How to Save the World: Mounting an Evolutionary Social Movement

Abstract: This paper centers on how to confront effectively the massive yet unsolved problems of the contemporary world, like the rise of dictatorships and the threats of nuclear war, economic disaster, and climate change. My approach is (1) to motivate readers to learn to move toward their own personal evolution, and (2) to sketch how such learning can become the basis for their developing a powerful and continually expanding evolutionary social movement which will move society toward solving its basic problems. In this way, the world will take its next steps toward achieving a democratic way of life. This will involve the development of a powerful and interdisciplinary science of human behavior placed in the hands of the ordinary individual. After a brief introduction, a sequence of two sections of this paper will convey these messages: “Personal Evolution” and “World Evolution.” This will require the individual’s practicing both mindfulness and the increasing solutions of personal problems, based on one’s development of intellect, emotions, and problem-solving actions. Such personal evolution is possible, given every human being’s amazing potentials. Yet the fulfillment of those potentials requires deep and continuing emotional commitment to solving personal problems. The result will be nothing less than the continuing development of societies and the solution of our mammoth societal problems.