object:1.04 - The Future of Man
book class:Let Me Explain
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter
4. The Future of Man
Above individual man, however, this involution is carried
further, in mankind, by the social phenomenon, at the
term of which can be discerned a higher critical point of
collective reflection. From this point of view 'hominiza-
tion' (including socialization) is a convergent pheno-
menon: in other words it displays an upper limit or point of
internal maturity.
i. socialization: formation of thb noosphere
The first thing to give us pause, as we survey the progress of
human collectivization, is what I would call the inexorable
nature of a phenomenon which arises directly and auto-
matically out of the conjunction of two factors, both of a
structural kind: first, the confined surface of the globe, and
secondly, the incessant multiplication, within this restricted
space, of human units endowed by ever improving means of
communication with a rapidly increasing scope for action;
to which may be added the fact that their advanced psychic
development makes them pre-eminendy capable of influ-
encing and inter-penetrating one another. Under the
combined effect of these two natural pressures a sort of
mass-concretion of mankind upon itself comes of necessity
into operation.
But, the second noteworthy point, this phenomenon of
solidifying, or cementing, turns out to be no sudden or
unpredictable event. Looking at the picture as a whole we
see that Life, from its lowest level, has never been able to
effect its syntheses except through the progressively closer
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Let Me Explain
association of its elements, whether in the oceans or on land.
Upon an imaginary earth of constantly increasing extent,
living organisms, being only loosely associated, might well
have remained at the monocellular stage (if indeed they had
ever got so far); and certainly man, if free to live in a scat-
tered state, would never have reached even the neolithic
stage of social development. The totalization in progress
in the modern world is in fact nothing but the natural cli-
max and paroxysm of a process of grouping which is
fundamental to the elaboration of organized matter. Matter
does not vitalize or super-vitalize itself except by compres-
sion.
I do not think it is possible to reflect upon this twofold in-
rooting, both structural and evolutionary, which charac-
terizes the social events affecting us, without being at first
led to the surmise, and finally overwhelmed by the evidence,
that the collectivization of the human race, at present ac-
celerated, is nothing other than a higher form adopted by
the process of moleculization on the surface of our planet.
The first phase was the formation of proteins up to the stage
of the cell. In the second phase individual cellular complexes
were formed, up to and including man. We are now at the
beginning of a third phase, the formation of an organico-
social super-complex, which, as may easily be demonstrated,
can only occur in the case of reflective, personalized elements.
First the vitalization of matter, associated with the grouping
of molecules; then the hominization of Life, associated
with a super-grouping of cells; and finally the planetization
of Mankind, associated with a closed grouping of people:
Mankind, born on this planet and spread over its entire sur-
face, coming gradually to form around its earthly matrix a
single, major organic unity, enclosed upon itself; a single,
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Phenomenology
hyper-complex, hyper-centred, hyper-conscious arch-mole-
cule, co-extensive with the heavenly body on which it was
born. Is not this what is happening at the present time - the
closing of this spherical, thinking circuit? (F.M., pp. 114-15.)
-the growth, outside and above the biosphere, of an added
planetary layer, an envelope of thinking substance, to which,
for the sake of convenience and symmetry, I have given the
name of Noosphere. (F.M., p. 157.)
II. the noosphere: verification of a hypothesis
Clearly this is a matter in which I cannot compel your as-
sent. But I can assure you, of my own experience, that the
acceptance of this organic and realistic view of the social
phenomenon is both eminently satisfying to our reason and
fortifying to our will. (Coherence and fmitfuhess.)
a. Satisfying to the intelligence above all For if it be true that
at this moment mankind is embarking upon what I have called
its 'phase of planetization, then everything is clarified,
everything in our field of vision acquires a new sharpness of
outline.
The tightening network of economic and psychic bonds
in which we live and from which we suffer, the growing
compulsion to act, to produce, to think collectively which so
disquiets us - what do they become, seen in this way, except
the first portents of the super-organism which, woven of the
threads of individual men, is preparing (theory and fact are
at one on this point) not to mechanize and submerge us, but
to raise us, by way of increasing complexity, to a higher
awareness of our own personality?
The increasing degree, intangible, and too little noted, in
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Let Me Explain
which present-day thought and activity are influenced by
the passion for discovery; the progressive replacement of the
workshop by the laboratory, of production by research, of
the desire for well-being by the desire for more-being - what
do these things betoken if not the growth in our souls of a
great impulse towards super-evolution?
The profound cleavage in every kind of social group
(families, countries, professions, creeds) which during the
past century has become manifest in the form of two in-
creasingly distinct and irreconcilable human types, those who
believe in progress and those who do not - what does this
portend except the separation and birth of a new stratum in
the biosphere?
b. Sustenance and reassurance for our power of will. Through
the centuries life has become an increasingly heavy burden
for Man the Species, just as it does for Man the Individual as
the years pass. The modern world, with its prodigious growth
of complexity, weighs incomparably more heavily upon
the shoulders of our generation than did the ancient world
upon the shoulders of our forebears. Have you never felt
that this added load needs to be compensated for by an added
passion, a new sense of purpose? To my mind, this is what is
'providentially' arising to sustain our courage - the hope, the
belief that some immense fulfilment lies ahead of us.
If mankind were destined to achieve its apotheosis, if
Evolution were to reach its highest point in our small separ-
ate lives, then indeed the enormous travail of terrestrial or-
ganization into which we are born would be no more than a
tragic irrelevance. We should all be dupes. We should do
better in that case to stop, to call a halt, destroy the machines,
close the laboratories, and seek whatever way of escape we
can find in pure pleasure or pure nirvana.
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Phenomenology
But if on the contrary man sees a new door opening above
him, a new stage for his development; if each of us can be-
lieve that he is working so that the Universe may be raised,
in him and through him, to a higher level - then a new
spring of energy will well forth in the heart of Earth's work-
ers. The whole great human organism, overcoming a mo-
mentary hesitation, will draw its breath and press on with
strength renewed.
Indeed, the idea, the hope of the planetization of life is
very much more than a mere matter of biological specula-
tion. It is more of a necessity for our age than the discovery,
which we so ardently pursue, of new sources of energy. It is
this idea which can and must bring us the spiritual fire with-
out which all material fires, so laboriously lighted, will
presendy die down on the surface of the thinking earth: the
fire inspiring us with the joy of action and the zest for life.
(F.M., pp. 116-18.)
III. THE CONVERGENCE OF THE UNIVERSE
It now seems difficult to deny that mankind, after having
gradually covered the Earth with a living web of a loose
social organization, is now in process of concentrating upon
itself (racially, economically, and intellectually) at a continu-
ally more rapid pace. The first thing we have to do when we
try to explain this process, is to realize that the world of man
is being irresistibly forced to form one single whole. It is
converging upon itself. (A.E. (Oeuvres VH), p. 335.)
Far from appearing to be slowing up or reaching its ceil-
ing around us, this biological movement of pan-human con-
vergence has simply been entering (for the last century) into
a compressive phase, in which it is bound to accelerate from
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Let Me Explain
now on. It is conceivable that certain abnormal individuals
will exercise their liberty of refusal and break free (to their
loss) from this aspiration of the Evolutionary vortex'. But
such evasions can only be viewed as a loss. In fact, on the
scale of the species, the process of totalization cannot, by its
nature, be brought to a halt, linked as it appears to be to two
cosmic curves on which our will has no effect: on the one
hand, the geometrical curvature of a planet which, relative
to our number and radius of action, continues rapidly to
contract; and on the other, the psychic curvature of a collec-
tive thinking that no force in the world could prevent from
concentrating on itself. (A.M., pp. 245-6.)
Nobody, I repeat, can contest this convergence, because
everybody is subject to it. On the other hand we have the odd
fact that nobody seems to notice it (except to regret it), and
nobody seems to suspect that, underlying the complex of
historical accidents into which this event may be reduced by
analysis, a certain 'force' is undoubtedly at work, as primor-
dial, and as generalized as nuclear forces or gravity, but one
that reveals perhaps even more clearly the physical nature of
the Universe. (A.E. (Oeuvres VII), pp. 335-6.)
We commonly think and speak now of : an explosive
Universe', and when we do so we know very well that we
are not leaving the domain of fact and experience.
Surely, however, we may well, and with even more
justification, speak of *a Universe that, as a result of an org-
anic arrangement that is continually carried further, is
psychically concentrating and reflecting upon itself? (Ibid.,
p. 295.)
There is something more to be seen now in the Universe
than the heartbreaking work of entropy, which inexorably
reduces all things to the most elementary and stable forms.
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Phenomenology
Emerging through and above this rain of ashes, there is a
sort of cosmic vortex within which the stuffof the world, by
a selective use of chance, twists and folds upon itself ever
more closely, in more complex and more highly centred
forms of association.
We see a world that is balanced upon instability, because
it is in constant motion: and a world whose dynamic consis-
tence increases in direct ratio with the complexity of its
arrangements, because it is converging upon itself, at as
many sidereal points as there have been, as there are, and as
there ever will be, thinking planets. (Ibid. p. 303.)
'Structurally and notwithstanding any impression or ap-
pearance to the contrary, man is at present engaged in a
process within which (by the very use of his liberty, that is to
say in order to survive and attain 'super-life') he is compelled
(at least statistically) to an ever-increasing biological self-
unification. Therefore, right in front of us in time, a peak
of hominization must necessarily exist - a peak which, to
judge by the enormous quantity of unarranged humanity still
all around us, must certainly lie very far above us in conscious-
ness, if not so far from us in time as we might at first be
tempted to suppose.' (A.M., p. 246.)
IV. THE FINAL EMERGENCE: OMEGA POINT
When we try to examine scientifically what sort of. end
awaits mankind on earth, I would rather there were less talk of
catastrophe (that is a gratuitous and lazy hypothesis), or de-
cay (for we have no reason to believe that the Noosphere
may not be immune from the ravages of old age - the evi-
dence is very much the other way) or of astronautic emigra-
tion (an escape that is astronomically improbable). On the
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Let Me Explain
contrary, we should, I think, look at the problem both more
closely and more deeply and then make up our minds to
draw the final consequences from this essential fact: that
Noogenesis (which is what Anthropogenesis essentially
amounts to) is a convergent phenomenon. In other words it is,
by its nature, directed towards an ending and a completion
that is internal in origin. And here I can only repeat, pushing
its conclusions as far as they can be taken, what has been the
constant theme running through what I have already said.
If it is true, as I hope I have shown, that the human social
phenomenon is simply the higher form assumed on Earth
by the involution of the cosmic stuff upon itself, then we
must accept something for which the road has been prepared
by the emergence (already adumbrated in the sciences) of a
Weltanschauung common to the consciousness of all man-
kind. By that I mean that we must recognize the rapidly in-
creasing probability that we are approaching a critical point
of maturity, at which man, now completely reflecting upon
himself not only individually but collectively, will have
reached, along the complexity-axis (and this with the full
force of his spiritual impact) the extreme limit of the world.
And it is then, if we wish to attribute a significant direction
to our experience and see where it leads, that it seems we are
obliged to envisage in that direction, finally to round off the
phenomenon, the ultimate emergence of thought on earth
into what I have called Omega Point. {Comment je vois,
para. 19.)
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