How can we use Teilhard’s ‘lens’ to help us to recognize an ‘axis’ in our evolution?

This Week

   Last week we took a first look at how, despite all the discontinuities that can be seen in our ever-unfolding understanding of the universe, whatever universal process that is at work must, by definition,  be active in all components of the universe.  More importantly, by the same definition it must be active in ourselves.

This week we will take a second look at how Teilhard traces this process through the expansion and compression phases of human history.

‘Compression’ in Human Evolution

Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ permits us to see human evolution as powered by the same energy by which the universe has increased its complexity over time.  He begins by stepping back and observing human history through his ‘lens’.

First, a simple look at the history of humans on our planet shows that a key aspect of human evolution has been expansion into every possible nook and cranny of the biosphere.  In Teilhard’s geometric metaphor of the development of human society, humanity starts out from the southern pole of an imaginary sphere, and ramifies into many threads: races, tribes, and nations.  In its expansion northward, it spreads into an ever-increasing space. Because of this it is possible for many centuries for one arm of ramification to remain unaware of the others.

 Second, it is obvious from this simple graphic that as humans reproduce and expand, eventually the threads will reach the midpoint, the ‘equator’ of Teilhard’s imaginary sphere.  As it does the threads begin to converge and hence encounter each other.  When we eventually expand into space occupied by others, we cross the imaginary equator where expansion begins to give way to compression and hence from divergence to convergence.

As is obvious from history, crossing this equator causes the emergence of new tactics of contact, conflict, and conquest.  To this day, many believe that the dire consequences of these tactics are simply an unwanted but inevitable consequence of population increase.

However, as seen in the ‘Axial Age’, (800 BC, early in this new compression stage), new paradigms of cultural evolution begin to emerge.  Karen Armstrong, in her book, “The Great Transformation”, sees civilizations across the globe beginning to rethink “what it means to be human”, and, more importantly, “what it means to be a person among persons”.

The Roman adaptation of Christianity by Constantine was an example of this shift.  While certainly less religious than political, it nonetheless reflected the same rethinking.  As Bart Ehrman explains in his book, “How Jesus Became God”, Constantine saw the integrative potential of Christianity as a political tactic for ensuring the smooth assimilation of the new Northern European Celts and Franks as they were incorporated into his empire.  While not abandoning the ‘compression’ tactics of contact, conflict, conquest, and subjugation, Rome was beginning to adopt tactics which would add a cultural level of assimilation and accommodation.

Third, that this new paradigm was slow to take hold is obvious, considering the ensuing two thousand or so years of human conflict, particularly in the West, frequently among those espousing the new religion.  The success of the new tactic, however, could be seen in the emergence of the new paradigm of democracy, underpinned by the belief in human equality first envisaged in the Axial Age.

In these three millennia of world history, we can see the ‘crossing of the equator’ and the gradual transition from ‘expansion’ to ‘compression’.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens, this transition from one to the other also maps the evolution of human relationships from ones in which the individual is reduced by this compression to one in which the individual can potentially become enriched by it.

This is truly an astounding paradigm shift, first asserted by Confucius in the Axial Age, and a tactic necessary for human survival as it compresses itself:

“Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.”

“In order to enlarge oneself, one should try to enlarge others”.

   These simple adages are not only reflected in nearly every religion, but they also offer the earliest use of self-reference as essential for understanding the nature of human co-existence.

Teilhard recognizes that as humanity enters the compression stage, the historical relationship between conquerors and conquered, common in the early compression stage, will no longer satisfy the need to continue evolution. The paradigm of ‘enrichment of the conqueror by diminishment of the conquered’ must give way to a different paradigm if the universal rise of complexity is to continue by the enrichment of the human person so essential to the survival of the species.

An approach more in line with Confucius than with Caesar is required.  Teilhard suggests that the tactic required is one which can unite human persons in a way in which increases their potential. In his words

“The human mass on the restricted surface of the earth, after a period of expansion covering all historic time, is now entering (following an abrupt but not accidental acceleration of his rate of reproduction) a phase of compression which we may seek to control but which there are no grounds for supposing will ever be reversed.  What is the automatic reaction of human society to this process of compression?  Experience supplies the answer (which theory can easily explain) – it organizes itself.  To adapt themselves to, and in some sort to escape from, the planetary grip which forces them ever closer together, individuals find themselves compelled (eventually they require a taste for it) to arrange their communal lives more adroitly; first in order to preserve, and later to increase their freedom of action.”

To him, the ‘external’ force of compression must be met by an ‘internal’ force which uses this compression to effect their fuller being; the emergence of a ‘pull’ to counter the ‘push’.  As he puts it in “The Phenomenon of Man”

“Fuller being is closer union.”

Next Week

This week we saw Teilhard’s insights into the historical spread of humanity from an ‘expansion’ stage to one of ‘compression’, and how this introduced yet a new danger to human evolution that would require humans to develop new modes of relationships to overcome.

Next week we will look at how the dangers of the compression phase of human history can be not only mitigated but forged into new modes of evolution.