So, what is the future? Is there one? How can you expect people to fight for the future if you can't tell them why to? How do you expect them to act if you can't tell them the goal and how to make the moral decisions of what is right or wrong to get there? What future can be offered to people to inspire them to struggle for it and face the powers fighting to go backwards? What are those contested territories people are fighting for? What is progress and why might it be worth working and fighting for? Well, we know what the past is as described in this article. It was a time of brutality, ignorance, disease, starvation, slavery, casual rape and casual killing. What does the future look like that we are fighting for? Darn, it's missing. It is <insert here from> [social justice, equality, wisdom, order,...]

I love the brilliance of these articles by Umair, but I have to say I think they are all stick, the horrors from our past when they should be more carrot, a vision of a bright future. Some better understanding is needed.

I'm good at biology, so of course I try to understand all this with that tool and I think it can answer far more questions than any other tool I've seen, even philosophy. Biology says that we have two primary instincts. The endless, mindless competition for dominance, red of tooth and claw, that nature gives most mammals. It explains a great deal of our past and what is going on now. The other instincts is for cooperation and communication. It's far less common in nature and takes greater intelligence, why human brain size dramatically increased when we left the trees.

So we know about two instincts and how one of them relates to the past. Both are for survival, but one certainly was what worked in our tribal past. What about the other one, cooperation? What does that offer us? Most importantly, does it offer us survival, because that is the goal we need to see to get people to support it. Well, it's not hard to improve on the horrors of the past, but what could our future look like? Can biology tell us? It can tell us some, but philosophy can actually tell us more because that new world is civilization and philosophy was what civilization was built on. It led to science, not the other way around. Philosophy was created because humans wanted to be more than animals. They could see "man in nature" outside their city gates and it wasn't pretty. Civilization is needed to escape the horrors of the past. It is a place where there can be practical social justice and equality. It is a place where humans can defeat ignorance, disease, poverty, war and so may other of the ills that plague humanity. It is where we can survive long term and develop into something far more than animals.

You might agree that that sounds good, but is that goal possible? How can we get to that? That's my specialty. I describe how humans can adapt genetically and strategically to the new world we have been working to create since probably before the first cities. Let me lay it out for you.

1. Solve the genetic problem. That was first and I won't go into detail as that is covered well in "Genetics For A New Human Ecology". Search for it. We have an existential threat based on that what we call human progress is the removal of natural selection, something no species can survive. There is an economical, ethical solution that will open great potentials for humans in the future.

2. Start teaching philosophy again in grammar school. It has to shape our thinking. It was the king of knowledge but became a casualty of the war between science and religion that was rather decisively won by science around the time of the Scopes trial. Science claimed all authority over knowledge, but there is so much it cannot tell us, especially "why". There are a number of reasons why we need to teach philosophy again for personal survival and the survival of the civilization that is our life support system.

3. Make sure people are taught what the alternatives of our two instincts are. Mindless competition will limit us to being animals. Cooperation can allow us to become much more. This must be understood and a choice between the two must be made. We can find both within ourselves and others. We just have to choose which we want to use.

4. Humans need to develop principles of thinking longer term. It is not instinctive so it must be learned. Investment (often called capitalism) is the resource strategy of building a civilization. Another part of this si since civilization is an ecoloy that is our life support system and does not exist naturally in nature, it must be built, maintained, protected and plans must be in place to repair it when it is damaged.

.. OK, that's more than long enough. I hope you found it thought provoking. It's all true and it can all be found on or is being developed on zagwap.com. Humans have the potential for an amazing future. we need to understand that and make it a conscious goal. Then we can achieve it.