For at least 50,000 years, humanity has been on a journey of separation – distancing itself from nature and becoming increasingly differentiated, individualized, and empowered.
In recent decades, we have become so dominant as a species that we are producing trends that alter the Earth – global warming, species extinction, unsustainable population, massive famines, waves of migration, and more – that threaten the future of humanity.
Now, with striking abruptness, humanity is being challenged to move away from the familiar path of progressive separation to an unknown path of global care and cooperation.
The transition from self-centered separation to world-oriented cooperation confronts us with an evolutionary crisis: Who are we? What kind of Universe do we inhabit? Where are we going?
Our vision of the Universe profoundly impacts how we live in the world. If we think we live in a Universe composed of lifeless particles without meaning and purpose, it makes sense to exploit what is dead for our own benefit, the most visibly alive.
Alternatively, if we have direct experiences of connection with the vitality in nature and the world around us, it is natural to respect and care for the countless expressions of vitality.
These are two radically different ways of seeing the Universe and, in turn, produce dramatically different views of our identity and evolutionary journey.
This leads to a surprising conclusion: The most urgent challenge facing humanity is not climate change, or species extinction, or unsustainable population growth; it is, rather, how we understand the Universe and our intimate relationship within it. Our deepest choices for the future emerge from this central understanding.
At the Evolutionary Crossroads
How did we arrive at such a critical crossroads in our evolutionary journey?
First, over the last several centuries, we have been spectacularly successful in exploiting the abundance of the Earth’s resources to create a short period of unprecedented material prosperity for a minority of the Earth’s population.
This explosion of wealth emerged from a worldview described as “scientific materialism,” which considers the Universe alien and indifferent to human existence in the thoughtless and unfeeling dance of dead particles in a purposeless or meaningless cosmic system.
Second, based on this worldview, we have consumed the Earth’s resources far beyond their rates of regeneration. Short-term material prosperity is being obtained at the cost of long-term ecological ruin.
As Wendell Berry reminds us, nature “has more votes, a longer memory, and a stricter sense of justice than we do.” We are creating, with our own hands, a long-term future that is relentlessly inhospitable to the advancement of human civilization.
We are now being compelled by circumstances to unite – collectively and quickly – to deal with deep climate disruption, massive human migrations, unsustainable population growth, critical shortages of key resources like water, 
the threatened extinction of nearly half of all animal and plant species, and much more.
As global trends of enormous magnitude converge and amplify each other, the people of Earth will face the unyielding reality that, unless we wake up and work together, we will only have the legacy of a severely wounded Earth and a impoverished future to leave to our children and grandchildren.
We need a new way forward and are reminded of Einstein’s famous words that “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them.”
We are going through a dangerous phase of planetary transition. Will we have the wisdom of the species to make profound and structural changes in how we live and turn towards a more sustainable future?
If not, the alternatives are the collapse and even the extinction of human civilizations.
It is reckless to be complacent about the possibility of collapse, as this has happened countless times throughout history. More than 20 major civilizations have collapsed over the millennia, including the empires of the Romans, Mayans, Aztecs, Easter Islanders, Anasazi, and Mesopotamians.
Importantly, many examples of collapse involve climate change as a key contributing factor.
While collapse has occurred countless times in the past, today is different in one crucial aspect: There are no more frontiers. The circle has closed.
The entire world has become a single integrated system – economically, ecologically, and socially. Never before has the entire planet been at risk of collapse, taking all the world’s civilizations down at the same time.
Humanity has never before experienced the collapse of a truly global embryonic civilization, like the one that exists today. Our time of planetary transition is truly a great transition, unprecedented in human history and deeply formative in shaping the long-range future.
To swiftly navigate this dangerous time of planetary transition, unprecedented advances in how we live and relate to one another are required.
However, cooperation will be difficult in a world that is unraveling and where most people are dealing with chronic traumatic stresses on a planetary scale.
A natural tendency is for people to separate and seek islands of safety to face the disruptive storms of transition that are beginning to blow across the world.
However, if we separate and seek our personal safety by withdrawing from the world and isolating ourselves, systemic problems will surely escalate and produce exactly the ruinous collapse future we fear the most.
Source: Duane Elgin