As I get older, I think quite often about extinction, not only my own but also the fate of wider humanity and life on Earth. I’m now 72 years old so if one imagines life to be divided into sections of 21 years, then given a reasonable life expectancy of 84 years, I am now approaching the second half of the fourth quarter of my life. My mother and father died at the ages of 85 and 89 respectively, so perhaps I may get a little more time than 84 years, depending on heredity and as Hamlet put it, the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. But in any case, it’s clear that my death is not that many years away. This is a natural time to reflect on what one has experienced, to try to make sense of the state of the world and to prepare for what is to come.
As an anthroposophist, with a view of what it is to be a human being, including the cycle of incarnation and excarnation which each of us goes through over many lifetimes, I have no fear of my next death, although I hope not to have a violent end or a painful or protracted illness leading up to it. But it’s surely not unreasonable to be fearful of the forces lining up against life on Earth, including an increasingly unstable climate, nuclear war, mass extinction of species, and unregulated artificial general intelligence which is shaping up to be our equivalent of the asteroid that finished off the dinosaurs.
These forces lead many people to conclude that, although Planet Earth may come through the onslaught, it’s entirely possible that humankind will not; and even, that it doesn’t really matter. Nature will survive and that is the bigger picture. Articles such as these from the BBC Science Focus website and Scientific American assume that humans will join the 99% of other species which have become extinct over the history of the Earth.
Scientists who, in the main, tend to be rationalists and atheists, have only a limited view of what it is to be a human being and so they underplay the importance of humanity and our role on Earth. They believe that human beings evolved accidentally from some protoplasm in the primeval mud; if you were to say to them that matter in itself has no living quality and it is the presence of spirit that gives life to matter, they would regard you as an imbecile. They cannot see, or perhaps they prefer not to recognise, that there is order in the cosmos and on the Earth and that it is vanishingly unlikely that all of this is the result of accidental processes. What they do see is the utter irrationality of human beings and their leaders, who in our present time are bringing all of us and our beautiful home planet Earth to catastrophe. In the face of such folly, humans can be dispensed with, and the planet will get on perfectly well without us.
Anthroposophists on the other hand tend to be much more positive about the role of human beings on Earth. I’ve just been reading an interesting article by Dan McKanan, who is the Ralph Waldo Emerson Senior Lecturer in Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. One passage struck me:
“There is much less despair in the anthroposophical milieu than in other communities of environmentalists. One reason for this is that they don’t see humanity in itself as an environmental problem. They truly believe that human activity, if rightly directed, can make the world a better place for other creatures. Another reason is that they are radical believers in evolution. They don’t think the environmental goal is to remake some past Eden; rather, it is to help every individual and every species continue on its path of development, in relationship with everything else. Perhaps the most important factor, though, is that seeing the best in everything and remaining open to new ideas are integral to the spiritual practice of anthroposophy. They are, in fact, two of the “basic exercises” that Rudolf Steiner recommended all of his students to practice on a daily basis. Not every person connected to an anthroposophical initiative practises these, but enough do that they set a positive tone for everyone else. Since I spend most of my time in academic and leftist contexts, both of which can foster an ultracritical ethos, I treasure the opportunity to spend time with people for whom affirmation and appreciation are core spiritual disciplines.”
Whether or not the Earth needs humans is essentially a spiritual question. We know that every kingdom of nature embodies spirit, up to its own degree. For example, plants embody the etheric, although the conscious aspects of this are not incarnated but remain in higher worlds; and this is so, too, with the other kingdoms. Human beings, however, are the only ones in which Spirit/I or Ego incarnates on Earth and this is a wondrous miracle in itself – think of the magnitude of evolution that this took.
If humans were to be wiped out, so are further evolutionary possibilities for both Earth and humankind. It would exclude the possibility of that spirit coming to the Earth to develop even higher qualities, eg Spirit Self and the continuing evolutionary development of humans into completely spiritualised human beings. Nature, with all her astounding beauty and majesty, is not enough, and evolution would have to start again. Christ came to the Earth so that this Spirit/I or Ego in humans would find the path of upward evolution – would be Christianised, either consciously, or for many people, unconsciously. What would the Earth be if human beings die out? Nature would remain, of course, but with Spirit still locked up, coiled within matter, unable to express its destiny.
Nature is lifted up by human beings, as she cannot do this for herself, not even when assisted by the best intentions of the environmentalists. Only spiritually aware human beings can do this, with the abilities of Christ given to us to make it possible. Two examples out of many of how we can help the travails of the Earth: participation in the Act of Consecration of Man, one of the seven sacraments of the Christian Community, which can be experienced by those with clairvoyant abilities as sending deep healing right into the heart of the Earth; and the use of the biodynamic preparations by farmers and growers, which are of huge benefit to the soil and to the elemental world. But what if we were not there…?
If we were not there, the true purpose of human beings and the Earth in their evolution together could not happen in the way that has been envisaged by the community of cosmic intelligences. So therefore, despite the ongoing assault on humanity from the Asuric, Ahrimanic and Soratic forces, I don’t believe that these oppositional powers will finally prevail.
On a personal level, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when I was 11 years old, and at the height of the standoff between Khrushchev and Kennedy, I remember riding my bike through our local park and thinking that in a few hours’ time, I and everything I could see around me might be vapourised. All of my generation has lived with this fear throughout our lives; and each succeeding generation has had additional fears to worry about since then. A 2021 poll by the University of Bath of 10,000 16 to 25-year-olds around the world found that 56 per cent of them agreed with the statement that humanity is doomed.
This is the direct result of the work of the oppositional powers, whose influence on human beings has made the last century and a half the most terrible in all history. Anthroposophists believe that this is part and parcel of what it is to live in this age of the Consciousness Soul, when most humans are unaware of the reality of the spiritual world and have no conscious access to sources of comfort or reassurance at this time of deep trial in human evolution. They are therefore unaware of the unique role that human beings are called upon to perform in the joint evolution of the Earth and humankind.
As I contemplate my own mortality and the fading away of many certainties in daily life formerly taken for granted, I try to maintain equanimity in the face of all the horror that is happening in the world. It’s very worthwhile to read Matthew Chapter 24 in the Bible to gain perspective on these times. Verse 6 is particularly notable for this extraordinary statement: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.”
anthropopper 