EPILOGUE

YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW

In a way what happened in the 20th century goes back to an observation by Darwin in Origin of Species probably skipped past for well over 100 years as being too simplistic.

After all, it's the complexities, which one can battle over for at least a decade or two before reaching any consensus, that generate the debates, books, and everything else that advance a career in politics, religion, and science.

"The most important of all causes of organic change," Darwin tells us in Origin, "is one which is almost independent of altered and perhaps suddenly altered physical conditions, namely the mutual relation of organism to organism,—the improvement of one organism entailing the improvement or extermination of others."

Improvement through improvement rather than extermination?

This seems too quiet, too simple to make much of. Yet from the point in time at which Darwin wrote this we can see yesterday, today, and tomorrow take shape far into the future.

Darwin focused on improvement through the extermination of others in Origin and then on improvement through the improvement of others in Descent.

Like the flow of two rivers from springs nearby one another in the deep past, the history and the next stage for the evolution of our species unfolds.

One stream, of necessity polluted at the outset but encouraged in every way by the Powers That Be, sets out to accelerate evolution through the elimination of others. The other stream, discouraged in every way by the Powers That Be, clear at the outset and still potable, pushes on to advance evolution through improvement of others.

Within the fields of science and religion the difference between the two streams sharpens into violent baronies along the polluted stream and peaceful villages along the clean stream, which harden into the battle between a higher order and a lower order alignment for control of 20th and 21st century mind.

At issue in the battle is whether we are to be guided:

• socially, by a theory and story of subhuman, inhuman, and inhumane evolution, or a theory and story of a fully human evolution.

• politically, by a theory and story of adaptation and accommo-dation, or a theory and story of assertion and aspiration.

• economically, by a theory and story of selfishness and greed as the key to wealth for the privileged—with, of course, a noble trickle down to the many. Or a theory and story of caring and sharing to spread the wealth of Earth to the many.

• scientifically, by a reductionist theory and story oriented to the deep past, applied spuriously to the present, or an expansionist theory and story oriented to today and the future.

• morally, by a theory and story of survival of the fittest and selfishness uber alles as the driver for human evolution, or a theory and story of love and moral sensitivity as the driver of human evolution.

• spiritually, by a theory and story of original sin and a ferocious God of my people versus your people, a God that must without question be obeyed. Or a theory and story of original blessing and a merciful God of all people. Or no God at all, good will from on high and below, just favoring an abundant life for all.

The good news is that through the escalation of disaster driven by the wrong choice we're being forced to grow up and move out of the paranoid mind space that requires a battle over every step of the way. Gradually, although by no means fast enough, the science of the old choice and the wrong choice is being replaced by the evolutionary systems science growing out of humanistic social science and cross-disciplinary cybernetic, chaos, complexity, and self-organizing theory.	Jolted at last into facing reality, within the mind space of both science and the world at large there's a new recognition of the fund-amental requirement of gender balance and moral evolution, or finding out and acting according to what's really right and what's really wrong. Only within religion and politics is the resistance to sanity still obdurate, both like a bad spoiled child resisting every attempt by progressive religion, progressive politics, and just plain sanity to advance our species.

Above all, within all fields there is movement toward recognition of evolution itself as the point of both origin and destination—the place of common ground, both the terrestrial and celestial framework, the integrating ideal for our species and all species that binds us together, transcending differences.

Particularly in education, for the theory and story of evolution, the shift from being merely a difficult tidbit for an endangered hour or two within the whole school year to become the framework for the whole curricula is urgently needed.

It is my hope this book, as well as others I've written to this end, may help by providing access to the much larger and greater theory and story of evolution foreshadowed in the rest of Darwin, now everywhere being corroborated and advanced by his progressive successors.

But the experience of the past shows that the paradigm of domination has only tenuously and temporarily been beaten back. Behind the ranting of those whom we would like to think may once again be safely labeled the "lunatic fringe" lies the drive of the same captive millions to recoup, regroup, and with the same old goal once again push for absolute power.

What happened will happen again—potentially worse, much worse—until the lopsided theory and story that drove us to the edge of a cliff in evolution has been replaced with the grown-up theory and story that was Darwin's and now is his progressive successors' vision.

As Darwin wrote, it is the "relationship of organism to organism" that matters—that is, what we do or do not do unto one another.

For thousands of years it has been so simple in the end.