February 2012 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.

After the War, Where is Peace?

A Teilhardian Perspective

The official end of the war in Iraq is cause for celebration. Where do we go from here? Is violence inevitable for the human species? Suppose new technology allows us to get off oil. No Middle East interests to protect. What a Utopia that would be! But would we then become involved in wars over water? Are we hard-wired to be aggressively competitive, a heritage from our savage ancestors? The vision of Teilhard offers better hope.

Pierre Teilhard deChardin (1881-1955) was the renowned Jesuit paleontologist and mystic who was troubled by what he understood as a conflict between Church teachings, to which he felt deeply committed, and the view of reality emerging from his scientific studies. It was not that the account of creation in the book of Genesis could not be literally true—that seemed so obvious that it was not worth much thought. The deeper problem was that Church teaching, like most other aspects of the culture, was based on the paradigm of a static universe. The Greek heritage insisted on the stability of the basic identity of all created forms. That’s why the Creator needed to create all the animals at one time. That’s why Noah needed to be sure to carry male and female of all animals.

But there was a new paradigm—a dynamic universe in which forms could evolve into other forms. Darwin’s thunderbolt awakened intellectuals to the reality of evolution, higher animals from lower ones, even homo sapiens from ape-like anthropoid ancestors. The fossil record spoke volumes. Even the everlasting hills were impermanent structures, the product of shifting tectonic plates and the relentless action of rain and wind. Cosmologists declared that the world is much older than had been assumed, much bigger too, and, can you believe it, expanding as well. The static paradigm just doesn’t fit. So evolution is the word.

Reductionist science of the times, as now, understood it all as a matter of blind chance. Improbable as the resulting intelligent life might be, there was plenty of time for trial and error, and besides, one can’t argue how improbable something is once it has actually happened. Teilhard would have none of it. Evolution must be going somewhere, he thought. Otherwise, life is not worth living.

Exactly what is evolving, he asked. The conventional answer is complexity—single cells to larger organisms to fish to reptiles to birds to mammals to primates; primordial quarks to atoms to clouds of dust to stars to planets to galaxies. No, says Teilhard, complexity of itself is not any particular accomplishment. What is evolving is consciousness.

Even inorganic matter has a kind of primitive consciousness, enough to sense the pull of gravity and the attractions and repulsions of electricity. Consciousness rises to a higher level in plants, which can follow the sun, draw water into the roots and out through the leaves, and accomplish the miraculous feat of turning sunlight into carbohydrates through photosynthesis, a miracle we animals are so radically dependent upon.

Animals have an even more sophisticated consciousness—mating behavior, fight or flight reactions, survival strategies, and so much more. A certain wasp may lay eggs which survive over winter and in the spring the newly hatched young know how to find their way to the old hives which they have never seen. Cowbirds routinely lay their eggs in the nests of other species, sparrows, yellow warblers, and the like. It’s a funny sight to see a young cowbird towering over his foster mother sparrow peeping away for food which the mother conscientiously supplies. And, of course, no cat or dog lover would deny feline or canine intelligence.

With human beings there is a whole new level of consciousness—self-reflection, language, technology, poetry, spirituality, altruism, ambition, greed, competition, even sophisticated violence. Is this the last step, that which the universe has labored so long to bring forth? Marvelous as it is, it is clearly incomplete.

Our earliest ancestors certainly inherited certain qualities suitable for individual and species survival, among them a tendency toward competition and even violence. An objective observer would have to admit, however, that our species has progressed in moral sensitivity over the centuries. Less than two hundred years ago, slavery was considered part of the human condition, and no one need apologize for it, when even clergy and presidents kept slaves. Around the same time an afternoon’s entertainment might be watching a public hanging of some poor wretch, who had stolen a sheep, or to visit the local insane asylum and laugh at the unfortunate inmates. A townsman who could not pay his debts could be sent to debtor’s prison until he could pay, a self-defeating arrangement if there ever was one. While we may see similar atrocities today, at least we don’t condone them.

Teilhard said, no, we are not at the final state of human evolution, but what will evolve is not greater biological complexity, but rather higher consciousness. He developed the idea of the formation of a noosphere, a layer of consciousness on Earth to supplement the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere. The noosphere is the habitat of higher consciousness, now the cutting edge of evolution, evolving not by genetic inheritance, a process too slow for what is needed now, but by education and cultural progress. In other words, we human beings have in our hands the power to control the direction of our own evolution.

What will this higher consciousness look like and how will it come about? It will certainly involve moving from competition and aggressiveness and control to cooperation and nurturing and shared power. Is it happening? Yes, pockets of higher consciousness are rising everywhere. Specifically how it will finally prevail will be a surprise, as has been every new development in evolution.

To return to our first question, what about our tendency to violence, even if hard-wired? Well, hard-wired though it may be, our rationality and higher consciousness are capable of overcoming what is after all an utterly irrational and stupid thing—wars which no one can win and which breed only more violence and suffering. Why do we see such horrors in the world today? Only because we have not yet reached the critical mass which will change the culture quickly and effectively. We can only hope it will come soon.

Meanwhile what can we do? Cultivate the peace in our hearts. Be peace wherever we go. Notice the signs of hope buried among the stories of despair. Learn to love ourselves and the world. Meditate. Pray. Be grateful for life and for this lovely planet.

Dom Roberti, PhD, is a member of CPF

Dom Roberti