The Politics of Connectivity

Abstract

This article is an exploration of humanity’s evolution from our earliest expansion out of Africa to today’s colonization of planet Earth. It traces how humanity’s success was predominantly based on our ability to bond, communicate, share and cooperate in ever larger organizational forms. Competition was also key, along with individual creativity, as our forebears developed the technological prowess now dominating all species and ecosystems in today’s Anthropocene age. The article also explores why our cognitive abilities have lagged behind our technological reach, so that humanity now faces its final existential challenge: our self-inflicted crises of biodiversity and species loss, climate change and our behavioral and cognitive limitations. We possess all the technological and organizational means to create our next stage of evolution, as embodied in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). If we reach the maturity and wisdom needed to overcome the global political and educational imperatives for our survival, we might then graduate to become a suitable inter-planetary species.