Essay on Possible future through Radical Evolution

People were always known for their desire to predict a future. Curiously, events that may come often are even more interesting to humans than the existing reality around them. Probably, such kind of thirst to unknown can be explained by inherent evolution process, however, it should be stated that contemporary science witnessed several outstanding theories about probable turn of events. We are not going to talk about old and banal idea of apocalypse, which is inherent part of Western religion by the way. There is the look at some fresh and original ideas generated by modern scientists of last years. The views of Joel Garreau seem to stand out from the crowd with fresh, bold and les or more scientific approach. Joel Garreau expressed main of his ideas in “Radical Evolution”, which became the real bestseller soon after release. This paper intended to give brief analysis of Garreau’s views on possible futures in the aspect of own paper writer’s ideas.

To point out the main idea of “Radical Evolution” by Joel Garreau, there is one useful quote to share the general message of it: “Humans are at a precipitous turning point in history, one in which our accelerating technological capacity has made us the first species to have significant control over our own evolution” (Garreau). In other words, he claims that humanity has already reached the inflection point that gives us the option of future selection. The existing diversity of future types is explained by the scholar with the significant achievements which were reached in the next fields – genetic, robotic, informational and nanotech. So, what are the scenarios of humans’ future according to famous writer?

Heaven. All advanced and marvelous technologies come online rapidly, and serve to the interests of people. It will help to deal with pain, suffering, stupidity, ignorance, and even death forever! In fact, the author identifies this scenario as Christian heaven and provides several supports that this utopia is possible in real world.

Hell. This scenario is totally opposing to the first one. According to author, it would be possible if the most advanced technologies and techniques got into the hands of fools or mad men. There is no doubt that the force contained in contemporary scientific inventions is capable to bring a lot of harm in global meaning.

Prevail. This scenario is different from previous two without direct reference to its technodeterministic nature. In fact, Joel Garreau’s states that he is pulling to it the most. The meaning of this scenario can be explained by humans’ ability to respond all challenges they meet. To understand this scenario correctly, here is the next quote: “Imagine a graph with two curves on it. One curve represents society’s increasing challenges; the second represents our potential for adaptive response. If our response curve stays more or less flat while our challenges rise exponentially, then we’re obviously in trouble, because the gap just keeps on getting wider and wider. But suppose our responses are also going up at a similar clip. That’s at the heart of the prevail scenario” (Garreau).

Talking about my own view about read material, I’m encouraged to say that the third (prevail) scenario looks the most probable and credible to me. Let me try to explain this idea. My point is humanity has already passed some of such inflection points as we are in today. To prove previous claim, we can remind numerous breaking time eras, such as Enlightenment, numerous Revolutions, transition from feudalism to capitalism etc.. All these significant events of humans’ history became the result of people’s common thought, the result of natural humans’ ability to respond the increased challenges of time. From biological point of view, this adaptability can be explained by evolution. The same idea is presented by analyzed book’s author, which expressed in one of his interviews to Gary Lachman: ” Then all of a sudden, in 1450, along came the printing press, and there was a new way of storing, sharing, collecting, and distributing ideas that was previously unimaginable. This led to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which gave birth to science, democracy, and eventually to the world we have today. What’s interesting is that all of this change was beyond the imagination of any one king or country. It was the collective action of millions of humans organizing themselves in a bottom-up way. They didn’t wait for the leaders to tell them what to do but changed their world to produce things as best they could” (Lachman). In other words, I’m agree with the author’s idea that people are capable to act in common interest in the name of single aim. This is the essential feature of our adaptability, which is called evolution.

Considering that my major is biology, the Heaven scenario looks the most interesting to me. It looks unreal from biological view that people can conquer the death! The scenario of Hell has no value as the overall destruction cannot be interesting from scientific point view. As for the prevail one, it is incredibly relevant from the point of transformations that will occur to people. Being the most probable way of events turning, it looks pretty curious what will be the human like after adaptation to respond increased challenges of technology advanced era. It’s all about mental and physical progress (evolution).

To sum up, it should be said that theories presented by Joel Garreau were extremely interesting to learn. Obviously, they are pretty doubtful from practical point of view. However, such knowledge is helpful to expand own horizons and to improve interpretative thinking. At last, it is not just a kind of look to future. Read book make us to think about nowadays – achievements, problems and challenges to respond.