Humanity is in the second stage of development
A renowned futurologist argues that there are three phases of human evolution, and our species is currently in the second phase. Jeffrey Charles Hardy, founder of the non-profit organization Care for Peace, has developed a global perspective of the «human timeline», placing us in a «limbo» state.
In the first stage, which lasted about 2.5 million years, people conquered nature, but now Hardy believes that we have moved «to a sustainable coexistence of the planet and its inhabitants.»
In limbo, humans will have to «rethink and abandon the unsustainable practices of unlimited growth and waste that we have inherited from the first generations of human evolution,» Hardy argues.
He went on to explain that we have been doing nothing since the creation of the atomic bomb in 1945, which cemented our dominion over nature, but the only way to «Phase Two» is to repair the damage.
The phase of human evolution we are currently in is on hold because we don't have a plan for Stage Two of human evolution, the Daily Mail reports.
«That's yet to be defined and it's up to us to imagine, debate, plan, design and implement,» Hardy said.
The visionary stresses that society must learn from the past and use ideas from scientists, the media, governments and NGOs to help drive these groundbreaking transformations.
Hardy said his timeline of human evolution was inspired by his experiences as an international health planner in the 1970s.
He realized that the world could be sustained through the compassionate actions of people, which prompted him to undertake to a global mission to create a timetable for solving humanity's biggest problems, such as climate change and environmental degradation.
That's when Hardy created four templates, writes the Daily Mail.
They included a personal prime directive that focused on individual values and responsibilities, and a relationship prime directive that explained the importance of harmonious relationships.
The second two patterns encompassed a culture that balanced the holistic well-being of the individual and an organization that was aligned with the goals of greater peace and sustainability.
«As a hospital corpsman, I remember caring for young, sick and wounded sailors returning from the Vietnam War,» Hardy recalls. «As I gave them shots, changed bandages and just sat there, I realized there was an intrinsic connection between caring for others and feeling at peace.»
For millions of years, humans have attempted to conquer nature, most recently through industrialization, believing that the world was ours to dominate. Humans have conquered nature by seeking to control everything around them through the urbanization of cities and infrastructure. This has allowed for an increase in human population, the introduction of mining and fossil fuels for energy, and the use of irrigation, crop rotation, and selective breeding to increase food production.
Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud once argued that for civilization to progress, it is necessary to «attack nature by forcing it to submit to human will under the guidance of science.»
Humans have been in an evolutionary hold since the 1950s, after the U.S. government created the Manhattan Project to create nuclear weapons capable of destroying humanity. The creation of the atomic bomb marked «humankind's complete dominance over nature and ended the First Stage of human evolution,» the press release said.
The effects of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945, killing between 129,000 and 226,000 people, are still being felt today. Nearly 80 years after the attack, parts of the US, including Missouri and Utah, continue to suffer from radiation poisoning from mines and nuclear waste that causes cancer. The World Nuclear Association said «the nuclear industry still has no solution to the waste problem.»
While governments are working to implement waste prevention and recycling programs, Stanford University's School of Sustainability estimates that it will cost at least $300 billion to clean up the waste left over from the Manhattan Project alone.
Hardy warned that human evolution will continue until we realize the need to reduce the waste created during the first evolution.
«What I call arrested human evolution is arrested because we're floundering like fish out of water, or like one of those Indiana Jones movies where we're standing on a bridge that goes from one side to the other and there's a chasm below and if we fall we're going to die,» Hardy said on the Care More, Be Better podcast.
He explained that humans won't be able to move on to the second evolutionary stage until they develop a plan to overcome and eliminate the waste and unsustainable growth created by the first evolution.
«You really need to have a conversation with the rest of the world about this if we're going to move from the first stage of human evolution, which is over, to the second stage of human evolution, which we haven't planned for yet,» Hardy said.
«That's still to be defined, and it's still to be imagined, discussed, planned, designed and implemented,» Hardy said, adding that scientists, government and non-governmental organizations we need to learn from the past in order to make «revolutionary changes.»
«The first evolution of man is complete, and we must learn from our mistakes, learn from the experience of the past, learn from our history, learn from each other, and begin to talk and discuss what this second evolution of man should be.»
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