The Practical Application of Human Evolution to Society:
Let me back up to the beginning of civilization: Throughout history, new civilizations have arisen when leaders have figured out how to get large groups of people to cooperate with each other. The leaders do that by founding the civilizations on ideas the people agree with and are willing to cooperate with. If the people cooperate with the founding ideas of the civilization, they cooperate with each other, and through their cooperation they build the civilization they want. When the people stop agreeing with the founding principles of the civilization, they stop cooperating with the civilization, and then either they change the founding principles of the civilization, or the civilization collapses. Then, one way or another, new leaders arise with new ideas the people are willing to cooperate with, and the cycle continues.
Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Lao Tzu, the Buddha, and Dekanawidah, the Peacemaker of the Iroquois Nation, and others like them, were all great leaders. They all figured out how civilizations could function, and lots of people were willing to cooperate with their ideas.
All of those six leaders had one thing in common: they all realized that very often people’s immediate feelings run completely contrary to life in civilized society— that if everyone ran around doing whatever felt best to them at any given moment, civilization would disintegrate. All of those great leaders found large groups of people who could see that problem, and all of those leaders found solutions to the problem that the people were willing to cooperate with. All of those great leaders solved the problem in the same basic way: by teaching their followers to use intellect and force of will to consider the long-term effects of their actions before acting upon their immediate feelings.
The teachings of each of those leaders were recorded in books. Each of those books became the foundation of a great civilization. Naturally, each of those leaders taught his lessons in terms his own followers would understand. That means that even though all the books teach the same lessons, they all phrase them differently, and none of them phrase them in terms that apply to the global community of the 21st century.
With this book, I do what none of those six great leaders could do. I do for the entire human race what the Buddha did for the Buddhists, what Lao Tzu did for the Taoists, and what Jesus did for the Christians. Do I think I’m so much better than all those great leaders? Not at all. I just have a couple things to work with that none of them had. None of those leaders had any way of teaching lessons whose values could be measured equally by anyone anywhere in the world, and none of them had any way of spreading their messages over all the world more-or-less instantaneously. I can do what none of them could do because of two things: modern science and the internet.
Let’s suppose for the sake of discussion that Jesus and the other five leaders understood what made people what they are. The scientific term for “what made people what they are” is “evolution”. The products of evolution can be studied scientifically now, but they couldn’t at the time that any of those leaders taught their followers how to live as civilized members of society. If Jesus truly understood what made humans what they are, then he understood evolution, but he understood it 2,000 years before the science existed to explain it.
I know that a lot of people insist that evolution is only a theory. And maybe they’re right. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that the Christian creation myth is absolutely true. That means that in 2,005 years, Christianity has only managed to spread to about 30% of the world’s population, while science can, by definition, be measured equally by 100% of the world’s population. Does that mean that Satan has managed to reach 100% of the population of the world and to affect 70% of them, and the Christian’s god has only managed to reach 30% of the people?
Of course not. Obviously, when the Christian god created all the animals, all the plants, all the humans, all the rocks, mountains, oceans, continents, and everything else in the world, he must’ve created all their characteristics that can be measured now by anyone anywhere through modern science. All of those scientifically measurable characteristics point to a course of development by which they came into existence, and we call that course of development “evolution”. Over the course of this book, I take this thing called “evolution” and I use it to prove mathematically to the 70% of people in the world who don’t believe in Christian creationism that Jesus meant every word that he said. So if I can write one book about “evolution” and prove to the entire human race that Jesus—and all those other great leaders—really did know what they were talking about, well, so much for the theory that evolution is only a theory!
Even if none of the great leaders understood “what made people what they are” in the same literal terms that scientists understand it now, they understood it well enough to teach their followers how to adapt their instincts to life in civilization. However those six great leaders understood “evolution”, they explained it in terms that their own followers would understand. If any of those leaders were alive today, I have no doubt that any of them could teach the same things in 21st century terms. If any of the six great leaders were here to teach their lessons now, I’m willing to bet they would sound something like this book.
Anyway, back to the history of civilization: Over the course of history, governments have continually improved and replaced governments that didn’t work as well, which is why democracy has replaced monarchy, theocracy, aristocracy, military dictatorship, Fascism, and Communism. All of those other forms of government broke down because they failed to account for the forces of human nature. Democracy has succeeded so far because it accommodates human nature better than any of the other forms of government. Literally, those other forms of government have declined and disappeared from the world because people don’t feel like using them anymore, because they feel like something is wrong with them. When people feel like there’s something wrong with their government, even if they don’t know what that thing is, they’re going to stop cooperating with it. Then either the civilization is going to replace that government with a government the people do feel like cooperating with, or the civilization is going to collapse and eventually the people will figure out how to build a new civilization with a new government they do feel like cooperating with. Quite simply, democracy is reigning as the favored form of government in the world now because over the past few centuries lots of people have felt like instituting democracy in place of earlier forms of government. However, democracy is still making one fundamental oversight, which is why, as many Americans would probably agree, our American democracy still doesn’t feel like it works as well as a lot of people think it should.
The one fatal oversight everyone is making is the force of evolution—the origin of everyone’s feelings. Humans evolved in the wild for about 7,000,000 years. Then about 10,000 years ago, humans began developing agriculture. With the development of agriculture the first civilization was born, and humans left the original conditions of their evolution behind. Writing was also invented in that first center of civilization, but not until 5,000 years later. Over the course of those 5,000 years, the people of that first agricultural civilization completely forgot that their ancestors had evolved in the wild—because without writing they had no way of recording the fact. By the time they began recording their myths, legends, and history, they did so under the faulty assumption that agriculture was as old as the human race. (For one obvious example, according to the Bible the first humans lived in the “Garden of Eden” rather in than the “Wilderness of Eden”.) The people of the world’s first agricultural civilization were still motivated by 7,000,000 years of instincts that evolved in the wild. That meant that their natural feelings didn’t apply to life in civilization, but no one could figure out why!
That first agricultural civilization of the world has been the direct ancestor of every dominant civilization of the world for all of human history. It is the most direct ancestor of all Western civilization, including the United States. For all of recorded history, human behavior has seemed an unsolvable mystery. For all of recorded history, people of more-technologically advanced (agrarian) societies have also conquered people of less technologically advanced societies. The agrarian people have done so under the faulty assumption that the fact that they conquered the other people proved that they must be better people than the people they conquered. Since every human being on Earth is a member of the same species, for any group of people to be inherently superior to any other group of people is fundamentally impossible, simply because if such a difference existed, we wouldn’t all be the same species. But as the dominant civilizations of the world spread around the world, the people of those civilizations brought with them the faulty ideas that they were better people than everyone else, and that everyone should live like them— even though human behavior remained such an unsolvable mystery to them and their civilizations have never worked as well as they thought they should!
Now a lot of people of the Western world are determined to build one global economy and culture. The basic assumption these people seem to be making is that everyone in the world wants to live like Americans. A lot of people of the world like the way they live and find that the American way of life undermines their cultures. A lot of people feel that Americans don’t respect their cultures as much as they deserve. If they did, why would Americans be trying so hard to turn everyone else into Americans? This idea of cultural globalization is being carried out under the assumption that the American way of life is the best way for everyone to live, but a lot of people whose cultures are being replaced with the American way of life disagree. The world is also full of weapons of mass destruction. Does anyone see a problem here?
Obviously, the only way to build one sustainable global culture that everyone in the world can agree with and cooperate with, must be to construct it on a foundation that everyone on Earth is guaranteed to share. The one most fundamental thing that all humans are guaranteed to have in common is human evolution.
In order to turn human evolution into a foundation for a global civilization, that understanding of evolution would have to be reached through modern objective scientific methods. Science is the only approach to understanding the world that is equally measurable to people from all over the world, regardless of who they are or what they believe in. Science is the only approach to interpreting the world that depends exclusively on observable evidence and not at all on faith, beliefs, or opinions of any kind.
Humans all evolved as the same species because the same set of biological laws affected our ancestors equally for all of human evolution. All human behavior revolves around following those laws, and by now, that set of laws is written into our very DNA, because whoever didn’t feel like following those laws died out as a result. For the sake of understanding human behavior, that set of laws is a code to humanity. For the sake of building a peaceful, sustainable global civilization, that set of laws is a Constitution of the Human Race. Those laws don’t need to be enforced upon us by any governmental body, and they can’t be anyway, because they’re the laws that make us what we are in the first place.
The Code to Humanity was my original title for this book, and The Constitution of the Human Race was the second, but I’ve come to realize that what I’ve written is much more than that.
I dubbed this book The Third Testament© because with it I do for the dominant civilization of the world what Jesus isn’t here to do now— Namely, show how the people of every civilization in the world have already figured out the things he taught his own followers. Every civilization in the world that survives instead of destroying itself survives because its people establish: a code of behavior for individuals to live by to allow them to function as a society; ways for them to build healthy families and strong communities; some form of higher power for them to believe in; some way for them to survive their physical mortality; and a way to give their lives their own sense of purpose. The ancient tradition of establishing a common ideology that does all of these things is the only way a civilization can be united, which is why every group of people that has built a stable civilization figured these things out thousands of years ago, and every civilization that doesn’t have these things isn’t stable, because these are all things that people everywhere need to make their lives feel complete. Unfortunately, the world has changed so much since any ancient tradition was established that no one ancient tradition suits the needs of the global community of the 21st century. I ask you: If Jesus was here now, would he try to bring about Peace on Earth by telling nearly a billion and a half Muslims that Mohammed lied to them? Or would he do it by teaching his own followers that everyone has the ability to learn the things he taught them, even if they learned them from someone else?
By establishing similarities among ancient traditions, this book does all of the things I listed. It is based on evolutionary science, so (obviously) it doesn’t conflict with modern science, and it applies equally to every human being on Earth by definition. No person or group of people is excluded for any reason at all, and this book leaves everyone free to believe in any ancient traditions they want. It is a philosophy of religious stature, but it is purely scientific. It is not a religion in any conventional sense.
Is it sacrilegious of me to believe that I, a mortal human, could write a book that deserved to be called The Third Testament©? I don’t think so. There’s a story in the Bible I like, about a Christian whose wagon breaks an axle. This guy has been a very faithful, devout Christian, so he decides that he will sit by the side of the road and pray for his axle to be fixed. He sits there praying all day, but nothing happens. He starts getting frustrated with his god. That night, a good Samaritan comes along and asks the guy if he needs help.
“I don’t understand,” says the guy, “I’ve been a good Christian all my life, but I’ve sat here all day praying for my wagon to be fixed, and it hasn’t been.”
“Well,” says the Samaritan, “it seems to me that your god already gave you the hands and the intelligence you need to fix the wagon yourself.”
The way I see it, the fact that the world obviously needs a new set of rules in order to build a peaceful global civilization, and the fact that I have the resources and the ability to write that set of rules, make it my responsibility to do so. When I realized that such a responsibility had fallen upon me, I knew I couldn’t turn away from it.
One of my objectives is to send copies of this book to the leader of every country in the world, the governor of every state in America, every major religious leader in the world, and every United Nations ambassador. This book is the foundation for a culture that includes every human being on Earth by simple virtue of their membership in the Homo sapiens species. Globalization is upon us whether anyone wants it or not, and in the end we will all be one culture one way or another. By sending a copy of this book to every world leader, I give the ones who want to globalize a set of rules by which they can globalize peacefully, and for the ones who don’t want to globalize I give them what they need to preserve their own (and other people’s) cultures while being able to participate in the global community. By the time I’m done here, every world leader will have had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the contents of this book, and all the people of the world will be able to hold their leaders responsible for having done so.
Globalization will be carried out peacefully from now on. There will be no more need for anyone to try to fight it off, because there will be no excuse anymore for anyone to threaten anyone else’s culture in the first place. The ultimate goal of globalization is to build a global community—that is, a community the size of a planet in which people work together peacefully and cooperatively. Globalization has been carried out under traditional Western cultural and economic imperialism to this point, simply because it was the Western imperialists who had the resources and the infrastructures that were needed to begin the process. Unfortunately, those Western imperialists didn’t realize what they were getting themselves into until it was too late, and sure enough, this new politically correct Western conquest of the world has led us into a war. That doesn’t mean that a global community can’t be built, it just means that it can’t be built the way the people who started it thought it could. If a true global community is going to be built, where people cooperate instead of trying to conquer each other, it’s going to be built on what everyone in the community has in common already, and not on the continued misperception that one culture is better than all the others.
If you agree with what I’ve done here and how and why I’ve done it, feel free to send copies of this book to political, religious, and cultural leaders yourself, tell them about it, photocopy the cover of the book and send them that as an advertizement, tell bookstore owners about this book, donate copies of it to libraries, or whatever else you can think of. I can create the catalyst for world peace all by myself, but world peace will only happen by everyone in the world helping to make it happen. If you want to help make it happen, then a good place to start would be by letting your leaders know what you expect of them.
Just think about this for a moment: If only 1% of Americans who voted in the 2004 election ordered a copy of this book at my website, www.newbookforanewworld.org, and addressed it to George W. Bush, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, the U.S. postal service would deliver to him over a million copies of the same book! Think that would get anybody’s attention?
And then, what do you think he would do with a million copies of this book? Throw them away? Burn them? Gee, that would look awfully funny, wouldn’t it?
Of course, because this book is based purely on modern science and not on any religion, political leaders can be held responsible for reading this new set of rules for the world and following them, without crossing the line between church and state. If other people think they can beat that by shipping a million copies of the Bible to the White House, they’re welcome to try.
It is my ultimate objective to get this book translated into every language spoken on Earth, from French, German, Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, to Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Egyptian, and Farsi, to Finish, Dutch, Serbian, and Thai, to Spanish, Latvian, Khmer, Fijian, and Swahili, to Ebonics, Gaelic, Maori, and Aztec, to Navaho, Apache, Cherokee (in their own alphabet), Comanche, Cheyenne, Chinook, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Salish, Lakota, Arapaho, Shoshone, Kiowa, Ojibwa, Penobscot, Klamath, Yurok, Coos, O’Odham, Havasupai, Zuni, Mi’kmaq, Passamoquody, Potawatomi, Nez Perce, Aleut, Athabaskan, Tlingit, Eyak, Tsimshian, Central Yupik, Upper Kushkokwim, Gwich’in, Deg Hit’an… What are you looking at me like that for? Those are all languages spoken right here in America!
Seriously though, the content of this book is older than any language on Earth and belongs to everyone. If one peaceful global community is ever going to be built, don’t you think we should start by giving everyone their own copy of the blueprints?