The Future of Mankind by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Chapter 3: The Grand Option
I. On the Threshold of Human Socialization
3. The Choice of the Road
looking to the future and assessing the value of things, we cannot do nothing, since our very refusal to decide is a decision in itself.
We cannot stand still. Four separate roads lie open to us, one back and three forward.
Which are we to choose?
world as we know it, the fraction of unusable energy (entropy) is
constantly increasing; and they found in this a mathematical expression of the irreversibility of the cosmos. This absolute of physics has thus far not only resisted all attempts at ‘relativization’, but, if I am not
mistaken, it tends to find its counterpart in a current moving in the
opposite sense, positive and constructive, which is revealed by the study of the earth’s biological past: the ascent of the Universe towards zones of increasing improbability and personality. Entropy and life; backward and forward: two complementary expressions of the arrow of time. For the purposes of human action, entropy (a mass-effect rather than a law of the unit) is without meaning. Life, on the other hand, if it is
understood to be the growing interiorization of cosmic matter, offers to our freedom of choice a precise line of direction. Confronted by the phenomenon of ‘socialization’ in which Mankind is irresistibly
involved, do we seek to know how to act that we may better conform to the secret processes of the world of which we are a part? Then of the alternatives that are offered we must choose the one which seems best able to develop and preserve in us the highest degree of consciousness.
If we turn out to have been wrong in this, then the Universe has no less gone astray.
b Reduction of the alternatives. To have accepted, on the strength of historical evidence, that the world reveals through its past its progress towards the Spirit, is to recognize equally that we need no longer
choose between being and non-being. Indeed, how can we choose when we are already enrolled? The choice was made long before we were born; or more exactly, it was of the choice itself that we were born, inasmuch as the choice is implied in the progress of the Universe, that from the first has followed a pre-ordained course. An underlying doubt as to the primacy of consciousness over unconsciousness might at a pinch be conceivable in a mind emerging suddenly from nothing; but it seems contradictory in an evolved being whose origins attest to this primacy. In their extreme form pessimism and agnosticism are condemned by the very fact of our existence. Therefore we need not hesitate in rejecting them. This disposes of the first alternative.
The second alternative seems to pose a more delicate problem.
‘Withdrawal -- or evolution proceeding ever further?’ In which direction does a higher state of consciousness await us? Here, at first sight, the answer is less clear. There is nothing contradictory in itself in the idea of human ecstasy sundered from material things. Indeed, as we shall see, this fits in very well with the final demands of a world of
evolutionary structure. But with one proviso: that the world in question shall have reached a stage of development so advanced that its ‘soul’
can be detached without losing any of its completeness, as something wholly formed. But have we any reason to suppose that human
consciousness today has achieved so high a degree of richness and perfection that it can derive nothing more from the sap of the earth?
Again we may turn to history for an answer. Let us suppose, for
example, that the strivings and the progress of civilization had come to an end at the time of Buddha, or in the first centuries of the Christian era. Can we believe that nothing essential, of vision and action and love, would have been lost to the Spirit of Earth? Clearly we cannot. And this simple observation alone suffices to guide our decision. So long as a fruit continues to grow and ripen we refrain from picking it. In the same way, so long as the world around us continues, even in suffering and disorder, to yield a harvest of problems, ideas and new forces, it is a sign that we must continue to press forward in the conquest of matter.
Any immediate withdrawal from a world of which the burden grows heavier every day is denied to us, because it would certainly be premature. So much for the second alternative.
And so, since we are bound to press on, we find ourselves faced by the third alternative. What course are we to adopt in order that our personal efforts may most effectively contribute to the terrestrial consciousness which we must strive to heighten and extend? Is it to be a jealously guarded fostering of our own individuality, achieved in increasing isolation; or in the association and giving of ourselves to the collective whole of Mankind? Are we to reject or accept human socialization, elect for a divergent or a convergent world? Where is the truth? Which is the right way?
It appears to me that at this last fork in the road the modern problem of Action displays itself in its most essential and acute form. If there is any characteristic clearly observable in the progress of Nature towards higher consciousness, it is that this is achieved by increasing
differentiation, which in itself causes ever stronger individualities to emerge. But it would seem that individualization leads to opposition and separation. In logic, therefore, we are led to suppose that every man must fight to break away from any influence that threatens to dominate and restrict him. And does not this separatist tendency exactly
correspond to one of the deepest instincts of our being? But what is the voice that speaks to us in the exaltation of separateness and self-
enclosure? Is it a challenge or a seduction?
It is undeniable that, viewed in a certain light, a Universe of divergent or pluralistic structure seems to be capable of giving rise to localized paroxysms of consciousness. The man who thinks to gamble the whole world for the sake of his own existence, and to gamble his own
existence for the sake of the moment, is bound to live every minute with extraordinary intensity. But if we look at it we can see that this
brilliance, besides being pitifully limited in scope, is radically destructive of the spirit in which it springs to light. For one thing, though it may enable the individual to achieve the heights of
momentary ecstasy, it robs him in return of the ineffable joys of union and conscious loss of self in that which is greater than self: the element burns up all its future in a flying spark. And again, since the impulse must logically spread from one to another through all the elements, it becomes a process of general volatilization infecting Mankind as a whole. To adopt the hypothesis of a final divergence of Life is, in fact, to introduce biologically into the thinking part of the world an
immediate principle of disintegration and death. It is to re-establish, at the very antipodes of Consciousness (become no more than a fleeting reality!), the primacy and preponderant stability of Matter. It is to deny, even more gravely than by an ill-timed act of withdrawal, the historic impulses of Life.
So there is no way out, if we wish to safeguard the preeminence of the spirit, except by taking the one road that remains to us, which leads to the preservation and further advance of consciousness -- the road of unification. A convergent world, whatever sacrifice of freedom it may seem to demand of us, is the only one which can preserve the dignity and the aspirations of the living being. Therefore it must be true. If we are to avoid total anarchy, the source and the sign of universal death, we can do no other than plunge resolutely forward, even though something in us perish, into the melting-pot of socialization.
Though something in us perish?
But where is it written that he who loses his soul shall save it?