Evolution, Sexual Reproduction & the Future of Human Society (Part I)

Abstract

In this two-part article, the author argues that we urgently need to invest in ethical, social and political processes that respect the passage of the generations, and the genetic and fertility principles upon which conscious life depends. We need to invest in forms of government and decision-making which contain cumulative principles which will both generate a capacity to value long-term investment for the future of life and enable social change and cultural evolution to have a truly genetic character, as effective for long-term stability and survival as molecular genetics are. All people need to respect that fertility is a sacred process through which we all become conscious beings, that childbirth is an essential component of the passage of the generations. Central to this is protecting the rights of women to reproductive, social and educational choice and providing adequate social, financial and contractual employment provisions to enable women to have children without compromising their professional or entrepreneurial careers. This is the ultimate test and end point of the scientific revolution, and is the fulfillment of the sense of living purpose religious traditions try to lay exclusive claim to, in which an ethic of living diversity and its protection must needs emerge and assert a natural morality for justice to prevail. Science has provided us with the knowledge to understand, in confounding detail, overthrowing all our preconceived assumptions, how the natural processes in the universe actually work and come together to enable the continuity of life. It is now up to us to engender a moral and ethical movement that can function to cherish and replenish the Earth throughout our generations to come.

Part I of this article includes: 1. Introduction; 2. Human Emergence and the Evolutionary Paradigm; and 3. Founding Civilizations, Religion and the Patriarchal Reproductive Imperative.