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You
are here: The 2020 Challenge:
Evolutionary Bounce or Evolutionary Crash?A Working-Draft Report to the Campaign 2020 Initiative
*This report was developed as part of a "Campaign 2020 Project" that was hosted by Union Theological Seminary with leadership from recent past president, Dr. Holland L. Hendrix and consultant Deborah Stern. I want to acknowledge the skillful and meticulous editing of this report by Deborah Gouge. As well, I want to acknowledge the important contributions made by the two dozen reviewers of this report who are listed in the appendix.
by Duane Elgin
Table of Contents
Summary
1. Humanity's Evolutionary Journey
2. Humanity's Initiation: An Evolutionary Wall
3. Adversity Trends
- Global Climate Change
- World Population Growth
- Mass Extinction of Species
- Depletion of Natural Resources
- Poverty and Diminished Opportunity
- A Global Challenge
4. Factors Transforming Adversity into Opportunity
- A New Perceptual Paradigm
- The Global Communications Revolution
- Choosing to Live Sustainably
- Reconciliation and Transformation of Human Relations
- A Global Opportunity
5. Initiation: The Coming Evolutionary Inflection
6. Two Scenarios: An Evolutionary Crash or Bounce
- Scenario for an Evolutionary Crash
- The Story of Easter Island
- Scenario for an Evolutionary Bounce
- The Story of the Village of Gaviotas
7. A Menu for Making a Difference
- Small Group Conversations
- Mass Communication and Consensus Building
- Business and Sustainability
- Personal Actions
- Whole-Systems Innovation
8. Conclusion
9. Appendix: Reviewers
10. References
11. Appendix: About the Author
- The human family has been on a long journey, working toward our early adulthood. Metaphorically, we seem to be in our teenage years as a species and on the verge of a new stage of maturity as we become a planetary civilization.
- Two sets of trends and forces are considered in this report. The first set is called "adversity trends" because they present unyielding challenges to further growth along historical lines (for example, global climate change). The other set can be called "transforming factors" as they present humanity with extraordinary opportunities for development along new lines (for example, the global communications revolution).
- Many of these driving trends seem to reach critical thresholds in the decade of the 2020s. Difficulties that may seem relatively isolated until then (such as climate change, world population growth, species extinction, water shortages, and poverty) seem likely to coalesce into a tight and unyielding web -- a whole-system crisis.
- Reaching the stage of an environmental, social, and spiritual crisis -- hitting an "evolutionary wall" -- does not represent an evolutionary failure as it is a result of our great success. Failure or success will hinge upon the choices we make on reaching this turning point in human evolution.
- An evolutionary wall presents humanity with an identity crisis at least as great as our ecological crisis: Who are we as a species? What is our larger story? What is the relationship we want with one another and with the larger web of life?
- Changes at every level are needed for us to realize an evolutionary leap forward -- such as sustainable patterns of consumption at the individual level; new types of housing and community at the neighborhood level; new policies with regard to energy, the environment, and education at the national level; and new partnerships among people from the local to the global level.
© Copyright 1999, Duane Elgin
duane@awakeningearth.organd © by Campaign 2020 Initiative
Hosted by the Union Theological Seminary
Co-founders: Holland L. Hendrix, PhD and Deborah E. Stern
515 Madison Avenue Suite 725
New York, NY 10022
Posted with permission of Duane Elgin
by New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org
E-mail: info@newhorizons.org