After all, since we have recently become the agents of change on Earth, we must now begin playing an active role in the process of evolution. And I maintain that this active role must begin with a collectively recognized set of ethics or principles suited to the preservation of all humankind. Furthermore, like the evolutionary changes that in turn originated and developed particles, galaxies, stars, planets, biochemicals, lives, and cultures, transition toward the next step of globally conscious life forms is a universal phenomenon. All technological beings, on any planet, must evolve a planetary ethic, lest they be unprepared to endure the by-products of technoculture. In fact, implicit within our cosmic evolutionary paradigm is a transcendence of the Darwinian principle of natural selection, a loftier standard that I call the principle of cosmic selection: Those technological civilizations (of any type on any planet) that recognize the need for, develop in time, and fully embrace a global (even a galactic and then a cosmic) ethics will survive, and those that do not will not.
On the scale of natural history, the material-technological world we have created is a supra natural no-man’s-land of existence where many unexpected things can happen, including wholesale self annihilation. The biblical metaphor of expulsion from Paradise excellently grasps the situation. Paradise was the old animal existence in harmony with nature. Life in no-man’s-land is stressful because our prime directives are not made for it. The Psychiatrist Anthony Stevens speaks of a “Schiziod Wound” in us — the old and new brains have stopped working together in harmony. We have become “instinct confused”. Functional religions have always tried to heal that wound by discouraging “worldly” adventures in no-man’s-land and turning inward. But in our current state of being lost in no-man’s-land, functional religion has become rare.
