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[17]. Social Evolution

In our text, some of the social movements mentioned over the past ten years in the United States are: Civil Rights, Environmental and Evolutionary. All three movements share the dynamic of social change towards the betterment of all mankind (not just people in the U.S. but globally) in an almost unconscious effort that involves the social mores of everyone on the planet. Civil Rights have been a force for change in every civilized corner of the world in some capacity or another for as long as men have had the power to govern themselves. In the past decade, Civil Rights has become a far more globally oriented cause in the face of terrorist presences across the world, the alarming rise of genocidal warfare in under-developed nations and in the systematic degradation of the middle class not just in America but in nations all over the world.

The Environmental issue is exceptionally prevalent even beyond the boundaries of America in part because of the dwindling supply of fossil fuel and petroleum useable in the production of just about every mass produced product that exists. The matters of global warming and other long range ecological factors, that are inevitably blamed on the continuous consumption and production of waste by the global community, serve as very stark reminders that humanity, rapidly approaching the 7 billion in number mark, cannot continue to sustain the level of destructive productivity by which we are maintaining our presence on this planet without eventually causing more damage than we can conceivably repair. The "green" option is rapidly becoming an attractive alternative to the wasteful, "instant gratification" way of life that Americans have long grown used to. Citizens of the United States as well as in other nations the world over are seriously considering many of the alternative, "green" ways of sustainability (such as recycling, solar and wind power, automobiles that run on electricity and even air) in the face of the emerging facts: people all over the world are socially conscious of the very real implications that our continued abuse of sustainable energy is causing and are ready to do something, anything, to change the course of the way things are currently going.

The Evolutionary stand is the ultimate conclusion to the efforts of both the Civil Rights and the Environmental movements over the past ten years, both in our nation and all over the world. As more and more people become socially conscious to the facts about how we treat each other as well as how we treat the world upon which we all have no choice but to share, the global social consciousness must inevitably begin to evolve towards a higher state, one in which some fashion of overall human solidarity on these crucial matters must either be eventually reached or some cataclysmic collapse or another is the only viable outcome. Through continued exploration of the equality of all men, combined with a higher level of awareness of the planet and the effects that our human presence is having on the world at large, one can only hope that some form of positive evolution in the global human consciousness is an eventuality soon realized and not a missed opportunity to save ourselves from ourselves.