An Evolutionary Crash and Bounce by Duane Elgin

6. Two Scenarios: An Evolutionary Crash and Bounce
There are innumerable pathways into the future, but all include the simple reality that humanity is currently on a collision course with nature -- and with our own human nature. Ultimately, we have a simple choice: to either pull together and cooperate, or to pull apart and compete. To pull together implies that we are on a shared journey, and that we have a common story and a common purpose. To pull together means that our social and cultural fabric is resilient, flexible, and able to stretch a considerable ways without tearing. If we pull together, we can conserve the evolutionary momentum of the past and use it to carry us into a promising future. If, instead of pulling together, we struggle and separate -- rich against poor, men against women, black against white -- we may do lasting harm to the fabric of human connection, and veer off on an evolutionary detour. To explore these two futures, I will present a brief scenario and a true story that illustrates each -- the story of Easter Island, and the story of the village of Gaviotas, Colombia.
Scenario for an Evolutionary Crash
Given the combined impact of continued population growth, dwindling supplies of cheap oil, and global climate change, it is not difficult to imagine an evolutionary crash. Such a crash would mean that we were not able to manifest the factors that were described earlier as having the potential to transform adversity into opportunity. How might such a future look?

Worldview -- Our worldview continues unchanged and assumes that we inhabit a material universe that is governed by blind chance and physical laws, that is lifeless at its foundations, and that is empty of larger purpose and meaning. The assumption of a lifeless cosmos without deeper meaning continues to promote an ethic of exploitation and short-term thinking.

Communications Media -- The mass media, including the internet, continue to be dominated by commercial interests and are used to promote a high- consumption culture that is accessible to only the wealthiest 20 percent of the world. The mainstream media marginalize and trivialize other perspectives, slowing down cultural innovation and social responses to growing challenges.

Vision of the "Good Life" -- Consumerism continues to flourish as people view the "good life" as having enough money for life's pleasures and to insulate us from discomfort. Voluntary changes toward simpler ways of living are too little and too late to make a significant difference.

Human Relations -- With no overarching sense of common purpose to draw us together, people separate into diverse subgroups, all intent on their own security and survival. Instead of healing, conflict and fragmentation grow.

When these transforming factors are weak and the adverse driving trends are strong, the potential for a devastating evolutionary crash is great. For example, with these assumptions, it is plausible to imagine a global scenario where climate change diminishes our ability to feed a growing world population, which increases international tensions, which makes it more difficult to reduce world military expenditures, which diverts resources from coping with poverty, which promotes industrialization without adequate attention to the environment, which exacerbates the problems of air and water pollution, which leads to a further deterioration in global climate, which further intensifies the challenge of supporting a growing world population, and so on.
Without a shared vision and common purpose, there will be no center to hold us together should we encounter the fierce conditions that may await us -- resource wars, civil unrest, cultural chaos, political turbulence, and economic breakdown. Like a rubber band stretched beyond its limits, we could break apart into competing subgroups. We would then veer off into a survivalist future characterized by chronic conflict and behavior destructive to our higher evolutionary potentials.
This crumbling world would be displayed across the planet on high-definition TV integrated into a hyper-intelligent computer system with instantaneous translation capabilities. Many people will have a vivid, interactive window onto the suffering of the rest of the world. The end result could be a true evolutionary crash that irretrievably mutilates the biosphere as well as the human culture and psyche -- forever disfiguring our evolutionary future. That such a fate is possible is made vividly real by the story of Easter Island.
The Story of Easter Island
The human experience on Easter Island provides a stunning example of both an ecological and an evolutionary crash. Only 150 square miles in area, it is located in one of the most remote places on Earth -- in the Pacific Ocean, roughly 2,000 miles off the coast of South America. The first Europeans to visit the island were the crew of a Dutch ship that arrived on Easter Sunday in 1722 -- hence the name Easter Island. They found a primitive society of approximately 3,000 people, living in wretched reed huts and caves, engaged in almost perpetual warfare, and resorting to cannibalism in a desperate attempt to supplement the meager food supplies available on the treeless island. 106 What was most amazing to the Dutch, the island was covered with more than 600 massive stone statues, each averaging more than 20 feet in height, which indicated that an advanced society had once flourished on Easter Island. To the Europeans, the primitive, barbaric, and poverty-stricken people of the island did not seem capable of the complex tasks of carving, transporting, and erecting so many statues. The story of Easter Island's decline is a chilling warning regarding the consequences of irreversibly damaging the environment.
Archeological evidence reveals that when Easter Island was first settled by a few dozen Polynesian colonists in approximately 500 A.D., it had a mild climate and volcanic soil, was covered by forests, and was filled with animal and plant life (although there were relatively few species, given the remoteness of the island). Among the foods that the settlers brought with them, yams and chickens were particularly suited to the climate and soil. As the islanders prospered, their numbers grew to an estimated 7,000, when the population peaked in 1550. 107
Because food production was so easy, the islanders had abundant free time to devote to elaborate rituals and statue building. Over a thousand years, they developed one of the most advanced and complex societies in the world, despite their limited resources and technologies. 108 From early on, however, they used the resources of the island beyond its regenerative capacity. Archeological evidence shows that the destruction of the island's forests was well underway by the year 800 -- only 300 years after settlers first arrived. By the 1500s, the forests and palm trees had disappeared as people cleared land for agriculture, and used the surviving trees to build oceangoing canoes, burn as firewood, build homes, and transport statues. At the end, the remaining forests disappeared quickly, as the islanders apparently used logs to transport statues in a competitive rivalry between the clans to see who could build the most. The loss of the tree cover increased soil erosion and reduced soil quality -- and both factors reduced crop yields.
The ecological destruction was not confined to the forests. Jared Diamond, professor of medicine at UCLA, describes how the animal life was also eradicated:
The destruction of the island's animals was as extreme as that of the forests: without exception, every species of native land bird became extinct. Even shellfish were over exploited, until people had to settle for small sea snails. . . . Porpoise bones disappeared abruptly from the garbage heaps around 1500; no one could harpoon porpoises anymore, since the trees used for constructing the big seagoing canoes no longer existed. . . . 109

By the mid 1500s, the biosphere was so devastated that it was beyond short-term recovery. With the forests gone, ocean fishing was impossible without trees to build boats. With animals hunted to extinction, the people turned on one another. Centralized authority broke down, and the island descended into chaos, with rival clans living in caves and competing with one another for survival. Eventually, according to Diamond, the islanders "turned to the largest remaining meat source available: humans, whose bones became common in late Easter Island garbage heaps. Oral traditions of the islanders are rife with cannibalism." 110 By 1700, the population had crashed to between one-quarter and one-tenth of its former level. Here is how author Clive Ponting summarizes the rise and fall of this civilization:
Against great odds the islanders painstakingly constructed, over many centuries, one of the most advanced societies of its type in the world. For a thousand years they sustained a way of life in accordance with an elaborate set of social and religious customs that enabled them not only to survive but to flourish. . . . But in the end the increasing numbers and cultural ambitions of the islanders proved too great for the limited resources available to them. When the environment was ruined by the pressure, the society very quickly collapsed with it leading to a state of near barbarism.

Professor Diamond concludes that the parallels between Easter Island and the Earth are strong. "Easter Island is Earth writ small. Today, again, a rising population confronts shrinking resources. . . . we can no more escape into space than the Easter Islanders could flee into the ocean." 111 As Easter Island reveals, we humans have already demonstrated our ability, on a small scale, to descend from greatness into collective madness and to devastate an entire biosphere and culture irreparably.
Scenario of an Evolutionary Bounce
While it is easy to see the possibility of an evolutionary crash, it is more difficult to imagine an evolutionary bounce. A bounce would mean that we were able to transform adversity into opportunity by bringing forth the contextual factors described earlier (or others similar to them). Let us examine how the world might look if humanity does bring forth these factors.

Worldview -- A new common sense is emerging in the world, supported by insights from both science and spirituality. The universe is seen as a living system of elegant design that seems intent on providing a context of great freedom and opportunity for human learning, both personal and cultural. In viewing ourselves as inhabitants of a living system, we develop a sacred view of the cosmos and an ethic of stewardship, reverence, and long-term thinking.

Communications Media -- The mass media, including the internet, are highly democratized and used to promote a culture of high satisfaction and sustainability that appeals to the world's masses. The media are a platform on which many perspectives are explored, energizing cultural innovation and social inventions.

Vision of the "Good Life" -- Increasingly, people view the "good life" as a balanced life that includes meaningful relationships, work that contributes to others, time with family, and opportunities for learning and creative expression. Voluntary changes toward simpler, less consumer-oriented ways of living are having a powerful influence on the course and composition of the economy, inclining it toward sustainability.

Human Relations -- The healing of human relations becomes a major global project. We are overcoming our deep sense of separation -- from one another, the Earth, and the universe. With cultural healing, the human family begins to move beyond chronic ethnic conflict, racial oppression, economic inequity, gender discrimination, and the other barriers that divide us. With healing, pent-up human energy is released into building a sustainable future.

When these factors are strong, there is less potential for an evolutionary crash, and commensurately greater prospects for an evolutionary bounce. It is plausible to imagine a global scenario such as this: sudden climate shifts serve as a wake-up call for humanity and lead to intense communication and visioning for a sustainable future, which produces a new set of global priorities, which results in a shift in expenditures from the military to sustainable energy and agriculture, which increases our ability to feed ourselves as our population moves toward stability, which decreases international tensions and makes further resources available for environmental restoration, which further transforms the psychology of consumerism in developed nations, which fosters a path of mutually assured development for all people.
What might it feel like to live in such a future? One possibility is that cities will become much more intensively developed, each transformed into scores of decentralized micro-communities roughly the size of a city block. A suburban block could be transformed into an "eco-village," with an aesthetic and organic clustering of buildings, gardens, and areas for living and working. Because the populations of micro-communities and eco-villages could approximate the scale of a tribe (with 500 or so people), this design for living could, for many, feel very comfortable. By using architecture sensitive to the psychology of these modern tribes, a new sense of community could begin to replace the alienation of today's massive cities.
Several areas could be common to all micro-communities and eco-villages: a community garden for local food production, solar collectors or some other source of energy production, an efficient system of recycling and waste disposal, and a telecommuting center. Each of these communities would be nested within a larger neighborhood, which would have an elementary school and grocery store within walking distance. Each eco-village might specialize in a particular area -- such as crafts, health care, child care, gardening, education, or publishing -- providing fulfilling work for many of its inhabitants. People could do work to earn time-share hours that could be bartered for the products or services of neighbors -- such as gardening, food, music lessons, carpentry, or plumbing. People could balance their work between serving their local community and serving the world.
We could achieve sustainability by designing our neighborhoods and regions so that each is uniquely adapted to its particular culture, economy, and environment. These micro-communities could offer the feeling and cohesiveness of a small town within the sophistication of a big city. Eco-villages could become cohesive building blocks of security and sustainability within the global society.
With life being transformed at the local level as well as on a global scale, we could achieve a soaring evolutionary bounce that affirms the human psyche and soul and launches humanity on our evolutionary journey. The story of Gaviotas is evidence that we can create such a future.
The Story of Gaviotas
A striking example of an evolutionary bounce is the village of Gaviotas, located on the grassy plains of eastern Colombia in South America. Established in the midst of a vast, desolate plain, where nothing but a few nutrient-poor grasses grow, it is surely one of our planet's least desirable areas to live. Paolo Lugari, who founded the village in 1971, explained why the villagers chose this site: "They always put social experiments in the easiest, most fertile places. We wanted the hardest place. We figured if we could do it here [in the most resource-starved region in the country], we could do it anywhere." 112 When people told him that the area was "just a big, wet desert," he would reply, "The only deserts are deserts of the imagination." 113 In the space of a single generation -- roughly 30 years -- Gaviotans have created a sustainable economy, nurturing community, and flourishing ecosystem.
In the early 1970s, Lugari brought scientists, engineers, doctors, university students, and others to this remote and inhospitable site to explore how it could be transformed into a thriving community. They produced a dazzling array of low-cost but highly efficient technologies. For example, to pump water, they created a lightweight windmill whose blades are contoured, like the wings of an airplane, so they can trap the soft breezes of the equator. They attached highly efficient water pumps to seesaws so that when children were playing, they were simultaneously pumping water for the community. Solar water heaters were invented that could catch the diffuse energy of the sun even on the many cloudy days. Underground ducts were placed in hillsides to provide natural air-conditioning for their hospital. Photovoltaic cells on rooftops provide electricity. Some food is grown in hydroponic gardens.
The transformation of the local ecosystem has been as remarkable as the development of innovative technologies. Since the early 1980s, the Gaviotans have planted roughly two million Caribbean pine trees, the only tree that would grow in the nearly toxic soil. This created more than 20,000 acres of forest. From the trees, the villagers harvest and sell pine resin, which is used in the manufacture of paint, turpentine, and paper. This provides a source of income for the community. The pine forest has brought fresh nutrients to the soil, cooled the ground, slowed the wind, and raised the humidity. 114 In turn, these changes have allowed dormant seeds of native trees to sprout and grow. The sheltering pine trees are enabling a diverse, indigenous forest to regenerate itself with surprising speed. As a result, the local populations of deer, anteater, and other animals are growing. The Gaviotans have decided to allow the indigenous forest to overtake and choke out the pine forest over the next century, enabling the area to return to its original state as an extension of the Amazon.
The Gaviotans have been equally inventive socially. 115 Everyone earns the same salary, which is above minimum wage. Many of the basics of life are free, including housing, health care, food, and schooling for the children. With no poverty, there has been no need for police or a jail. Government is by consensus and unwritten rules of common sense. Dogs, pesticides, and guns are not allowed. Alcohol use is confined to homes. Loafers are not tolerated. The harvest from this community of social invention is a village where people exude happiness. The people of Gaviotas have the confidence of a sustainable future, a strong community, meaningful work, and a peaceful life. 116
As the village grows, its creator envisions new satellite villages. "I see enclaves of maybe twenty families, little satellites surrounding Gaviotas, no more than twenty minutes away by bicycle." 117 He envisions "little island communities where people live in productive harmony with nature and technology. And with each other." 118
Alan Weisman, in his book Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, beautifully summarizes the net result of the Gaviotans' efforts:
Surrounded by a land seen either as empty or plagued with misery, they had forged a way and a peace they believed could prosper long after the last drop of the earth's petroleum was burned away. They were so small, but their hope was great enough to brighten the planet turning beneath them no matter how much their fellow humans seemed bent on wrecking it. Against all skeptics and odds, Gaviotas had lighted a path through a magnificent but darkened land, whose sorrows mirrored a beautiful, embattled world. 119

With the rapid growth of the Internet, information about how to create communities such as Gaviotas will soon be accessible to millions of emerging eco-villages around the world. People will be able to scan the entire planet for inventions, farming techniques, and energy production technologies that make sustainable living possible. The Earth will be alive with inventions that are exquisitely suited to the local ecosystem, climate, and culture. Gaviotas demonstrates that, even in the harshest conditions, humans do have the ingenuity and cooperative capacity to create a sustainable and meaningful future.
Reviewing the spectrum of experience represented by Easter Island and the village of Gaviotas, it is clear that humanity is fast approaching a momentous choice. We can choose a path of continued separation and competition which will likely result in the clash of civilizations and an evolutionary crash and detour. Or, we can choose a path of connection and cooperation that amplifies human potentials and produces an evolutionary leap forward.

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© Copyright 1999, Duane Elgin
duane@awakeningearth.org

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