A Short Course in Comprehensive Thinking – Part 34 – Human Nature, the Human Condition, and the Human Potential

They are different concepts, and humanity may be on the brink of realizing a great deal of its potential.

Human nature, the human condition, and the human potential are different concepts. Human nature is rooted in our journey as social animals and primates. When our ancestors became bipedal, it led to a series of evolutionary changes, and it began changing dramatically with the rise of tools around three million years ago. The human line’s brain grew immensely, and Homo sapiens arrived on the evolutionary scene around 300,000 years ago. Human nature has changed very little since humans became behaviorally modern. Our innate intelligence has changed little, if at all, since then, and we are physically less robust, with our softer lives.

The past 60,000 years or so have largely seen changes in the human condition, as humanity conquered Earth and settled it. The human condition changed dramatically with the rise of sedentary living, which largely came about through plant domestication. Sedentary humans formed communities that were not feasible with a nomadic existence. In several places on Earth, after several thousand years of farming, civilizations arose, which comprised another dramatic leap in the human condition, at least for professionals and elites, which were new social roles. In ways, humanity began reaching new levels of its potential.

After several thousand years of civilization, Europeans turned the world’s ocean into a low-energy transportation lane and thereby conquered humanity, which was a demographic catastrophe for the conquered peoples. In the middle of that conquest, England industrialized on the power of coal. The biggest event in the human journey so far has been the elimination of childhood death. From gorillas through agrarian civilizations, half of all offspring died before adulthood. The elimination of childhood death was a side effect of industrialization, with improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and hygiene.

I have divided the human journey into four Epochs, and each was founded on its energy practices. Until now, nobody ever saw the new Epoch coming, and nothing has changed the human condition as dramatically as industrialization has. The human potential also began to be realized with industrialization in new ways.

Not only was childhood death eliminated, but hunter-gatherers and agrarian peoples suffered daily rigors, privations, and brutalities that industrialized peoples can scarcely imagine. Scientists have learned that children raised in adversity have brains that are damaged for life.

I learned during my unbelievable journey that energy technologies that are older than I am can usher in a new Epoch of the human journey, which I call the Fifth Epoch. Just as the average American is richer than Europe’s richest man of three centuries ago, the average person in the Fifth Epoch will be richer than Earth’s richest human today. Fourth Epoch societies are far less violent and far more humane than in prior Epochs. The arrival of the Fifth Epoch will take those trends into trajectories that are scarcely imaginable today.

Not only will the human condition change in the Fifth Epoch in ways that are hard to believe, nurture can become nature. No child will be raised in adversity in the Fifth Epoch, just as few children die in the Fourth Epoch. I suspect that we will see a new kind of human in the Fifth Epoch, as abundance and love reign instead of the scarcity and fear that have dominated the human journey so far, but they are far more muted features in industrial societies.

In the Fifth Epoch, the human potential will begin to be realized in ways that few people today can even imagine. Enlightenment formerly reserved for spiritual masters will be humanity’s normal state. Everybody will live to be at least 100 and will be healthy the entire way, and nobody will have to work to make a living. Humans will also live in harmony with nature in ways that few can imagine today. Those are only some of the easily foreseen changes that will come with the arrival of the Fifth Epoch. But without that new energy foundation, it can’t happen. Helping those changes come to pass is what my life’s work is all about.