The process of individualization is the current phase of human evolution.  This phase began to democratize at the European Renaissance.  Now it wanes.  The two World Wars increased the scale of human targeting—in state terrorism, suffering and annihilation.  Auschwitz was the terminus of civilization; the atomic atrocities of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, warnings against omnicide.  The largess of human personality vanishes.  Environmental consequences of modern warfare are scarcely spoken of.  We continue in systems of falsification and exploitation and a culture of excesses and violence.

What is wordless is unthinkable.  When naming happens the named is open to endless communication.

The next phase of human evolution is the transformation of ego-self into eco-self.  In core dynamics this shift involves turning the long journey into the interior outward to geo-biotic relationships and in dialectic alternations between reaching deeply into the past of origins and moving conditionally into an Ecosophic Future.

In the ongoing century this, which is already an affinitive calling, will democratize further. The coming on of this spreading and taking root; more and more comprehensively reshaping contours and the content of existence; opens the greater possibilities of human survival, sanity and planetary stability.

Likely this will democratize only out of increasing and intensifying tragedies, reducing global human presence to sustainable levels.  Challenges are unprecedented.  The process into eco-self-identity and Earth-based affirmation is terrifying and sublime.

Persons dedicated to the next phase should willingly support one another, learning and mastering living between tragedy and necessity.  Each should serve as an invitation to directional dialogue.  Alert senses, emotional spontaneity, intuition and critical thinking—with the goal of mature response-ability—are vital powers in the shaping of the Practical Gestalten of an Ecozoic Era.

Only in the presence, or in an immanent expectation, of a life-altering event (or in response to a traumatic, life-altering anti-event) does integrity fully manifest and define human identity.  As passion of anticipation declines, or is suspended, the evil urge reintroduces: confusion and lassitude existentially proliferate.  From thence partiality in decisions increases, often leading to personal and social fragmentation or even, on occasion, a hollowing out of affirmative values, being replaced instead by apocalyptic betrayals popularized and politicized as our inevitable species destiny.

It is in the ascension of the next phase for pathfinders in quest of, if not engaged in blazing, new directions to apply the Native American attitude of doing what is done with a signature of identity for seven generations, each generation working for yet seven more to follow thereafter. 

Even if it dreams over the rainbow, as practicum of the next phase, The Great Work plans both now and beyond the horizon for a condition of welcoming, in health and wellbeing, for those who are yet unborn. 

Aggression, cruelty, arrogance, malignance and greed are among the worst human traits.  Tenacity and tenderness, kindness, humility, courage and the openness to participate with creation in reverence and respect give countenance to the best of who and what can be.  The greater benevolence of human beings is yet to become.

To harden is to become a mask.  The mask is moribund and belongs to death.  To be familied into the next phase of human evolution is to be porous and to become an Ecosopher of the Ecozoic.  Why not call this transition salvation?  Why not name this pursuit heroic?  Why not mandate that the embracing of life (Human and Holy) is sacred?   

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David Sparenberg is author of CONFRONTING the CRISIS: Essays & Meditations on Eco Spirituality in the Earth Spirit Series (Moon Books).  An international essayist and eco-poet, David lives in Seattle, WA in the Pacific Northwest, USA.