Critical mass.. – it is said that when enough individuals would make an evolutionary step, they would drag all the rest of the mankind up on the ladder.
For example there are speculations as of: “How many Buddhas would be required to live in the same time on the planet to force the world to make a spiritual evolution step?”
My thoughts are that this is unlikely to happen any time soon, because of a fact of life: survival. As long as so many people on this planet are striving for food, water, shelter, basic survival needs, the law of natural selection (Darwin) will favor the strongest, the merciless, the most egoistic individuals to survive and reproduce. Their genes will endure. Please hold this idea for a moment, as I need to point out something else for now, and I’ll come back to it shortly.
A spiritual master once said that he is the teacher of the wealthy. Why? Because the poor are so busy to fight for surviving, they have no time to think, feel, or exist for something else. It is true. When I had no job, no house, no money, almost no food, I had no time or mood for anything else than trying to secure these basic needs. It is said that emperors who had everything were not happy. That is because they realized that having all the world on your doorstep does not bring happiness, fulfillment – these are somewhere else. These are of a different nature.
So, back to the first idea, I think that only when all the basic needs of food, shelter, water, health care would be secured for the majority of the world’s population, there will be a chance for the human kind to advance beyond the law of the jungle: only the strongest, the most cunning, the most egoistic, crude, merciless – survives. People will have time and mood to think, to feel, to wonder what do they really need, who do they really are? Some other kind of genes will be allowed to pass Darwin’s evolutionary filter and move the world ahead.
It should be a worldwide step ahead – because history proved it can not be done only by part of the world’s population. When a civilization evolved culturally and spiritually, it became “weak” military and was conquered and distroyed by less evolved, “barbarian” populations.
Apparently the world is on a spiral to self suffocation, self saturation. Poverty increases the number of births, hence the world population; poverty favors bad and egoistic genes to survive and reproduce, and creates Jackals trying to monopolize the resources, which further increases poverty. Our civilization used space (the discovery of americas, australia, etc), resources, technology to increase the standard of living, to evolve.
Nowadays there is no more space to colonize on the planet; the resources are fast depleting; indeed, the technology advances but there is a small chance that this will be enough on itself – instead, it may be useful just for the auto-destruction of the civilization. We are changing the climate faster then ever in the planet’s history. The picture is not looking good – at least for me.
As someone said long ago (don’t remember his name) , the 3-rd millennium will be religious (I’d say spiritual) or it won’t be at all.
