How to Save the World: Toward A New Social Movement—"Individual Evolution"
Creators: name: Bernard Phillips*
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Vision, individual evolution, social movement, the Buddha, reinforcement, image of the future, and invisible crisis.

description: Abstract: We begin with understanding THE BASIC PROBLEM humanity faces, a prerequisite for developing a solution. It is our bureaucratic way of life, with its focus on hierarchy, narrow specialization and personal conformity, that prevents us from fulfilling our evolutionary potential. As a result, given the recent invention of weapons of mass destruction, we are poised to destroy ourselves and become just another life form which has become extinct. Our individualistic and small two-legged great ape ancestors had to form bureaucratic groups for protection when they were forced to come down from the trees in Africa due to declining foliage. For they were confronted by large, powerful and swift four-legged predators. We continue with an evolutionary VISION for every single individual who walks the planet, by contrast with our having learned to see ourselves as very limited beings. However, it is possible for us to learn, over time, to adopt that vision, for we are nothing less than learning animals, and we’ve developed language as well as the scientific method. What is essential, following the vision of the Buddha, is that we learn to reward ourselves ever more frequently and move toward an evolutionary way of life with its emphasis on equality, interdisciplinary understanding, and autonomy. However, to continue to move in these directions, given our lifetimes of having been brainwashed by our bureaucratic way of life, it is essential that we follow the idea invoked by an ancient Japanese proverb: “Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.” What we require is vision with ACTION if we are to save the world. Following a previous book, Creating Life Before Death: Before Disaster Strikes the Ship of State (2024, second edition), along with five previous ISAR articles —especially the most recent one published in October, 2024—the individual must learn to evolve. It is the further development of the individual that is the basis for the continued evolution of society. That October article listed ten ways in which anyone can learn to reinforce or reward oneself ever more frequently throughout one’s everyday life. This approach can be simplified, making it much easier to employ, into simply (1) evolutionary perception, and (2) evolutionary action. By so doing, one builds on an evolutionary vision with momentary actions which transform oneself, enabling one to continue to evolve throughout one’s everyday life, and teach others to do the same. Those actions must include one’s mundane everyday activities. As a result, those mundane activities, which normally are perceived as trivial, become elevated as part of a nobler vision. They become part of one’s efforts to develop a widening social movement pointing toward individual evolution. Over time, the result can be nothing less than the trashing of our bureaucratic way of life. This approach to vision and action fulfills Polak’s and Busch’s understanding of what will make for a successful image of the future able to actually transform the future.