The Future of Mankind by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Chapter 3: The Grand Option
I. On the Threshold of Human Socialization
4. The properties of Union
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?
and the individual with the collective, as though these were
diametrically opposed ideas. We constantly argue as though in each case the terms varied inversely, a gain on the one side being ipso facto the other side’s loss; and this in turn leads to the widespread idea that any destiny on ‘monist’ lines would exact the sacrifice and bring about the destruction of all personal values in the Universe.
The origin of this prejudice, which is largely imaginary, can no doubt be traced to the disagreeable sense of loss and constraint which the individual experiences when he finds himself involved in a group or lost in a crowd. It is certainly the case that any agglomeration tends to stifle and neutralize the elements which compose it; but why should we look for a model of collectivity in what is no more than an aggregate, a
‘heap’? Alongside these massive inorganic groupings in which the elements intermingle and drown, or more exactly at the opposite pole to them, Nature shows herself to be full of associations brought about and organically ordered by a precisely opposite law. In the case of
associations of this kind (the only true and natural associations) the coming together of the separate elements does nothing to eliminate their differences. On the contrary, it exalts them. In every practical sphere true union (that is to say, synthesis) does not confound; it differentiates.
This is what it is essential for us to understand at the moment of encountering the Grand Option.
Evidence of the fact that union differentiates is to be seen all round us -- in the bodies of all higher forms of life, in which the cells become
almost infinitely complicated according to the variety of tasks they have to perform; in animal associations, where the individual ‘polymerises’
itself, one might say, according to the function it is called upon to fulfil;
in human societies, where the growth of specialization becomes ever more intense; and in the field of personal relationships, where friends and lovers can only discover all that is in their minds and hearts by communicating them to one another. We may note, certainly, that in these various forms of collective life (except the last) differentiation, the fruit of union, goes hand-in-hand with mechanization, the element
becoming a cog in the machine; and that this is especially what happens in the case of the termitary and the hive, of which the shadow looms so disturbingly over the collective future of Mankind. But we must take care not to bring phenomena of a different order into our argument without making the necessary adjustments. In the termitary and the hive (as in the case of the cells of our own body) the union and therefore the specialization of the elements takes place in the field of material
functions -- nutrition, reproduction, defence, etc. -- which accounts for the transformation of the individual into a standardized part. But let us imagine another kind of association within which a different possibility of mutual fulfillment is offered to the individuals composing it, this time a psychic grouping corresponding to what might be called a function of personalization. Operating in such a field, the tendency of union to bring about differentiation, far from giving birth to a mere mechanism, must have the effect of increasing the variety of choice and the wealth of spontaneity. Anarchic autonomy tends to disappear, but it does so in order to achieve its consummation in the harmonized
flowering of individual values.
And this is precisely what happens in the case of Mankind. By virtue of the emergence of Thought a special and novel environment has been evolved among human individuals within which they acquire the faculty of associating together, and reacting upon one another, no longer
primarily for the preservation and continuance of the species but for the creation of a common consciousness. In such an environment the
differentiation born of union may act upon that which is most unique and incommunicable in the individual, namely his personality. Thus socialization, whose hour seems to have sounded for Mankind, does not by any means signify the ending of the Era of the Individual upon earth, but far more its beginning. All that matters at this crucial moment is that the massing together of individualities should not take the form of a functional and enforced mechanization of human energies (the
totalitarian principle), but of a ‘conspiracy’ informed with love. Love has always been carefully eliminated from realist and positivist
concepts of the world; but sooner or later we shall have to acknowledge that it is the fundamental impulse of Life, or, if you prefer, the one natural medium in which the rising course of evolution can proceed.
With love omitted there is truly nothing ahead of us except the
forbidding prospect of standardization and enslavement -- the doom of ants and termites. It is through love and within love that we must look for the deepening of our deepest self, in the life-giving coming together of humankind. Love is the free and imaginative outpouring of the spirit over all unexplored paths. It links those who love in bonds that unite but do not confound, causing them to discover in their mutual contact an exaltation capable, incomparably more than any arrogance of solitude, of arousing in the heart of their being all that they possess of uniqueness and creative power.
We may have supposed when a moment ago we were bidding farewell
to a Universe of divergence and plurality, that some part of our
individual riches must be absorbed by our immersion in Life as a whole.
Now we see that it is precisely through this apparent sacrifice that we may hope to attain the high peak of personality which we thought we must renounce.
Nor is this all.
Union differentiates, as I have said; the first result being that it endows a convergent Universe with the power to extend the individual fibers that compose it without their being lost in the whole. But this
mechanism, in such a Universe, begets another property. If by the fundamental mechanism of union the elements of consciousness,
drawing together, enhance what Is most incommunicable in themselves, it means that the principle of unification causing them to converge is in some sort a separate reality, distinct from themselves: not a ‘center of resultance’ born of their converging, but a ‘center of dominance’
effecting the synthesis of innumerable centers culminating in itself.
Without this the latter would never come together at all. In other words, in a converging Universe each element achieves completeness, not directly in a separate consummation, but by Incorporation in a higher pole of consciousness in which alone it can enter into contact with all others. By a sort of inward turn towards the Other its growth culminates in an act of giving and in excentration. What does this mean except that at this final stage there reappears the mystical ‘annihilation’ advocated by those whom we called earlier (in discussing the second alternative) the partisans of Withdrawal. Everything now becomes clear. What the apostles of ecstasy foresaw was true. But they wished to escape in an arbitrary and, as we have said, premature fashion. They were right in their desire to be absorbed in the Other; but they did not see that this mystical night or death could only be the end and apotheosis of a process of growth. Can water boil under ordinary conditions before it has reached a temperature of 100 degrees? Before passing into the Beyond, the World and its elements must attain what may be called their ‘point of annihilation’. And it is precisely to this critical point that we must ultimately be brought by the effort consciously to further, within and around ourselves, the movement of universal convergence!
From which, to sum up, the following situation arises.
To elect in the depths of our being for the possibility and hope of an indefinitely increasing unification of the Universe, is not merely the
only course we can pursue which conforms to the evolutionary past of the world; it is the course that embraces, in its essence, every other constructive act in which we might look for an alternative. Not only does this road offer a positive outlet for the diminished or specialized form of consciousness -- a victory dearly paid for by Life -- but consciousness as a whole must follow it, with all the accumulation of riches which, at each turning-point, we had thought to abandon. Which amounts to saying that the world is wellmade! In other words, the choice which Life requires of our considered action is a great deal less complex than at first seemed to be the case; for it is reduced to a simple choice between the first and last stages of the successive alternatives which we have been able to define: the rejection of Being, which
returns us to dust, or the acceptance of Being, which leads us, by way of socialization, to faith in a Supreme Unity -- opposite directions along a single road.
But if, as history suggests, there is really a quality of the inevitable in the forward march of the Universe -- if, in truth, the world cannot turn back -- then it must mean that individual acts are bound to follow, in the majority and freely, the sole direction capable of satisfying all their aspirations towards every imaginable form of higher consciousness.
Having been initially the fundamental choice of the individual, the Grand Option, that which decides in favor of a convergent Universe, is destined sooner or later to become the common choice of the mass of Mankind. Thus a particular and generalized state of consciousness is presaged for our species in the future: a ‘conspiracy’ in terms of perspective and intention.
Which brings us in conclusion to the consideration of an especial phenomenon arising directly out of this approaching unanimity -- the more or less early establishment on earth of a new atmosphere, or better, a new environment of action.