Introduction In his chapter on “Hitting an Evolutionary Wall”, Duane Elgin discusses five adversity trends- what are they and how do you see them affecting your life over the next 50 years? In his 2001 book Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity’s Future author and activist Duane Elgin employs the metaphor of development stages to describe human evolution from its inception to the present day; the main thesis of his book is that the human species has become arrested at the developmental age of an adolescent or teenager (Elgin 4). According to Elgin the human species is right now facing a series of sharp upheavals – in Elgin’s words, we are amid an “initiation” that involves “hitting the evolutionary wall” as well as the “environmental wall” (Elgin 6). The selfish behavior of humans to date has created a dilemma of shortages, and in Elgin’s mind, these limits are “fast approaching because we are rapidly consuming more resources than the Earth can renew” (Elgin 6). These limitations in our development have brought us as a species to the “evolutionary wall” where our lack of community-mindedness and spiritual unconsciousness drives us to “sustain dysfunctional and destructive behaviors” (Elgin 6) Duane Elgin Analysis In the chapter “Hitting the Evolutionary Wall,” Elgin outlines the current manifestation of “adversity trends” we human face. Elgin outlines five main adversity trends that he has been tracking in his research: global climate change, world population excess, whole-scale extinction of animals, flora species and habitat, exhaustion of natural resources, and global poverty and weakened opportunity for all (Elgin 18-37). Often the latter gets overlooked or at the very least “under-perceived by either the privileged or their favorite experts during…unparalleled economic growth” (Loye n.p.). But in Elgin’s mind, this will all soon change. “We tend to compartmentalize these powerful trends and think that we can deal with them one by one when, in reality, they are increasingly interacting and amplifying each other’s impact” (Elgin 38). Elgin understands that these five adversity trends will each interact and generate desperate behavior in the human species due to “waves of famine and resource wars” (Elgin 38). All of these will invariably lead to the crucial “make or break” evolutionary decision that Elgin claims will arrive by the year 2020 (Elgin 38). The main way in which Elgin’s adversity trends will affect my life in the next 50 years pertains to the mass extinction of species. If Elgin’s predictions come to pass then the current generation may indeed be the last to see a certain number of species alive in the wild; tigers, especially, are dwindling in such rapid numbers they may become extinct in the next few years. According to the New York Times, over 100,000 tigers were living in the wild at the turn of the 19th century (Revkin n.p.). In just a century, the population of tigers has been depleted by “more than 97 percent and 94 percent of their home range” and habitat has been destroyed (Revkin n.p.). Currently, tigers cling to existence in remote parts of Asia, Russia, Indonesia, and South Asia (Revkin n.p.). If Elgin’s