Humanity has problems, of course, because humanity is a collection of barely evolved apes, in the possession, nonetheless, of incredible technology. The only enduring solution to this problem is for humanity to evolve, both culturally and biologically. But just as the invention of technology has not been a haphazard affair, neither must be the further evolution of humanity.
In fact, given present geo-political dynamics, it is far from clear that humanity could evolve without a very conscious attempt to adapt. Normally evolution requires a large number of relatively distinct, cohesive actors competing and, at times, cooperating, over a long period of time. Given the diffuse nature of cultural beliefs, practice and enforcement, it is quite unclear who or what are the independent actors among humanity. One might argue that each of the nations represents one, but there are only a couple hundred of these, and even these are hardly distinct, due to human migration and the complex dynamics of international and economic relations. Moreover, since most individuals survive the "death" of a nation, the interests of the individuals are not really aligned with that of each nation (as they are in the case of the individual cells that make up an organism, for example). Therefore, individual humans are in fact likely to slowly evolve separately from culture, becoming, most likely, more selfish and culturally less conscious: i.e. more apelike and less human.
Perhaps most significantly, there is little time. even in the best circumstances, evolution requires hundreds of generations. when an environment changes radically over a short period of time, it is far more likely to cause mass extinction than mass adaptation. Therefore it seems foolhardy to cling to the hope that humanity will sort out its present mess without a careful, rational, and strategic effort. If the problem of culture and humanity is left to sort itself out, it will likely do so by extinguishing itself.
What I propose, in short, is the erection of a new social and biological science, similar to what is already going on in those sciences already, but focused on a producing a foundation to enable a "technology" of cultural engineering. This technology would allow the rational creation of new cultures, including even the altering of human instincts, with an aim to evolving humanity past its current degenerative and self-destruction condition. Most likely, this science would suggest it is important to have a lot more distinct groups, and thus it would probably aim at finding ways to allow people to organize themselves into distinct groups of less than, say, 100 thousand, possibly much less.
Of course the idea of creating culture and value rationally and synthetically is bound to be controversial, as it seems like an unprecedented and dangerous activity. indeed, large-scale attempts have been made at this sort of thing, and some have shown just how awful the outcome can be (communism and national socialism). One positive example of this kind of synthetic approach, however, is the founding of the government of united states, the core culture of which is enshrined in its constitution and other founding documents. Ultimately, the united states may be corrupt and degenerative in its own way, but its relative success shows what is possible with a careful, rational approach.
This is a very rough introduction to the intellectual agenda I am advocating, and a lot of questions remain. Why should we be concerned with the evolution, adaptation, and survival of humanity in the first place? And what do we mean by evolution, survival, and adaptation (or, more properly put, what should we mean)? Is it appropriate to "play god" by synthetically producing cultures? To what extent should culture be produced scientifically, and to what extent should it be an artistic affair? Is a social science like that suggested really possible? What might it look like? How will people be convinced to adopt the values of new cultures it eventually produces? How will the necessary resources, especially intellectual resources, be obtained and coordinated in order to found such a science? I will address these questions in later posts.
