“Humans have entered a new stage of evolution” claims Stephen Hawking...

...and I agree wholeheartedly.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/stephen-hawking-the-planet-has-entered-a-new-phase-of-evolution.html

It is easy to look around into human society and to appreciate just how irrelevant a concept of physical evolution – differential mortality as caused by actual genetic traits leading to a genetic, and thus physical, drift in the human species. Our people have not changed in body since we became human over 100,000 years ago. (Despite the nonsensical dreams of the social Darwinists.)

Yet we would be very confused to assume that this irrelevance of physical evolution implies the irrelevance of the concept of evolution as such in our species. Nothing could be further from the truth, for there is nothing in this world that has evolved as quickly as our particular breed of hominids. And all on a different plane from that on which evolution usually applies -- the plane of thought. We are now the organism on which the fate of the planet rests. Have we not become the destroyer and creator of worlds? Time will tell which trait is dominant and which recessive.

Our evolution has been one of culture, thoughts, dispositions – it has been the mind and the interface between mind and body that has changed so very drastically both on the individual level and on the social level. We are a computer whose hardware has not changed but whose software is updated continuously – innovating new ways of connecting with each other and producing as well as consuming information. Innovation has been the name of the game since we abrupted onto the world of thought. This unfolding of a clearing of being at a deeper essence than the blank stare of brute physicality meant that recognition in language could take flight as a very real birdling – struggling to gain control of its clumsy wings at first, and later carving up the air with the slightest calibrations of its deft feathers. These feathers have reached the moon and back, spliced into the core of existence unleashing the power of the atom, formed gods of characters to captivate the mind and soul and raise goosebumps in lovers of Shakespeare.

Weapons, gossiping, scheming, love, hatred, leaders, tyrants and freedom fighters, thoughts of the sacred and metaphysical meanderings – all these things have built up a rich substance into which every human being is now born. A baby born to day is given the same physical limitations and capabilities than one born many thousands of years ago – yet it its thrown into an ether rich in information and in which cultivated crafts abound to harness talent and further its becoming. And this makes all the difference.

All these things matter tremendously in the success of this quest for overcoming that has marked the human journey. The trouble with this evolution in the landscape of though is that it can be as limiting as hostile elements to thoughtless creatures. Devolution is possible too – and this is the downside of the information game – it produces all the trash that holds us back. It produces despots and racists and weak liberals and people enraptured with shoes. It is riddled with bugs that serve no purpose and destroy our collective potential.

For nothing constrains us individuals anymore – except the persistence of wretched habits in human society. For the same faculties that have blessed us (and spawned a ridiculous population explosion over the last thousand years) might be what condemns us to a life wasted and a planet torn apart. We are locked into our suffering, and our pleasures are the seal. And if we rupture our climate, make war, overpopulate the planet to dust and ashes, it will only be due to the vices of our culture – all because we misinformed ourselves to death.

Thus, the critical faculty is crucial in our society as it is in each individual. But the relativistic stance that would insist that there is no such thing as progress, and that all different cultures and ways of doing things are different without seeking to find how to do things better, is an unfortunate enemy to all those who would try to correct the misconceptions of the day. Sadly, anthropology is a discipline which frequently adopts an extreme relativism in view of human progress.

The master of the critical stance, it is attractive and liberating because it lashed out against many of the dogmatic vices of dominant and provincial European culture. Thus it is more advanced in this respect than many of the dominant disciplines which still preach from a supremely world-denying solipsism (which is destroying the world and has been doing so for hundreds of years).

Anthropology is able to deftly point out the crucial contradiction in most dogmas of modernity. It shows how our social claim to universally is culturally contingent, and thus misleading. But like most things – the discipline does not go far enough. It disavows all progress in the name of cleverness, rather than harness the critical faculty to progress.
The point is to embrace the contradiction wholeheartedly (in deference to Hegel) and to realize that it is because and not in spite of its very cultural contingency that there is a real quality of the universal in our fabricated global order.

Of course – this language ceases to be language of the social sciences and crosses the line into philosophy. This is discipline which at its greatest never ceases to have faith in the power of truth to light the way. No discipline pursues pure revelation so systematically. And in an “overinformed” world, where information is incessant but transmits useless commercials rather than messages we should all receive, it is not surprising that the discipline has almost become irrelevant. There are no philosophers, merely scholars of old accomplishments.

But – being able to steer a world that is fast spinning out of control to a virtuous path will take much applied philosophy. Either we bring philosophy back, reflective thought with purpose, or we bail from the ship of life like rats from a sinking ship. Certainly the political transformation in the US is a step in the right direction. But there is a world of work to do still and lots of interests mindlessly committed to perpetuating ills due to their lack of appreciation for philosophy!