Unbound reflections on upward evolution and art

If form is determined by content, what is ugly content? The opposite of the classical standards of beauty, simplicity, restraint, proportion, harmony, intelligence, clarity, strength...

Upward material evolution might be called  the art and science of attaining beautiful form and noble content. The goal is attaining the zenith of form and content, which is Godhood.

When we define classical standards we can't stop at human perfection, as classical standards tend to do, the ideal is Godhood which means materially evolving beyond human form and content.

In defining Godhood we channel all the subject matter we have. The Romantics used to say all the arts end in music, we could say all life, art, politics, all evolution, tends toward their highest completion in Godhood.

Not “evolutionism”, which might be called evolution for evolution's sake. That is a limitation, like art for art's sake in aestheticism. Evolution has the sacred goal of ascending levels of Godhood, for the sake of Godhood, and for the sake of the material activation within life, or Tirips,  which seeks Godhood, while it is also shaped by outside evolution.

Can we live with the discontent from seeking higher evolution and not stopping at the status quo? The conservative connection with evolution comes in Ordered Evolution toward Godhood, beyond the Father Within, which was first seen in the Inward Path of the great religions---now transformed in the Outward Path of material evolution to ascending levels of Godhood.

Revolutions, like war, tend to sweep all gains away. That might slow down evolution which over time needs the order of tradition and peace, seeking and keeping the best of the new, using all fields in eugenics and genetic engineering to define and attain the best, but still grounded in classical standards.

A limited return to tradition is possible in the following way

I suppose the old WASPS did not purposefully cause the decline of American culture, it was greed, the old “root of all evil.” This made it easier for what Mark Steyn calls the PORGI, post-religious globalist intellectuals, to overcome the WASPS (Chronicles, Aug. 2013).

The PORGI have accomplished their “long march” through all of American culture, from the globalist business world through the universities and the media, and now not much of real America remains. What is real America? The modernists have of course tried to change the historical and biological facts, but culture is derived from race, religion and ethics, and shared language. Global modernism is the opposite of these things, as Robert Beum points out in the same issue.

So, can the country defeat the PORGI empire? The old demographics, which determined American culture, were also treacherously changed by the PORGI, and so a return to tradition is no longer possible, accept in the following limited way:

Our original Constitution still prefers nearly independent regions and states, protected by a light federalism. Since the PORGI made sure to distribute apparently unassimilable people and cultures throughout the land, it will be a gradual thing, and it won’t be perfect, but eventually even the WASPS may return in this way, living in their own regions or states, in cooperative competition with other demographics in other regions and states. This is the way the de-civilizing PORGI empire can collapse without the whole country crashing down around us. I love my country and I think this can be done to save it.

Goal and purpose

Nietzsche decided that a goalless “will to power” would have to suffice. He said, “The reality of becoming is the only reality that is admitted.” (“The Will To Power”). But within the heart of man, including members of all religions and schools of philosophy, is the activation of life to survival and reproductive success, in whatever way we have found to do so in relation to human nature and the environment. This is a fundamentally optimistic outlook, although it can be cynical about the claims of religion and philosophy and culture in general.

Without purpose there are no goals, without goals there is no purpose, so Nietzsche defines the origin of nihilism. The problem with nihilism is that there are essential goals and there is purpose to life, and that purpose is fundamentally biological. Is biology not enough for you? Biology is evolving toward Godhood in the cosmos, from the simple to the complex, from unconsciousness to superconsciousness. That should be enough goal, purpose, and sacredness for anyone, although it does require the sometimes difficult realities of evolution.

Many destroyed by Hollywood

Hollywood began years ago slowly destroying Western values, then vamped it up exponentially until  now we have former Disney goody-goodies constantly dropping the F--bomb and performing low-brow simulated sex acts on national television in prime time. It isn't  even bad art, it's foul soft porn.

I blame Hollywood first, but why was it so easy for them? One would think that even the growing number of atheists, or the secular humanists, would not approve of this garbage. The marijuana ethos of the 60's boomers won't even let them protect their own children. Don't worry, be happy.  Turn the program off if you don't like it. 

There is no social morality, only individualism.  Post-modernism (Hollywood's more intellectual cousin) has taught women to actually dislike chivalry, that is, men of courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help the weak. 

It is especially angering to watch Hollywood exploit and then destroy young women, one after the other, with increasing perversity. Hollywood has been exploiting and corrupting beautiful people for years, especially blond young women, who come innocently, one after the other, from places like the Midwest, and end up playing prostitutes and proudly giving the finger to the world. Now all the "mean girls are blonds." What's with that?

Changing Hollywood now seems impossible, they have obtained the power to tell you to go to hell. Back in the early days they had to submit to traditional movie codes, and so on, but not anymore.

Hollywood promotes everything that has nothing whatever to do with real human nature, but unlike the ugly nerdy college professors who promote the same garbage, the Hollywood zoo does it with beauty and emotional effectiveness. The one hopeful sign is that people have been tuning out television and movies and turning to alternative internet sites.

I wish somehow another show-business could rise alongside the declining Hollywood zoo; build it in the Midwest, and make it a rule that any producer found abusing actresses would be canceled. Let's see creative films that affirm real human nature, which is---according to science and common sense---genetically and culturally conservative and traditional.

On Miracles

The miracles discussed in the great religions are not related to natural events or a violation of nature, they are, almost without exception, religious symbols for moving from one bland awareness to another grand awareness, often compared to moving from being blind to seeing. Philosophical arguments skeptical of miracles, such as David Hume made, therefore seem almost silly. Atheists make hay regarding the truth of miracles using arguments that religious masters never claimed. It's like socially challenged nerd's missing the non-literal meaning of things. Certainly the placebo effect from strong suggestion can cure ailments, and that has happened with highly respected religious figures, but that is not what they meant by miracles.

The way out of Nihilism

We might not have the right to assume the existence of transcendental objects, as Nietzsche believed, but I think we do have the right to assume the existence of highly evolved material and supermaterial objects evolved in the cosmos. We can assert the right of the material over the spiritual and still allow supermaterial Godhood. This is nearly a scientific fact, evolution proceeds from the simple to the complex, from unconsciousness to consciousness, and supposedly superconsciousness, with backward steps along the way.

We also have a right to assume “things in themselves” by refusing to play the games of philosophers. The object does not need the support of human definition, it does just fine on its own. Definitions and formulas have become Gods in themselves. God is lost when God is rejected as a material object, then meaning becomes lost in trying to define God or Being as a non-object. The soul was once thought to be material (Lucretius?, the Carvakas of India ?)---which it is---and definitions of the soul went down hill from there. No wonder nihilism arose in this lost intellectual world.

Nietzsche defined morality only as being an antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism (“The Will To Power”), but morality is developed naturally, sociobiologically, as a method to aid in successful survival and reproduction. Morality hypertrophied can be seen as creating the values for attaining the zenith of successful survival and reproduction, which is Godhood.

When is “ought” not “is”? All things human, such as culture and morality, are essentially biologically derived. We ought to survive and evolve because life and evolution is what is. The written law of ought harmonizes with the natural law of is. What bestows real value on men and the universe? We are evolving to Godhood materially and supermaterially, and we ought to harmonize with that goal.

The Inward Path requires the Outward Path in Religion

When we close off all bodily sensations and desires we no longer experience the outside world, we experience the inside world. Our experience of the outside world, our consciousness, is related to the brain being conscious of certain states, thoughts, memories, which come mainly from the outside world. The blissful experience of the Father Within derives from the inside world, from blocking out all the sensations and desires of the outside world. This is not a super-consciousness, as is often claimed, it is a lack of consciousness, a complete blocking of consciousness.
 
Why would the religious masters seek to block all bodily-derived consciousness, and strongly promote this state to followers? They do so for the blissful experience of the Father Within, which they often define as God. Who would not want to contact God? The problem is, the Father Within is not God, it is only a symbol-experience of God.  We may pursue the Father Within, but not exclusively, and not stop there, as if drugged.  It is only a stopping off place to help us understand what Godhood will be like when we evolve to Godhood.

Godhood is the highest evolved material and supermaterial consciousness, mind and body, not the complete blocking of consciousness, mind and body. Godhood is the zenith of material evolution, requiring the highest consciousness, truth, beauty and goodness, which is a supermaterialism, not a cessation of these things.  Godhood is the attainment of the highest materiality, or super-materiality, not the blocking of materiality. The evolution of material life needs to be refined in the Outward Path to attain Godhood, not stopped, blocked or called evil.

Superiority disguised as equality

I don't think people object to equal opportunity for all, but they do object to what they sense is the disguise of one people seeking superiority over another. It is of course the zenith of political incorrectness to say so but Martin Luther King's speech was in fact a dream, in the sense of a fantasy. People in general do prefer their own kind. This defines the very same human nature today which was developed by evolution many thousands of years ago, nothing has changed, only the dreams of humans have changed. And this does not condone the great evil of slavery.

Admitting real human nature is not something to be depressed about, facing reality can help us find real solutions that can allow us to live together, without open warfare. Culture has gone against basic human nature in trying to make all people the same, and this has not worked, even when it was imposed by force. Cultures ultimately exist on a biologically-derived leash, and human nature always pulls our cultures back to what we actually are, often after causing much pain and suffering.

The best we can hope for is cooperative competition between different states and regions with distinct populations and cultures, with some sort of light federalism to protect the differences. This will be the political movement of the future, if we can survive our dreams and fantasies. The next religious goal is based in the material and supermaterial reality of human evolution to Godhood. But to get there, beyond the human species, we have to admit reality and affirm the desirability of differences, as we seek to improve all of us.

Thoughts on the foundation of theology

Contrary to gnosticism, which the traditional religions affirm in their occult base, the Spirit, or Spirit-Will-To-Godhood does not seek to be free of the body since the body is the only means the Spirit-Will has to reach Godhood, by way of activating the body to evolve to Godhood, shaped by outside evolution. This is why the material world is not satanic, as implied by the Gnostics.

Godhood is what we and our bodies aspire to in a cosmos which has no beginning and no end. There is not even a duality since the primordial, primitive, Primal Material, and the Spirit-Will, are one and never separate, and it is they who create and recreate the cosmos, which is driven by evolution, but also falls back in devolution, all on the path to Godhood for the evolving life within the cosmos.

Conservatives and the instincts

The instincts of human nature are defined by such biologically based traits as gender differences, age-grading, marriage-making, hierarchy, ethnocentrism, religion-making, group-selection, and any culture that tries to bypass or deny these things is fighting a losing battle.

Progressives often do try to block these things with their social schemes, whereas classical conservatives do not. But conservatives need to affirm the evolutionary dynamics behind culture more than they do. Evolution is a sacred element in the instincts, human nature and culture.

I am no Freudian but Freud thought that blocking the instincts was the root of neurosis if the instincts were tamed before reason was developed enough to handle things. And Nietzsche thought human culture became decadent and declined as a result of blocking the human instincts.

Reason cannot really tame the instincts but it can see that a truce must be declared between reason and the instincts, a balancing needs to take place, with reason riding the instincts like a horse and not trying to go it alone. Science is too cold, and religion is too warm, a middle ground is needed.

If we pay attention to the instincts, human nature and evolution then we can reach our full potential, the zenith of which is our evolution to Godhood in the cosmos. We are only in our infancy now and we don't want to be strangled in the cradle.  Life demands instinctively that we never give up on evolving life, which is the ground of the activating Spirit-Will.

The religious transvaluation

The religious masters have said that when we know with “direct perception” it is a knowledge beyond the mind and the senses. No it is not, it is knowledge at the zenith of the mind, which is the soul, and it may be supermaterial but it is not beyond the mind and the senses.

It is not the material world that is the “chains that bind us,” it is the spiritual world which blocks the evolution of the material world to Godhood. The Inward Path needs to be transformed into the Outward Path.

The priest-craft and philosophy are steeped in dogma and rituals and they do not want this religious transvaluation, but real Godhood cannot be reached without this transformation.

The Inward God, the Father Within, the Radiant Form of bliss, is a symbol-experience of what Godhood will be like at the zenith of evolution, it is not a stopping place.

The real “civilizing of the beast” happens when we learn to refine material evolution toward evolving to the highest intelligence, beauty and goodness, which helps define Godhood, and not when we utterly block this evolution.

The Middle

Someone said the progressive movement wipes out the past and the conservative movement kills the future. I think of Revitalized Conservatism in the middle between libertarian/populist ideas and the importance of a light protecting federalism of economic nationalism. I believe in fair and free markets but I don't think an unfettered free market can solve all our social problems, far from it.  I reject the present centralization in agreeing with Richard Weaver that widely distributed ownership of small private property is a barrier against the encroaching state and against rampaging capitalism. I don't believe in mono-racial imperialism but I do believe in plural-racial independent states, even ethnostates, with their variety and independence protected by light federalism, which could work in accord with the U.S. Constitution. I also seek a bonding of traditional religion with evolutionary science as I see mankind evolving toward Godhood in the cosmos.  Does this sound too complicated? I think it avoids simple stereotyping and it is in accord with real human nature, as traditional human nature is more or less defined by both religion and sociobiology.  I am a patriotic American and I think this kind of revitalized conservatism could save America from decline. I also think this worldview could be healthy for Europe, Russia, China, Africa, etc---but of course this would not at all include our meddling in their affairs.

Courage for the truth

When one says “ truth wherever it leads” this to me has always meant courage is involved, probably even more than intelligence. Intelligence does not go very far without courage, but courage requires intelligence in pursuing the deepest truths in religion, philosophy and science. One of Nietzsche's notes: "A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions." And of course his other quote: “What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.” I pursue truth believing that where there is truth there is true religion, true philosophy and ultimately Godhood. I have found that this requires courage.

Traditions and universals regarding Burke and Strauss

Abstractions and formulas are secondary to the real thing or the real object, which they should be describing. If God is merely an abstraction or beyond the natural or material world this tends to place abstractions on the top of the hierarchy in religion and in philosophy, where truth or absolute truth, free of material ground, also often stand-in for God.

With that in mind, human traditions are usually based in human objects, not non-physical abstractions, or universals, which suggests that Burke's philosophical respect for tradition takes precedence over the Strauss non-material universals. But then Burke goes on to define God as beyond the material world, which brings in universals beyond living traditional objects.  This God is defined as essentially the Inward God of the great mystics, and often the absolute truth of philosophers. Burke's Christian God has a Gnostic/Judaic quality which fits in better with the Strauss universals and with the so-called non-material Father-Within of the great religious masters.

If the Godhood of religion, as well as the absolute truth of philosophers, is an actual supremely evolved materiel-supermaterial object and not the mere denotation of a non-object, or a mere sacred Word or a supreme abstraction, then both Burke and Strauss worship spiritual abstractions and universals as God, and as truth, even though Burke has more room for actual human traditions in defining truths.

Universals, abstractions and traditions are hollow and don't really exist without the actual material or higher-evolved supermaterial objects that they should be seen as secondarily defining, including Godhood. Human traditions follow this material-supermaterial  non-abstract trajectory in the evolution to Godhood.

The Twofold Path seeks to end the spiritual/material war

Jesus Christ and other great Masters did not come into the world to bring worldly peace, they came to bring the heavenly peace of the Father Within (the “beatific vision” in Christianity). Worldly peace is a secondary result or reaction to ridding the physical body of all material desires. This is often misunderstood in religious social philosophy. The Involutionary Inward Path is not concerned with worldly things for this reason.

This is also why the Inward Path is incomplete without the Evolutionary Outward Path to real Godhood. Without the Outward Path there would be little happening in the material life, little business, little material creativity, less everything.   The more successful a culture is in finding the Inward Path and reaching the God Within, the less successful it will be materially---look at India in this respect, up until their recent materialistic advances.

When the Father Within is understood not literally as God---which is only the symbol of experiencing Godhood---and when Godhood is seen as the zenith of material and supermaterial evolution, then we can affirm both spiritual and material success.

The war between the religious masters and the satanists needs to cease, with both sides totally excluding the other side, with the religious masters calling the material world satanic, and the satanists calling the religious masters anti-life.  These are fear tactics not truth.  The Involutionary and Evolutionary Twofold Path seeks to end the spiritual/material war, which damages both sides and prevents or slows our evolution to Godhood out into the cosmos.

In order to enter the future we need to bring religion and culture back to real human nature

Our task is as big as Nietzsche's task, but more religious and conservative. In order to enter the future we need to return to the distant past where the human nature we have today was developed and evolved. We have to go back to before the great religions and philosophies were developed, back to hunter-gatherer times thousands of years ago, and learn about ourselves from those times.

Darwin and sociobiology defeated the “tabula rasa” hypothesis but you wouldn't know it from the affectations of modern culture. Our human nature today is a collection of genetic and mental patterns developed during hunter-gatherer times and our cultures are the product of that same human nature adapting to the environment. Our real human nature is defined by such things as gender differences, age-grading, marriage-making, hierarchy, ethnocentrism, religion-making, group-selection, and all of these traits are blocked or rejected by our pretentious modern culture.

But the origin of our culture lies even deeper within the morals and values of the great religions which developed the Involutionary Inward Path seeking the God Within. The Father Within is reached by blocking or stopping the drives of human nature and evolution. The central thrust of our task is to turn religion and philosophy back to real human nature and to open up the great spiritual blockade of morals and values which have devalued, blocked and nearly killed real human nature and culture.

The Involutionary Inward Path needs to be transformed in the Evolutionary Outward Path, the Father Within is “only” the symbolic blissful experience of what Godhood will be like when Godhood is reached by evolving in the material and supermaterial world to Godhood. This exhumes the material world and revives human nature and culture.

We do not murder God and religion as Nietzsche tried to do when he saw some of the same serious cultural and biological problems we see. The religious philosophy of theological materialism renews religion and culture, as the Evolutionary Christian Church and the Twofold Path make sacred our evolution on earth and out into the cosmos toward real Godhood. 

Can we be straight about racism?

Racism exists, white, black and yellow racism, it is a deep part of human nature and has existed since at least primitive hunter-gatherer times because it helped various inside-groups to bond together for the sake of survival against competing outside-groups. But here is the reality not understood or blocked: human nature has not changed, we are still racist, even though it is denied. Genetic engineering might be able to change human nature, but we don't seem to want to do that, or there is something in our nature that won't let us change.

Altruism was originally evolved by nature for the in-group to gain advantage over the out-group, altruism was not designed as an egalitarian behavior to make all out-groups as in-groups, which actually works against real human nature. This is why even the great religions and powerful political philosophies who promoted all-group-altruism have not stopped racism.

Racism against blacks exists, which helped to channel blacks into ghettos across the nation, but then black racism against whites strikes out in revenge against whites and does so at a crime rate many times higher for blacks than whites. We have not been able to convince distinctly different races to live together in peace even after spending billions of dollars and endless effort trying to do so. This is because we have been working against the very roots of human nature.

To make matters worse, it seems clear that those who fulminate the most against racism do it so they may then insert their own race into power, which only continues racism as before. This is hypocritical and treacherous but it is natural because it is real human nature to promote ones own people, ones own kind. Look closely at the motives or reasoning of those groups who deny this view, although some are duped and many are unconscious of the real forces behind much of this.

It seems to me that the realistic thing to do is to stop trying to force distinctly different people to live together. The most we can hope for, realistically, given human nature, is cooperative competition between different people, rather than overt war or civil war. The attempts at racial supremacy or imperialism of one group over all other groups has not worked on our crowded planet, it leads to war and destruction for all.

This brings us to the idea of separate regions and states, protected by a light federalism, with cooperative competition sanctioned between states or ethnostates. Radical revolution need not take place. In the United States the original Constitution promoted virtually independent states which could be applied to this perspective. As has been said before, why not let the forces of real human nature which are tearing us apart put us back together again?

 All else has been tried and failed. Why not go back to the original configuration of people, in harmony with human nature? Then perhaps we can move forward again and evolve together out into the cosmos, rather than destroying one another, or destroying the earth.

The exaggeration of the experience of the Father Within

The great religious masters have told us that the world is evil and dark but that we don't have to be born into this world again if we follow the master who will help us find the God Within, the Father Within, which will liberate us from this world. The central message of this blog is that the world is not evil and dark, the world is the only stage we have for materially and supermaterially evolving to real Godhood.

Do we clear our karmas and get rid of all our sins by reaching the Father Within as the masters have told us? That is like the child closing his eyes and thinking the outside world goes away. The world is not defined as evil because the world is the only way we can reach real Godhood by way of material and supermaterial evolution.

The Father Within, the God Within, the Eye Center, the Third Eye, the Radiant Form, the Light Within is not God, but it is applied as a virtual Godhood, a symbolic God, as an experience within the body, within the mind, at the zenith of the mind, to help us see what Godhood may feel like when we attain Godhood by way of evolution.

Are the masters therefore charlatans and deceivers? No, but they are preaching only one of two paths, they are preaching the Involutionary Inward Path and blocking out the Evolutionary Outward Path. Everlasting life within? Please. Do not exaggerate the experience of the Father Within, it is misleading and can actually take us away from the sacred mission of evolving to real Godhood.

The big change which of course looks audacious and arrogant nevertheless does not reject the great religions of the Inward Path as they reject the world and the Outward Path. The Outward Path transforms the old religions in the Twofold Path, the next stage of religious knowledge of Godhood reached by evolving in the material body to the supermaterial body of Godhood, beyond the earth, beyond the human species, all the way to the Godhood in the cosmos.

Hamilton, Jefferson and Modern America

We don't want revolution, we don't require deeply radical solutions. Toward the end of his life Alexander Hamilton, the father of American nationalism, wrote: “The present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling...rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.”

Hamilton, according to Holmes Alexander, always thought that the American and French revolutions were not alike. The French committed regicide. Jefferson was the “French president” to Hamilton who he thought was a “befuddled theorist,” which perhaps was going too far, but there was no love between Hamilton and Jefferson. For 13 years during his rule Jefferson ignored Thanksgiving Day which angered Hamilton because he thought of Thanksgiving as the national destiny day.

Hamilton, who made personal mistakes in his active life, nevertheless thought honesty was the product of the business world, where contracts and banknotes were the promises men lived by. Was Hamilton naive? No, those were in fact the qualities of the Anglo Saxons in general who formed America, which looks naive now because America has changed, or rather Americans have changed.

Hamilton also wrote: “The science of policy is the knowledge of human nature.” In today's language this means political science should be based in knowledge of human nature, and for that the science of sociobiology is needed as the foundation of the humanities, which includes political science.

We can deal with our growing differences best through the separation of powers written in our Constitution, championed by Jefferson, giving most of the power to the states, but also by protecting the states internally and externally with light federalism, including the protection of economic nationalism, which was affirmed by Hamilton and by many future leaders during the time of the rise of America, before the fall brought about by anti-American global economics.

Expanding Col. John Boyd's theories to modern political philosophy

If we expand the military theories of Col. John Boyd, as admired and explained by William Lind, and we apply them to modern political philosophy, we can see how liberal humanism, conservatism, communism and fascism have not orientated themselves fast enough to the changing world.

Boyd's nine grid levels of war: tactical, operational, strategic, physical, mental and moral, can be applied to political and cultural philosophy. We desperately need to  include the fact that our human nature evolved during hunter-gatherer times, when we had endless space and could afford to promote only one people as superior or noble or chosen above all others as a successful survival strategy. Although human nature has not changed in that we still feel most comfortable with our own kind and our own cultures, the world has changed from a low population with lots of space for separate and distinct people to rule themselves, even with deadly competition, to a world with a high population and little space for separate and distinct people to claim superiority and imperialism.

Attempts to orient ourselves to these big changes included liberal humanism and communism, which rejected actual human nature in demanding that all people are, or should be, the same in nurture and nature, or the conservatives and fascists who basically refused to change from the strategies and moralities of ancient hunter-gatherer times, even though there was no longer room in the world for such hypertrophied imperial exclusivity---in these times the world rises up and destroys such exclusive imperialism, or we now have the Fourth Generation Warfare of non-state groups. The hypertrophied strategists of the old closed systems, left and right, have become increasingly irrelevant and panicked, or they have given up when they still have intact power.

The healthy orientation now is certainly not to try to reject human nature, which can't be done short of genetically engineering a change in basic human nature, and it can't be done with the same old wildly impractical egalitarianism or racial supremacy. We need now to gradually set up, or allow naturally to happen, thousands of virtually independent regions, small states or ethnostates, where human nature can prefer its own kind, its own culture, but can be protected internally and externally by a light kind of federalism, perhaps not unlike what the Founders of the United States originally had in mind, with the Constitutional separation of powers and states. Cooperative competition between separate and distinct people is about as close to getting along with one another as is possible or practical, given human nature.

Then we can begin to move on to the truly important mission of evolving out into the cosmos, with the variety that evolution prefers. We can then even think in terms of evolving beyond the human species.