Strategies for Advancing Evolution

Strategies for Advancing Evolution STRATEGIES FOR ADVANCING EVOLUTION 1. EVOLUTIONARY GOALS As detailed in The Evolutionary Manifesto and Evolution’s Arrow, an understanding of the large-scale evolutionary processes that have produced life on Earth and will determine our future is making sense of human existence. This evolutionary worldview is revealing that we are not just meaningless accidents in a universe that is indifferent to our existence. Instead it shows that humanity has a critical role to play in the future evolution of life on this planet and in the universe. Our role is evident from an understanding of the trajectory of evolution. Until now, evolution has proceeded along this trajectory of its own accord. But it will not continue to advance unless humanity now drives the process forward intentionally. If this transition to intentional evolution does not occur, evolution on this planet will stall and humanity will not participate in the future evolution of life in the universe—we will be a failed evolutionary experiment. It is as if evolution is a developmental process. Just as a human embryo is organized to develop through a number of stages to produce an adult, evolution tends to produce a particular sequence of outcomes of increasing complexity. However, at a particular point life will continue to develop along this trajectory only if certain conditions are met: organisms must emerge that awaken to the possibility that they are living in the midst of a developmental process; they must realize that the continued success of the process depends on them; and they must commit to actively moving the process forward. We have reached this critical point. Until now, the trajectory of evolution has been driven by natural selection (cultural as well as gene-based). Selection has been powered primarily by competition—to stay competitive, living processes must improve continually. Selection has taken evolution from the first simple cells to multi-cellular organisms to animal societies and now to the threshold of a global society. But a global society is not in direct competition with other global societies. Competition-based selection will not drive the development and refinement of a global society. We have reached the point where intentionality is essential if evolution is to continue to advance. But what specifically do we need to do to advance the evolutionary process? We can use the direction of evolution to answer this fundamental question. We can identify the next great steps in evolution on Earth, and devise strategies that will help actualize those steps. The trajectory of evolution points to the following key milestones in the future evolution of life: • A sustainable and cooperative global society emerges. It will be organized so that the interests of individuals, corporations and states are aligned with the interests of the global society as a whole. As a result, only actions that advance the interests of the society and its members are rewarded. No longer is it in the interests of individuals, corporations or governments to engage in war, destructive competition or actions that contribute to global warming. 1 Strategies for Advancing Evolution • The majority of people on the planet become intentional evolutionaries. Their conscious participation in the evolutionary process has become the source of value and meaning in their lives. Redefining themselves within a wider evolutionary perspective is providing direction and purpose to their existence—they no longer see themselves as isolated, selfconcerned individuals who live for a short time, then die irrelevantly in a meaningless universe. They have developed the capacity to free themselves from the dictates of their biological and cultural past, able to find satisfaction and meaning in whatever is necessary to advance evolution. • The global society becomes an intentional evolutionary in its own right. The global system is managed by people who have embraced an evolutionary worldview. They have helped to organize the planetary society so that it actively pursues whatever goals will enable it to participate successfully in the future evolution of life in the universe. They are managing the living processes, artificial intelligence, matter and energy of the planet into a symbiotic, highly evolvable whole that is capable of deciding and pursuing its own goals. 2. THE CHALLENGE Are these milestones achievable? It goes without saying that they represent extraordinarily ambitious goals for a movement that currently comprises a small number of individuals scattered around the globe. Is it possible to devise realistic, practical strategies that can make the evolutionary worldview the dominant social, ethical and political force on the planet? The need to develop these strategies is a critical challenge for the evolutionary movement. In significant part, the success of the movement will depend on its capacity to meet this challenge. The energy and passion of potential members can be harnessed only if evolutionary goals are seen as realistically achievable, and not just an idealistic pipe dream. And members need to know what they have to do to advance the evolutionary process. The movement needs to identify a realistic and feasible path to its goals. This paper begins the development of these strategies. But it can only be a first step. As the evolutionary movement begins to fulfill its potential, its strategies will soon be improved and adapted by thousands of highly motivated and intelligent people across the planet. The movement will soon develop a distributed diversity of evolving strategies that cannot be specified in any single document or comprehended in all its detail by any individual. 3. STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS If the evolutionary movement is to have a significant influence on events in the world, it needs to become a political force. If it is to actualize the next great steps in evolution, it needs to do what is necessary to accumulate power. In large part the power of the movement will depend on its size—the number of citizens who embrace an evolutionary worldview. This gross aspect of its power will also depend on the amount of resources commanded by the movement, the power and diversity of its members, and so on. 2 Strategies for Advancing Evolution The movement’s ability to influence events will also depend on its intelligence—its ability to devise effective strategies to achieve its goals and to adapt them creatively as circumstances change. Finally, its power will depend on the way it is organized. The more effectively it organizes itself, the better its ability to make use of the skills, knowledge and other resources available to it. Until the movement develops sufficient power, it will not be able to ensure that human societies intentionally pursue evolutionary goals. However, in the meantime it can join with other groups to achieve change where these groups have goals that are consistent with advancing evolution. Many organizations are currently pursuing goals that would move humanity in the general direction of a unified and sustainable global society. This is a particularly urgent goal for the evolutionary movement—without a global system of coordination that restrains carbon emissions and war, human civilization might not survive this century. Against this background, key priorities for the evolutionary movement are to: • Grow the size and power of the movement as quickly as possible, including by devising strategies to rapidly spread the adoption of the evolutionary worldview; • Develop the intelligence of the movement; • Organize the movement to make most effective use of the skills, knowledge and other resources available to it; and • Join with other groups to support actions that move humanity towards a sustainable and cooperative global society. We will deal with each of these key strategic areas in turn in Sections 4, 5, 6 and 7 below: 4. GROWING THE EVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT The inherent power of the evolutionary worldview The evolutionary worldview has an intrinsic capacity to spread. It satisfies the deepest of human needs. An evolutionary worldview shows that there is meaning and purpose to human existence. It reveals that humanity has a critical role in the future evolution of life on this planet, and the potential to make a significant contribution to the evolution of life in the universe. And unlike previous religious and mythical worldviews, it is science-based and capable of withstanding rationalist critiques and skeptical scrutiny. In this respect it is unique. It doesn’t have any viable competitors. Importantly, the evolutionary worldview is capable of being embraced by all of humanity. This is particularly significant for strategies that are designed to build the power of the 3 Strategies for Advancing Evolution movement—it means the movement has the potential to accelerate its accumulation of power by targeting recruitment at powerful individuals. The wealthy and the powerful are as much in need of meaning and purpose in their lives as are the poor and disadvantaged. At present, the wealthy and powerful may consider that their narrow biological needs and desires can be best served by maintaining the status quo and suppressing real change. But the evolutionary worldview is capable of convincing them that real meaning and purpose is to be found in advancing evolution intentionally. This also means that the evolutionary worldview is unlike ideologies such as communism in an important respect. These ideologies reinforce conflicts of interests between groups in society and therefore must rely on overthrowing opponents by force. Communism could not recruit the wealthy and powerful, it had to put an end to their control through revolution. In this respect the evolutionary worldview is more like religious and mythological belief systems. At times in the past, religious worldviews have acquired the capacity to shape the goals and beliefs of societies by gaining the acceptance of elites. At these times they have not had to be imposed and maintained by violence. Autocatalysis The evolutionary worldview will spread due to its inherent attractiveness. But an understanding of evolutionary dynamics suggests ways in which the growth in power of the worldview can be greatly accelerated. Processes that are autocatalytic can grow exceptionally rapidly. An autocatalytic process is one which catalyses itself. It acts on its environment to cause more of itself to come into existence. These new instances of itself are also autocatalytic. They in turn cause more instances of itself to form. And so on and so on. In this way, an autocatalytic process ratchets itself up. It pumps up its own production. It draws more and more of the available materials and energy from its environment to make instances of itself. When enough resources are available, it can grow exponentially. Autocatalysis is a central feature of the growth of populations of living processes. It is responsible for the tendency of living processes to pump themselves up and expand into every part of the environment. To an extent, the evolutionary worldview is inherently autocatalytic. Adoption of the worldview motivates individuals to do what they can to actively spread the worldview. It energizes them to take action that will increase the power of the movement and will advance the transition to intentional evolution. As new individuals adopt the worldview, the total number of people promoting the worldview increases, and the rate of growth of the movement therefore accelerates. • The most successful world religions are also generally autocatalytic in this way. They motivate at least some of their adherents to actively go out to convert others and to invest resources in doing so. Its autocatalytic nature will therefore enable the evolutionary movement to expand rapidly. 4 Strategies for Advancing Evolution Enhancing the autocatalytic capacity of the evolutionary movement But intentional evolutionaries will not just leave this autocatalytic process to unfold of its own accord. Instead they will target and shape their actions to maximize the autocatalytic effect of the movement. They will intentionally use their understanding of evolutionary dynamics to enhance the effectiveness of the autocatalytic capacity of their actions. The movement will harness autocatalysis to continually ratchet up the size and scale of the movement, its command over material resources, its power, and its ability to continue to expand. As it expands autocatalytically, the movement will extend its influence over more and more of the members and resources of society. And it will use these resources to drive further growth. Eventually it will have the scale and power to shape the goals and policies of the global society. Key ways in which intentional evolutionaries can enhance the autocatalytic capacity of the evolutionary movement include: targeting transmission of the worldview to individuals who have a greater capacity to transmit the worldview (e.g. because they have more power and other resources they can use); using resources other than their own to transmit the worldview (i.e. resources associated with the position they occupy in government or in a corporation); developing materials that will spread the worldview (e.g. web sites, articles, books, films, and computer games, including materials tailored for individuals at particular developmental levels); taking advantage of crises and newsworthy events to demonstrate the capacity of the worldview to solve real-world challenges; developing processes, materials and experiences that will deepen commitment to the worldview and engage individuals on all levels (emotional, mental and intuitive); promoting the spread of skills, capacities and knowledge that are ‘pro-worldview’ (i.e. they increase the propensity of individuals to adopt the worldview); using the marketplace to aid transmission by packaging pro-worldview skills and knowledge with other goods and services that are in demand; use markets to spread proworldview capacities by taking advantage of the fact that they can enhance the competitiveness of businesses; using ‘consumer power’ to preferentially support proworldview goods and services; using existing religious, social and community organizations and networks to spread pro-worldview knowledge and capacities; devising better strategies for spreading the worldview and disseminating best practice; facilitating the coordination and organization of intentional evolutionaries; countering opposition and resistance to the spread of the worldview. It is worth noting here that some of these strategies rely on indirect autocatalysis. They do not involve the direct transmission of the worldview to others. Instead they rely on actions that prepare the ground for transmission of the worldview—they transmit skills, experiences or knowledge that increase the likelihood that the individual will then go on to adopt the worldview. For example, they might assist individuals to develop the cognitive capacity to understand complex systems, including evolutionary processes. Individuals with such a capacity are more likely to develop a deep commitment to the worldview. We will now examine some of these strategies in greater detail: 5 Strategies for Advancing Evolution Specific strategies for enhancing the autocatalytic capacity of the movement Targeting the powerful The greater the power and resources commanded by individuals, the greater their capacity to promote the spread of the evolutionary worldview. By targeting recruitment efforts at such individuals, the movement can accelerate the spread of the worldview, and increase the power of the evolutionary movement to influence events. But it is not just individuals with personal wealth and power who could be targeted under this strategy. As we discuss in the next section, individuals in the higher levels of government and business can use the power of their positions in a number of ways to enhance the transmission of the evolutionary worldview. People in these sorts of positions are also more likely to embrace the evolutionary worldview. This is because they often possess the higher-level cognitive capacities needed to immerse themselves in the worldview and to fully appreciate its implications. As discussed in more detail in The Evolutionary Manifesto, a full grasp of the evolutionary worldview requires the capacity to develop complex mental models of the large-scale evolutionary processes that have shaped life on this planet and that will determine our future. Strategic vision and some ability to deal with complex systems are usually demanded of individuals in the higher echelons of government and business. These capacities will enable them to quickly develop a deep understanding of the evolutionary worldview and a strong commitment to it. In turn, the worldview will enable them to make sense of the events and processes that are unfolding around them on a planetary scale. It will show them how they can live a life that matters in this wider context. Their adoption of the evolutionary worldview will fill the void of meaning and purpose that has resulted from the collapse of the old mythological and religious worldviews. For these reasons the evolutionary worldview has the potential to spread rapidly amongst business, governmental and political elites. Once it gains a foothold, it will spread autocatalytically—the early adopters will introduce others to it, and so on. The evolutionary worldview can rapidly become the dominant worldview of elites across the planet. It will become the main determinant of their personal values and motivations. The targeting of the worldview to the powerful will also help to counter moves to attack the movement. To the extent that the worldview is perceived to threaten the status quo, attempts will be made to undermine and discredit it. ‘Expert opinion’ and ‘authoritative sources’ will be funded to attack those who support it. The more of the elites who have embraced the worldview, the less effective these attacks will be. Campaigns to discredit the worldview will be sapped of their energy and power. Once the worldview has spread sufficiently, the processes that normally defend the status quo will collapse. Something similar happened with the collapse of communism in the Eastern bloc. Eventually communism lost the support of many of the key individuals it needed to enforce its power. Once these individuals realized they had reached a critical mass, the power of the communist state ceased to exist. 6 Strategies for Advancing Evolution Intentional evolutionaries within governmental and business elites will also play a significant role in the movement towards a unified and sustainable global system. In the coming years international crises associated with global warming, migration, war and unrestrained economic activity will increase in size and frequency. Because of the global nature of these crises, no nation acting alone can solve them. They will demand global solutions. The crises will increasingly give intentional evolutionaries within governmental and business elites the opportunity to steer the world towards a global society. When conditions are appropriate, they will begin to use the evolutionary worldview to explain and justify the movement to a coordinated global system. Using the resources of governments, corporations etc The more resources that are directed at fuelling the autocatalytic process, the faster the evolutionary movement will grow. Intentional evolutionaries will use their own time, money and other resources for this purpose. But wherever possible, they will also use any influence they have over other resources to support the growth of the movement. The potential of this strategy will be particularly significant for intentional evolutionaries in powerful positions in politics, government, business and other large organizations. Although their organization might not overtly support evolutionary goals or values, they can use their power within the organization to allocate resources to support the growth of the movement. For example, they may use their influence to preferentially engage and promote individuals who have embraced the evolutionary worldview or who are likely to do so; protect individuals within the organization who are penalized because of their pro-evolutionary values and activities; support the formation of ‘communities of practice’ within the organization that not only nourish skills and knowledge relevant to the organization, but also assist in spreading evolutionary perspectives and cognitive capacities that are conducive to adoption of the worldview; engage management consultants to develop systemic cognitive capacities and related skills in staff that enhance the likelihood the staff will adopt an evolutionary worldview; when engaging management consultants, preferentially chose consultancies that are staffed by intentional evolutionaries and that use an evolutionary worldview to frame their training and developmental interventions; when providing funding or donations to other bodies such as think tanks, charities, community organizations, representative bodies etc., give the money to those who have an evolutionary perspective or employ people who do; wherever the opportunity arises, bias all commercial decisions in a similar way; in the case of governmental organizations, bias funding decisions towards organizations, projects and activities that are pro-evolutionary, are staffed by proevolutionaries, or that create conditions (including cognitive development) which are conducive to the adoption of the evolutionary worldview (e.g. meditation programs in schools that are specifically directed at developing meta-cognitive capacities and emotional intelligence); etc, etc. As the evolutionary movement grows and as the concentration of intentional evolutionaries increases in the higher levels of governments and businesses, governmental and business resources will increasingly be put to work to fuel the growth of the movement. In some circumstances, the use of an organization’s resources in these ways will be consistent with the interests of the organization. For example, preferentially promoting 7 Strategies for Advancing Evolution intentional evolutionaries may often benefit an organization—the strategic vision and capacity to understand complex systems that characterizes intentional evolutionaries will be extremely valuable at the higher levels of governments and multi-national corporations. Furthermore, intentional evolutionaries will not use resources in ways that will seriously damage their organization—they will be careful to use their strategies in ways that are sustainable and in the interests of the evolutionary movement in the longer term. However, intentional evolutionaries will not be concerned by the fact that using the resources of organizations in these ways might clash with some common ethical principles. Whether their adherents are conscious of it or not, our existing moral and ethical systems have been shaped and tuned by the needs of past evolution. These systems embody principles that tended to be effective in past biological and cultural circumstances. For example, many moral principles are derived from the norms needed to organize effective and cohesive tribal societies. People who blindly adhere to these principles are following the dictates of past evolution, irrespective of whether the principles will be effective in current circumstances or in the future. In contrast, intentional evolutionaries pursue values, principles and strategies that advance the evolutionary process. Their allegiance is to the future, not the past. A fundamental implication of the evolutionary worldview is that ethical principles are no longer things that we inherit blindly from times gone by. Instead they are principles that are chosen intentionally to serve the goal of advancing evolution. Intentional evolutionaries do not adhere to ethical principles that worked well in the past but now impede our future evolutionary progress. Of course, these ethical issues will dissipate once the majority of a nation’s citizens embraces an evolutionary worldview and elects a government that is explicitly pro-evolutionary. Even under past ethical systems, this will legitimate the overt use of governmental resources for pro-evolutionary purposes. The people who first elect a pro-evolutionary government will have done something that is not just of great historical significance. It will also be a major event in the evolution of life on Earth. And it will be a major boost to the growth of the evolutionary movement. Such a government will intentionally use its resources to promote the evolutionary worldview in other nations, and help create conditions that facilitate its embrace across the planet. Hitch-hiking on market autocatalysis Economic markets comprise processes that are indirectly autocatalytic. A product that efficiently satisfies the needs of consumers can be exchanged for money in a market. The money provides the producer with the resources to make more of the product, and an incentive to do so (in the form of profit). In a market, such a product causes the creation of more instances of itself. It indirectly catalyzes its own production. This autocatalytic process pumps up the availability of products that are in demand. 8 Strategies for Advancing Evolution The evolutionary movement can take advantage of markets to pump up the availability of activities that support the transmission of the evolutionary worldview. It can augment the inherent autocatalytic nature of the movement by also hitch-hiking on market autocatalysis. The most obvious way to do this is to integrate things that facilitate adoption of the worldview into consumer products and services that will be pumped up by the market. Good candidates for this are knowledge about the worldview and processes that transmit cognitive capacities that assist a deep understanding of the worldview. Examples of consumer products and services that can be integrated with pro-evolutionary material include movies, documentaries, web sites, computer games, workshops, lectures, educational courses etc. Pro-evolutionary material can also be packaged with other services that are marketed to businesses as effective means to increase their competitiveness. Important examples are services that develop the ability of employees to understand complex systems (as mentioned previously, this capacity is a pre-condition to a deep appreciation of the evolutionary worldview). Other examples are programs that enhance emotional intelligence and promote a capacity to transcend the dictates of our biological and cultural past (these improve the ability of individuals to pursue evolutionary goals more effectively). These capacities are extremely valuable for businesses that have to cope with a business environment that is increasingly complex and interdependent. Corporations that develop and enhance these capacities in their employees will tend to out-compete those that don’t. As more businesses acquire these skills, their strategies will tend to make the business environment even more complex, further increasing the demand for the skills. Market forces will therefore quickly spread these capacities throughout the economy, just as they previously spread the demand for such capacities as rational thought and selfauthorship. A further way in which the evolutionary movement can take advantage of market processes is through the use of consumer choice. As the evolutionary movement grows, the combined consumer power of its members can be used to support pro-evolutionary products, services and businesses. The effectiveness of consumer choice has already been demonstrated in particular markets. For example, by preferentially choosing products that are environmentally friendly, consumers in more affluent countries have significantly influenced the goods that are produced and marketed. However, consumer choice is often not as effective as it could be. Its effect is undermined where consumers base their choices on inadequate information. This is often the case where consumers rely on information from the producer or from ‘experts’ who are influenced by the producer—there is an obvious conflict of interest.. The evolutionary movement can use more sophisticated means to assess the pro-evolutionary credentials of businesses. For example, it may require corporations to submit themselves to independent, third party certification processes. 9 Strategies for Advancing Evolution Devising better strategies The evolutionary movement will continually improve and adapt the strategies it uses to enhance its autocatalytic growth. It will increase its ability to do this by building the intelligence of the movement and its organizational effectiveness. Broad strategies for enhancing these capacities are examined in the following two sections. 5. BUILDING THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE MOVEMENT The higher the intelligence of the evolutionary movement, the greater its capacity to advance the evolutionary process. The intelligence of the movement is its ability to improve and adapt its goals and strategies. The more intelligence it can call on to enhance its strategies and tactics, the better it will be at achieving its goals. The movement will use its intelligence to continually improve all its goals and strategies, including those in the key strategic areas examined in this paper: moving the planet towards a sustainable and unified global society; growing the evolutionary movement and enhancing its autocatalytic effect; organizing the movement so that it makes best use of the skills and resources available to it; and bootstrapping the intelligence of the movement. The movement can enhance its intelligence by building its capacity to undertake the following key functions: • Constructing models, theories and narratives that can be used to guide the development of better strategies, and adapting the models in the light of experience (models can be intuitive as well as explicit); • Identifying successful strategies and interventions and the circumstances in which they are effective; • Monitoring relevant aspects of the social environment to detect opportunities for strategic interventions; • Monitoring the implementation of strategies so that they can be adapted as circumstances change; and • Making the knowledge and learning that arises from these activities available throughout the movement, in a form that is readily understood and usable. The particular ways in which the movement undertakes these key functions will be determined largely by self-organizing processes. In some instances this may mean that functions are distributed across a number of individuals and groups who are only loosely connected. In others the functions relating to a particular issue may be embodied in a particular organization. How these self-organizing processes will organize the evolutionary movement will be discussed in detail in the next section. In some cases, strategies will deal with circumstances that are highly complex and inherently unpredictable. In these situations, strategies will be very flexible. They will be adapted 10 Strategies for Advancing Evolution continually in the light of feedback provided by monitoring the environment and the impact of the strategies. The intelligence of the movement will depend on the cognitive capacities of its individual members as well as the intelligence of its collective processes. Boosting individual or collective capacities will enhance the intelligence of the movement. We will deal briefly with each in turn. Enhancing individual intelligence Humanity has not yet developed the cognitive capacities needed to readily understand and manage complex systems. Rational thought alone is ineffective for dealing with complex social, economic and environmental systems. This is because circular causality is common in complex systems— when components of the system impact on other elements, these in turn often impact back on the original components. As a result, linear analysis guided by rational thought is unable to keep track of causal relationships within such a system, and therefore cannot predict its behavior. Due to this limitation, scientific understanding has been largely restricted to parts of reality that can be approximated by analytical models. To date, science has been relatively ineffective at understanding complex social, psychological and ecological systems. Computer simulations of complex phenomenon have helped. But their value will be limited until scientists develop greater capacities to understand the patterns and processes exemplified by the simulations. The development of cognitive capacities to understand complex systems is of paramount importance to the evolutionary movement. In particular, these capacities are essential for understanding the large scale evolutionary processes that have shaped life on Earth and that will determine our future. Furthermore they are essential for developing effective strategies for the movement. In order to achieve its goals the evolutionary movement has to understand and manage complex social, political, economic and ecological realities. As outlined in The Evolutionary Manifesto, the key to developing these capacities is to train the ability to detach at will from linear thought processes. Currently we are almost continually embedded in sequences of thought. These thought processes fill the limited capacity of consciousness and crowd out access to the capacities that can enable us to understand complex systems—e.g. intuition, wisdom, pattern recognition abilities, and so on. Linear thought will continue to be important for understanding parts of the world that are analyzable, and for putting together mental models of complex systems. But we need to develop the ability to voluntarily and effortlessly move between thinking and other modes at will. In particular, we will need to freely access ‘silent’, intuitive modes if we are to build our capacity to understand and manage complex systems. In the language of the spiritual and religious traditions, we need to be able to ‘come into the present’ at will. And we will need to train this capacity by using practices that use the principles underlying meditation. 11 Strategies for Advancing Evolution Importantly, the training of a capacity to come into the present will also free us from the dictates of our desires, emotions and past conditioning. It will enable intentional evolutionaries to do what is necessary to advance the evolutionary process, unfettered by their biological, cultural and social past. The full development of these capacities produces a quantum-level increase in adaptability and intelligence. Individuals at the higher cognitive level are able to exploit opportunities that others do not even suspect exist. In circumstances where individuals at the rational level see only chaos, those at the higher level are able to see and exploit causal relationships, identify opportunities, see ways of intervening in systems to achieve their goals, identify leverage points, and understand at a glance how a system will unfold in response to a variety of actions. It is as if individuals who are embedded in linear thought are moving in slow motion, and those at the higher level are able to move freely about them at normal speed. While linear thinkers are stuck in habitual and conditioned responses, individuals at higher levels are able to move at right angles to social convention and normal understandings, and achieve what they want at will. The additional freedom available at higher levels is as extensive as the extra freedom we have when we reflect consciously on how we could have acted during a dream. For these reasons, intentional evolutionaries will work on themselves to develop higher cognitive capacities, and will promote the acquisition of the capacities throughout society as a whole. A key priority will be to integrate into education systems meditation-like programs that are specifically designed to develop these higher capacities. Boosting collective intelligence Collective intelligence has the advantage of being able to draw on the disparate skills, perspectives, knowledge, cognitive styles and emotional intelligences of the participants in the collective process. In recent years, a number of collective processes have been developed that are particularly effective for dealing with complex systems. They utilize similar principles at the collective level to the processes that bring individuals ‘into the present’. Although these collective approaches often use different terminology and rationales, they generally share the following key features: • The participants are ‘in the present’. They experience their minds as being relatively still, and they are not attached to any thoughts or feelings that arise; • As a result, sequences of thought do not crowd out access to other resources such as intuition, wisdom and capacities for pattern recognition. The group process is therefore able to freely draw on any of these resources that are relevant to the group; • As a further result of being in the present, feelings and emotions do not determine the resources that individuals contribute to the collective process. The way is cleared for contributions that are relevant to the group to be elicited, not those that are relevant to 12 Strategies for Advancing Evolution individual needs and ego-concerns. For this reason, participation in the collective process is experienced as impersonal and non-volitional; and • The process is designed to focus the attention of the participants on the needs of the group, and to elicit contributions relevant to these needs. For example, participants may be asked to ‘speak into the middle’, to ‘sense what wants to emerge’, or to consider what ‘the whole’ would want as a solution to a particular problem. In short, such a collective process can access the most effective resources within the group for responding to an issue (including the resources needed to understand and manage complex systems), without being impeded by the narrow needs and ego-concerns of members. Participants often experience their involvement in these processes as exhilarating and profound. In part, this is due to the experience of ‘being in the present’. In this state, an individual’s attention is not being continually jerked around by thoughts and feelings, and the processing power of consciousness is relatively free and unencumbered. As a consequence the state is experienced as one of stillness, peace, clarity, and spaciousness. Perceptions are heightened and experienced as being particularly vivid. Furthermore, individuals will often experience their own contributions to the group as surprising and magical. This is because their contributions often come directly from the intuitive unconscious. Their thought-based conscious mind is not involved in generating the contributions, so it does not understand where they came from or how they were generated. To the conscious mind, the contributions appear to arise fully formed from ‘un-knowing’. Although these collective processes can be experienced as magical by the limited conscious mind, it is important to recognize that they are not. The processes are able to access only the resources and knowledge that are brought to the table by the participants. The processes cannot get something out of nothing. The effectiveness of the collective processes is therefore dependent on the quality of the skills, knowledge, mental models and other resources possessed by the participants. In order to get the best out of the processes it is therefore essential that the participants build their knowledge and mental models before they participate. The pump must be primed. A group of silly saints will still be silly, no matter how effective the collective process. These sorts of collective processes are still at a very early stage of their development. However it is already clear that properly used, they have a significant role to play in the evolutionary movement and in the emergence of a highly evolvable global society. 6. BUILDING THE ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS OF THE MOVEMENT The capacity of the evolutionary movement to achieve its goals will depend critically on the effectiveness of its organization. How well it organizes itself determines its capacity to make best use of the diversity of skills, knowledge, resources, opportunities and passions of its members. Ineffective organization wastes the resources of the movement. 13 Strategies for Advancing Evolution Until recently, the most common organizational form was an authoritarian, top-down hierarchy. The highest levels of such an organization establish its vision, goals and strategies. Policies and instructions are fed down the hierarchy with little room for input or modification from those at lower levels. Authority and power is used to get lower levels to do what the hierarchy considers is in the interests of the organization. This form of organization is unlikely to play a significant role in the evolutionary movement. There will be no ‘One Big Evolutionary Organization’ (OBEO) that runs the evolutionary movement and has branches in each town or city. Forms of organization are now possible that are much more creative, adaptive and energized. A number of factors are responsible for these new organizational possibilities. First and foremost, the internet has made participation in many types of collective projects possible no matter where an individual lives. In these cases, the internet has abolished geography. This has very significant implications. It means that individuals are not stuck with some local branch of the OBEO, irrespective of whether it is competent or relevant to their particular interests. Instead they can now join any evolutionary group they wish, no matter where its founders are located. Individuals can search the planet for groups that that are competently pursuing projects that interest them and suit their talents. And they can also set up their own evolutionary projects and seek to attract others to contribute. Collectively, the activities of many intentional evolutionaries selecting, joining and leaving groups will produce a dynamic of creative destruction: Organizations that are seen to competently pursue effective evolutionary goals and strategies will attract new members and resources. Groups that cannot convince potential members that they are efficient or sufficiently relevant to advancing the evolutionary process will wither away. And groups will end when their purpose is achieved, when more effective groups emerge, or when they lose their relevance. Organizations within the evolutionary movement will be disciplined and shaped by the need to compete for members and for support. They will be embedded in a form of market that will ensure that only the most effective survive and that those that stagnate will disappear. Like any highly adaptable and effective market, this organizational dynamic would always be open to new ideas and better forms of organization. Any participant in the evolutionary movement would be able to initiate a new project and seek collective support for it. Every possible project that has the potential to enhance the effectiveness of the movement would be an opportunity that could be taken up by an evolutionary entrepreneur. As a result of these dynamic processes, an effective organizational structure will selforganize within the evolutionary movement. It will adapt appropriately to changes in circumstances, goals, strategies and resources. To an extent, the effectiveness of these self organizing processes will depend on the entrepreneurial capabilities of members of the movement. The movement will need members that are strategic, self-authoring, motivated, able to understand and manipulate complex environments, and able to organize complex projects. 14 Strategies for Advancing Evolution The evolutionary movement will have these skills in abundance. As mentioned previously, some cognitive capacity to understand and manage complex systems is needed to grasp the significance of the evolutionary worldview. And intentional evolutionaries will work on themselves to enhance these and related capacities. The ubiquity of these capacities in the evolutionary movement further reduces the need for top-down hierarchical organization. Individuals do not need close control and coordination if they have the cognitive capacity to see the relationship between the needs of the organization and their own specific contributions. They will have the vision to adapt their activities to the needs of the organization as a whole. And they will be able to adjust their contributions continually as circumstances change, while taking into account the contributions of other members. Evolutionary activists will be coordinated across the globe not by some OBEO, but by common strategic visions and by knowledge about what other activists are doing. The voluntary nature of the movement will also reduce the need for hierarchical controls that align the interests of individuals with the interests of the organization. This is because the ability of intentional evolutionaries to join projects that match their particular talents, skills and passions will tend to align interests. Any miss-match between organizational goals and personal motivations will also diminish as intentional evolutionaries begin to free themselves from the dictates of narrow desires and motivations. 7. MOVING TOWARDS A UNIFIED AND SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL SOCIETY Long before the evolutionary movement accumulates sufficient power in its own right to shape society, it will be able to influence events by joining with other groups to pursue common goals. A central goal of the evolutionary movement is to organize a unified, sustainable and highly evolvable global society. There are good prospects for joining with other groups to move the planet towards this goal. Many other political and social groups are pursuing goals that would take humanity in the direction of a planetary society. The evolutionary movement can make a unique and powerful contribution to this wider push towards a global system of coordination: • The evolutionary worldview provides a rationale for the transition to a global system that is capable of attracting, motivating and energizing powerful support. The worldview shows that there is much more at stake than just ensuring our social systems continue to satisfy our narrow and self-centered desires. It reveals that the transition to a global system is the next great step in the evolution of life on Earth. The successful completion of the transition is necessary to ensure that life on Earth is not a failed evolutionary experiment. The transition is essential if life on Earth is to contribute to the future evolution of life in the universe. The worldview enables people to see that when they are working for a global society, they are participating in the unfolding of a major evolutionary transition on Earth. What they do here and now matters in the larger scheme of things. 15 Strategies for Advancing Evolution • The evolutionary worldview also gives supporters of a global system confidence that it is a realistic and feasible goal. In particular, the worldview shows that narrow self-interest is not a barrier to the emergence of harmonious cooperatives. In the past, evolution has repeatedly found ways to organize warring and competing entities into harmonious and cooperative wholes. The next step in this evolutionary trajectory is the formation of a sustainable and unified planetary civilization. • The evolutionary worldview shows us the types of arrangements that must be put in place to organize a sustainable and cooperative global system. It shows us how to organize self-interested entities into harmonious cooperatives. • The evolutionary movement can attract the support of elites in the higher levels of politics, government and business, and can mobilize them behind the goal of a global system of coordination. This constituency has a critical role in designing arrangements that will move us towards a global system, advocating them when international crises emerge that require global solutions, and ensuring that the new arrangements stick once they are put in place. Priority tasks for the evolutionary movements are to develop its contributions in each of these areas. The urgency is clear—until a global system suppresses destructive competition across the planet, civilization will be endangered and may not survive this century. The global crises that are beginning to beset the planet will help drive humanity towards an integrated planetary society. The crises are signaling the need to move to a new level of global organization that restrains destructive competition at lower levels. Why a global system of coordination is necessary A global system is necessary because destructive activities that extend beyond the borders of nations cannot be controlled by any one state acting alone. For example, there is no governance that a nation can establish within its own borders that will prevent it from being attacked from outside. Furthermore, regulation of carbon emissions or other pollution within a nation will not prevent global warming or pollution produced by the emissions of other nations. And in an interdependent global economy, what happens in one country may affect all others, no matter how they regulate their own economy. This time the global financial crisis began in the US, next time it might begin in China. Only an integrated global system can coordinate regulation across all nations. The control of global warming and other international crises therefore demands the emergence of a global system. However there is no guarantee that global crises will bring an integrated global society into existence. The destruction of human civilization is also a possible outcome. Crises will create conditions which make a coordinated global system achievable. And only a global system can bring the series of crises to an end. But a coordinated planetary society will not just emerge spontaneously or magically. Evolution teaches us that highly specific organizational arrangements need to be in place if a harmonious and cooperative organization is to emerge. This is as true at the planetary level as it was at the level of the cell and at the level of the multi-cellular organism. Unless and 16 Strategies for Advancing Evolution until these arrangements exist, destructive competition and conflict will continue across the globe. A major task for the evolutionary movement is to develop and advocate a comprehensive blueprint for organizing a sustainable and cooperative global society. The movement will set out to organize widespread support and activism behind the blueprint. A priority will be to target political, governmental, business and academic elites. Members of these elites who embrace the evolutionary worldview will be critically important for the move to a coordinated global system. They will take every opportunity to present the blueprint as the best way forward as global crises increasingly demand the emergence of an integrated global system. The influence of members of the elites will also be essential to overcome strong resistance from interests that profit from current crises and conflicts, such as the military/industrial complex. These interests will do everything they can to undermine the move to a unified global society, including funding ‘expert’ opinion and ‘independent’ media to discredit it. The evolutionary movement will develop and improve the blueprint as the movement builds its power and intelligence. Members of the movement in the higher levels of government, business and academia will allocate resources to think tanks and institutes that contribute to this work. As mentioned earlier, they will also allocate funding to projects and activities that enhance the cognitive capacities of members of society. This will better equip citizens to understand complex systems in general and the role of the blueprint in particular. How evolution has organized cooperative societies But our understanding of evolution is already sufficient to identify the broad outlines of the arrangements that will be necessary to organize a sustainable and cooperative global society. Evolution organizes warring individuals into harmonious cooperatives by aligning the interests of the individual with the interests of the organization. This ensures that when an individual’s actions advantage the organization, the individual is also advantaged. And when the actions harm the organization, the individual is harmed. As a result, cooperation pays within the organization. Members who pursue their own individual interests will also pursue the interests of the organization, as if guided by an invisible hand. This is the way in which cooperation is organized within cells, within multi-cellular organisms, within animal societies, within tribes, within corporations and within nation states. The importance of governance and regulation The arrangements that evolution uses to organize cooperatives are what we know as governance in human societies. Effective governance restrains actions that would otherwise undermine cooperation (e.g. free riding, cheating, theft, and reneging on exchanges). And it ensures that cooperative actions that benefit the whole are funded and rewarded. 17 Strategies for Advancing Evolution A unified and sustainable global civilization can be achieved by an appropriate system of global governance. Such a system would be structured so that nations and corporations capture the benefits of their contributions to the global society, and also capture any harmful effects they have on others. As a result, corporations driven solely by the profit motive will search for ways to advance the interests of the society. In contrast, our current system actually rewards corporations for doing some things that are harmful, such as dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere— doing so makes them more profitable and competitive. Evolution teaches that the solution to destructive behavior that undermines the common interest is not to somehow abolish self-interest or greed. This is fortunate because selfinterest is an unchangeable element of human behavior. Although it is not always dominant, it is always a factor. A society with a high proportion of wise, compassionate and altruistic citizens would be much easier to govern, but evolution shows that the achievement of a cooperative and sustainable society does not depend upon it. Nor will the organization of a global society stifle diversity. In fact, each time evolution has produced new cooperatives, it has increased the differentiation and diversity of the members of the cooperative (for example, the cells that combine together to constitute our bodies are far more differentiated than their ancestors that lived as separate individuals). This is because diversity and specialization make for more effective cooperation and adaptability. Free markets are an important way of aligning the interests of businesses and consumers in human society. However, markets align interests only if they are properly governed. In a market, businesses compete to satisfy the interests of consumers. The best products win the competition, and the needs of consumers are satisfied in the most cost/effective way But these market processes work only if governance prevents theft, cheating, fraud etc. If these types of behavior are not restrained, participants will be able to pursue their interests in ways that are not aligned with the interests of the community. Governance will not be able to constrain the interests of corporations if they are so large and powerful that they can influence the regulators. If this occurs, the corporations will escape effective regulation, and their interests will no longer be aligned. The ability of large corporations to control regulators rather than be controlled by them is the primary cause of the current global financial crisis. It arose because regulation failed to align greed with the community interest. The solution is regulation that does so, not the miraculous abolition of greed. The fundamental test that evolution teaches us to apply when examining the effectiveness of any social or economic system is this: • Will participants in the system who are driven solely by greed and self interest end up serving the community? 18 Strategies for Advancing Evolution How can effective governance be organized? But what specifically can be done to ensure that governance is effective and will continue to align interests despite attempts by corporations and individuals to escape regulation? Evolution achieves effective governance by aligning the interests of the governors of the cooperative with the interests of the organization as a whole. Once this has been achieved, the only way that governors will be able to pursue their interests is by instituting governance that advances the interests of the whole. In such a system, it will be in the interests of governors to implement governance that efficiently aligns the interests of individuals with the cooperative. It will also be in their interests to institute governance that constrains individuals to the minimum extent necessary to align interests (i.e. that maximizes freedom). Furthermore, it will be against the interests of governors to favor sectional interests that may attempt to corrupt governance. And it will be in the interests of the governors to institute governance that punishes and constrains sectional interests that might try to do so. The specific way in which past evolution has aligned the interests of governors with the whole is to subject them to higher-level governance. This higher-level governance may in turn be subject to governance from an even-higher level and so on, producing a hierarchy of governance. The end result is that the interests of all within the organization (governors and ordinary members alike) will be aligned with the interests of the whole. Human societies must have similar arrangements if they are to be governed in the interests of the society as a whole. The regulators themselves must be regulated so that their interests are aligned with the society. The regulatory system must also ensure that it is not in the interests of corporations (and nations, in the case of global society) to influence the regulators. And the regulatory system must be highly adaptable so that it can maintain the alignment of interests despite changing circumstances and the continual efforts of corporations to escape it. These general principles of regulation also apply to scientists, economists and others who provide expert, technical input to regulatory decisions. Recent history is littered with examples in which the views of experts have been biased by sectional interests. Their advice will always be suspect unless they are also embedded in a process that aligns their interests with those of the society. Properly regulated decision markets can be effective ways of aligning the interests of experts in this way. Decision markets reward quality judgments and expertise. Through an invisible hand process they also adjust their judgments as circumstances change (including as further information becomes available), and resolve conflicts between experts. As mentioned, evolution teaches us that efficient regulation will constrain participants in the market to the minimum extent necessary to align interests. Provided their interests are aligned, participants in markets will always be better placed than regulators to work out the best ways to satisfy their interests and therefore the interests of the community. 19 Strategies for Advancing Evolution This is why centralized, command economies are so incompetent, and why evolution does not use command systems to organize cooperatives. As far as possible, governance should constrain the actions of individuals, businesses and governments only to the extent necessary to enable exchange relations such as economic markets to operate effectively. In short, the same fundamental test that enables us to evaluate the effectiveness of social organization also applies to regulatory processes. We need to ask whether regulators that are driven solely by greed and self-interest will end up serving the interests of the society. If the answer is no, the arrangements that regulate the regulators should be amended. An understanding of evolutionary dynamics suggests other ways in which a regulatory system can be organized to enhance its effectiveness, creativity and adaptability. In particular, provision could be made for competition amongst potential regulators with low barriers to entry. This would tend to produce a distributed regulatory hierarchy that selforganizes, self-adjusts and self-repairs in the interests of society, as if guided by an invisible hand. Any regulatory deficiency would be a profit opportunity, and would attract investment and other actions to correct it (for more detail, see Chapter 17 of Evolution’s Arrow). It is obvious that much of the regulation within nation states does not meet these tests at present. And at the global level regulation is almost no-existent. It does not overstate the position to say that most of the crises that arise in the world today (other than true ‘natural disasters’) result from regulatory failures, both within nations and internationally. These crises could be prevented by effective governance. Without effective regulation that aligns interests, destructive competition that undermines the interests of the whole will prevail. The result will be similar to the outcome within our bodies when some cells escape effective regulation and reproduce out of control. Global warming Unfortunately, one of the areas in which it is particularly challenging to introduce global regulation is also where the need is most urgent. If carbon emissions are not restrained significantly in the next decade or so, global warming will set in motion irreversible processes (including possible world war) that will seriously disrupt or even end human civilization this century. A central priority of the evolutionary movement is therefore to join with other groups to develop and implement strategies for dealing effectively with global warming. The problem is not that it is difficult to design a regulatory framework that will restrain carbon emissions. This challenge is easily met. Applying the principles discussed above, the interests of businesses and consumers can be aligned with those of the planet by global regulation that imposes costs on carbon emissions. This can be achieved by appropriate capand-trade schemes, or carbon taxes. The central difficulty in responding to global warming is obtaining sufficient support across the planet for implementing an effective regulatory solution. The problem is that restraining carbon emissions is against the immediate interests of most people on the planet as well as against the immediate interests of business. 20 Strategies for Advancing Evolution In the short term, reducing emissions to a safe level would mean reducing the standard of living in industrialized countries. It would also prevent most people in developing countries from attaining the standard of living they dream of (and see daily on their television sets). This difficulty is compounded by the fact that the effects of unrestrained carbon emissions are not direct, concrete and immediate. The causal relationships between carbon emissions and climate change cannot be perceived or experienced directly. The relationship can be seen only with the aid of appropriate knowledge and intellectual understanding. A key necessity is therefore to provide people across the planet with experiences and knowledge that enable them to see the causes and impacts of global warming, and see the need for global regulation. If people are to be willing to sacrifice their immediate interests to avoid a longer-term threat, they need to feel and experience the reality of that threat. We are not talking here about spending a few million dollars on posters and pamphlets. The future of humanity and civilization is at stake. Even in purely financial terms, the multi-trillion dollar impacts of global warming justify multi-billion dollar investments in these types of programs. But economic markets do not provide incentives to anyone to fund the programs. Each year, the invisible hand of the market directs many billions of dollars to the production and dissemination of pornography. But markets organize almost nothing for activities that are essential for the survival of civilized humanity. It therefore falls to governments to fund these programs. The evolutionary movement will support the establishment by governments of independent, non-political institutions to develop and implement information programs about global warming. A major emphasis will be on the production of graphic representations in film and related media that enable people to experience the relevant causal relationships and see the necessity of global regulation. These and other materials will be used in schools and in the mass media. The need for governments to fund education campaigns in other countries The information programs will need to operate internationally. This is because global warming can only be corrected by actions that extend across the borders of nations. The citizens of a nation will only be able to avoid the devastating impact of global warming if the citizens of other nations are equally motivated to support global solutions. National governments currently accept the need to educate their citizens on public health issues. This is clearly in the interests of all citizens where the risks of disease will be increased unless all members of society restrain particular behavior. The same principle applies at the global level. In relation to global warming, all citizens will be at risk unless all individuals, including those in other countries, restrain carbon emissions. If a coordinated global system was already in place, the responsibility for the global education program would lie with it. However, in the absence of such a system, and with the future of civilization at stake, national governments need to act globally. 21 Strategies for Advancing Evolution Governments in countries that support action against global warming will therefore fund comprehensive and sophisticated campaigns in countries that have not yet done so (this will include funding bodies within other countries to make and disseminate films, run advertisements in the mass media, etc). Until it funds its own internal information programs, a key target must be the people of the United States, many of whom have been disadvantaged by an inferior public education system and a mass media that serves the interests of large corporations. Of course, this strategy will be highly controversial. But the publicity and outrage it generates will help it achieve its objectives. Overcoming the inability of governments to regulate big business A further major difficulty for an effective response to global warming is that corporations have an incentive to avoid regulation that restricts their carbon emissions. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that they have developed the power and the means to regulate governments, rather than be regulated by them. We do not live in societies in which the interests of corporations have been aligned with the interests of the societies. To date, corporations have undermined and corrupted every attempt made by governments to reduce carbon emissions significantly. The strategies already discussed will go some way to strengthening the hand of governments—informed and intelligent citizens who understand the causes and remedies of global warming will attempt to hold their politicians accountable for effective action. And governments will be able to take advantage of major crises that will enhance the political feasibility of restraining carbon emissions (crises make it easier for people to see the causal impacts of carbon emissions). But these strategies are unlikely to be enough to achieve effective action in some key nations. Powerful industries with a long history of manipulating governments will ensure that carbon regulatory systems leave them relatively unconstrained. Australia’s carbon trading scheme announced in 2009 is a good illustration of this type of outcome. Lobbying by big business has produced a scheme that is little better at restraining carbon emissions than a sieve at holding water. A way out of this difficulty is for governments to lock themselves into a process in which independent third parties determine the detail of the regulatory scheme. The decisions of the third party would bind the government irrevocably. In other words, the first step that governments would take is to lock-out corruption—they would set up a process for determining the regulatory system that is insulated from manipulation by corporations and other sectional interests. They would take themselves out of the equation. This would have to be the first step they take, because anything done before it would be irrevocably corrupted. 22 Strategies for Advancing Evolution It would be necessary to ensure that when it designs this first step, the interests of the government are aligned with the interests of the society. For example, regulation could require that the proposal be evaluated by an independent third party. It would be nullified if it were found to fail against broad criteria of equity, effectiveness, fairness etc. The use of independent processes does not mean that governments would abandon their fundamental responsibilities. Governments would determine the goals and values of the regulatory scheme. The function of the independent process would be to design a regulatory scheme that would meet the goals set by government. The ends of the scheme would be determined in the political domain, the means would be determined in the technical domain. The independent process would be responsible for the implementation and enforcement of the regulatory scheme, and would be allocated a substantial budget to educate the public on the reasons for the scheme and its design. The establishment and operation of the independent process and its interactions with corporations and others would be completely transparent, and subject to detailed regulatory control. The best option for ensuring that such an independent process is completely insulated from sectional interests would be to establish it at the international level. A less secure alternative would be to establish a separate process within each nation, but to have it supervised by an international body against established criteria. The necessity for governments to take such action would be a critical element of the multibillion dollar global information program funded by governments. The program will make it clear why no country will be permitted to shirk its responsibility to restrain its carbon emissions. It will demonstrate that human civilization will be at risk if national governments are let to establish sham regulatory schemes. The program will explain why all countries, no matter how powerful, must eventually have their interests aligned with the interests of the planet on this issue. The campaign will also show that the arrangements which are being proposed at the global level to deal with global warming are the same types of arrangements that already organize cooperation and harmony within nations, within our bodies, within our cells, and so on. In many countries, the global information campaign will be essential if sufficient political support is to be built for the use of independent processes to design regulatory arrangements. The citizens and governments of northern Europe have been at the forefront of action against global warming. A key goal for the evolutionary movement in these countries will be to get their governments to initiate information campaigns in the United States and other countries as a matter of urgency. 23 Strategies for Advancing Evolution 8. WHAT SPECIFICALLY CAN I DO TO ADVANCE THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS? The actions that are best for a particular individual to take will depend on their skills and passions, the needs of evolution, and the possibilities that open up before them. They will look for opportunities where the needs of the evolutionary process intersect with their own specific capacities and motivations. At this early stage in the growth of the evolutionary movement, very little exists to help intentional evolutionaries identify specific things they can do to advance evolution. This strategy document is a first step in filling this urgent need. It points to a diverse number of ways in which the evolutionary movement can grow its power, increase its intelligence, organize itself effectively, and contribute to the movement of humanity towards a unified and cooperative global society. But it is just a first step. To assist the increasing numbers of people who will be embracing an evolutionary worldview, there is an urgent need for more. Possible ways of meeting this need include websites and other resources that, for example: give detailed examples of ways that individuals and groups have found to contribute (including personal stories); float possible projects and activities; call for specific assistance to develop and implement projects; evaluate and critique implemented projects and those in development; disseminate best practice and good ideas; facilitate coordination by making the evolutionary movement and its activities visible to all its members, and so on and so on. Given that the evolutionary movement is in the very early stages of its development and that its rapid growth is essential to the achievement of its goals, a key priority will be activities and projects that transmit the worldview and expand the movement. John Stewart http://www.evolutionarymanifesto.com [email protected] April 2009 24