you are may in fact be the single most important thing you can do for yourself and society.
It is true that for individuals it's a lot less difficult to become self aware than it is for a group or for a society. But the bottom line is this: it has to first begin with you. Ideas start with one person and spread like wildfire. The very act of thinking of an idea immediately makes it that much closer to reality. Write about that idea and it materializes even further. Discuss that idea with friends and it grows further still, moving from merely an idea to a living, breathing 'meme'. If you're reading this then I've done my part. Now it's your turn.
"Now nothing is nearer to thee than thyself, and if thou knowest not thyself how canst thou know anything else?..real self-knowledge consists in knowing the following things: What art thou in thyself, and from whence hast thou come? Whither art thou going, and for what purpose hast thou come to tarry here awhile, and in what does thy real happiness and misery consist?”
Aaron "Galac" Francis is a member of Canadian hip hop group Embassy, and the leader of Maccabee Media. Find out about their upcoming projects, by visiting them at: Myspace.com/maccabees
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