All things evolve and develop along a path, unfolding towards maturity along a spiritual journey. The richest repository of this potential is human civilization progressing from ancient times until the modern age. The present era has seen the emergence of humankind from an age of infancy towards its transitional phase of adolescence before full adulthood. The exigencies of the age we live in vary from those gone before it, the remedies and methods employed even fifty years ago are inadequate and lamentably deficient in addressing the challenges we face today. Similarly, humanity’s collective achievements and capacities are of a scale undreamt of an age ago. The explosion of knowledge, alone, testifies that we are indeed evolving through a distinct phase. This adolescent age of transition is characterized by turbulence, chaos, and a questioning of collective identity; yet discernible is the approaching age of maturity that humanity is irresistibly marching towards. Whether we arrive is not a question – rather, how will we reach our next evolutionary stage? Will we stubbornly cling to old patterns of behavior, competitive and atomistic? Will we embrace a consultative, cooperative, and collective consciousness and proceed united?
The hallmark of this age of maturity is the unification of the entire human race. This represents the consummation of human evolution, which began with the birth of family life, to tribal solidarity, to the creation of city-states, to independent nations, and will continue to a world civilization. Why wouldn’t this be so. Why do we think of all things in terms of evolution, and not humanity? And then once we do, why would we think our social evolution has halted with our current stage of sovereign nations? Isn’t world civilization the next obvious step in humanity’s social progression? Our next stage requires reordering the life of the individual, of the community, and of the institutions, and reconceptualizing the relationships between and among them all.
achieving coherence 