Are You Caught Up on the Current Progress of Humanity?
History shows us that our lives change from generation to generation. Previously people lived in small towns and villages. They lived and worked in the same place and rarely traveled. Today people work in one place, live in another, and often travel on business or vacation. People also relocate far more often and aren’t confined to spending their lives in one place. Everything has become dynamic and subject to change.
Anyone who began his life in the first half of the previous century and now lives in the 21st century can see how the world has changed. Unlike all other parts of Nature— animals and plants—that hardly change for centuries, each human generation shows significant evolution in every realm.
This begs some questions: Why do we change from generation to generation? Is it not enough to be born and continue the species as before? What is the purpose of these changes, this development?
Here’s Why People Change from Generation to Generation
While we may not see the need for human development or its direction, we can observe how we grow. We see that a newborn baby has to grow in order to lead a good and fulfilling life as a grownup—to fulfill his or her wishes, change his or her life, have children and bequeath to them the possessions acquired throughout life. The children then continue the parents’ life. In a sense, they are extensions of their parents’ lives. But to achieve all that, a baby needs to grow and obtain the knowledge, strength, and perceptions that enable it to understand life and accomplish his or her goals.
Perhaps we, too, are like that. Perhaps we can compare those tens of thousands of years of evolution to the life of a single person, where each stage of evolution is like another stage in the child’s growth.
We know how our own kids develop and how to provide them with what they need in order to develop, such as games and exercises. We then introduce them to a society that will develop them. But as to us, we ourselves don’t know in what ways we are developing. This is why we don’t notice the evolution of our desires, but consider their development incidental or random.
We seemingly don’t know anything about our children. Indeed, how does a baby grow? It evolves by chance. The drives within them aren’t enough to promote them toward the things they need as humans because the nature of our world is from the animate level. Therefore, we provide them with knowledge, sensations, exercise, music, education, and so forth. Put differently, we add to them the human level, the “speaking” level, enabling them to grow into the world we have created for them.
Stop Misunderstanding the Rise of Unhappiness in One Minute
Conversely, while humanity is evolving from generation to generation, there is no one to make sure that it evolves correctly. Consequently, each new and more developed generation becomes more miserable, feeling more deficient and empty.
Yes, we’ve reached outer space, sent spaceships to Mars, and landed on the moon, but no one is excited about these achievements anymore because we’re taking them for granted. We can do almost anything on earth, but what about us? We don’t know how to conduct ourselves in order to be happy. We’re in a deep crisis, families are falling apart as divorce rates are soaring, children are suffering, parents are suffering, and society is suffering from terrorism and drugs. Where’s our joy, our happiness?
Depression is the most common illness in the world. So if we think of humanity as a baby, it seems as if we don’t have very good parents to take care of us and rear us properly.
Have a Knowledge of Humanity You Can be Proud Of
If we examine Nature, we’ll see that it has great concern for the correct development of each element. We, as parents, have great love for our children; we want to give them the best. We put our whole lives into it, developing for them all kinds of systems. Actually, the whole world works only to promote children, so they will have a better life.
But we are not succeeding, although Nature provides us with all the means to do so. Nature has given us love, without which we wouldn’t pay attention to our children, but we love them instinctively, as animals love their offspring. In other words, Nature tends to the development of every single element and creature in a very special way. But while it prompts them to grow safely and well, for which Nature instills in parents instinctive love for their offspring and compels them to care for them, we humans are still failing to give them a good, secure life.
If we examine a fruit on a tree, we will see that initially it may appear unpleasant and not at all tasty. But as it grows and ripens, it becomes handsome, fragrant, and delicious.
Perhaps we are also like a fruit on a tree—going through similar forms of development that have yet to ripen. Perhaps we’re like a green, hard, sour apple, which no one knows will grow into a beautiful fruit unless we know it from experience.
The same happens with humans. It takes at least 20 years before a child grows and becomes fit for life as a grownup, able to learn, implement knowledge, and “make one’s mark in the world.”
Therefore, we can conclude that our development is gradual, like that of a fruit that is foul-tasting in its inception, but finally grows sweet and tasty. And the longer and more stages it requires to develop, the more complex will be its final development and the greater its achievements.
From generation to generation, we are evolving as a single creature still in its early stages of development. This is why we seem so “sour” and unsuccessful. However, at the conclusion of our development we are guaranteed to be “sweet” and wholesome.
Here Is Nature’s Method to Reach a Wonderful Life
Of the four levels of reality—still (inanimate), vegetative, animate, and human—the human species is at the top. Man is the apex of creation. This is why his development is the longest, and the stages he goes through—from the beginning of his development to the end—are so extreme that the final version seems like a completely different species from the original one.
If we saw the apple in its early stages of development, we’d think that it would be completely useless. Only in the end do we see Nature’s great wisdom in developing it into such a beautiful and delicious fruit.
Following the Law of Development, we, too, are under the same pattern of development, and the purpose of our development is undoubtedly to bring us to a good, wholesome, sweet, and perfect state.
Now, what might the perfect state be? If Nature gradually develops us so that in each generation we acquire more sensations and more perceptions, acquire more and more of the nature of Creation, rise above it, and become able to absorb and govern it, then our final development will truly achieve the highest degree of reality.
By making our last developmental stages conscious we can become fully aware not only of our own nature, but aware of the whole system of Creation, becoming its partners.
Written by Michael Laitman
Michael Laitman is a global thinker dedicated to generating a transformational shift in society through a new global education, which he views as the key to solving the most pressing issues of our time. He is the Founder of the ARI Institute, Professor of Ontology & Theory of Knowledge, PhD in Philosophy, MS in Medical Cybernetics. You can find him on Google+, YouTube and Twitter