The moral issue to be resolved is whether happiness in the absence of awareness is good. Ultimate goals have no basis in logic. The only meaning life has is the meaning we choose to give it. The only ultimate goal that is compatible with human survival is the continued expansion of awareness. Awareness subsumes the ability to predict and control the total environment. If man is to prevail, he must make a deliberate choice to expand awareness as an end in itself and not as a means to an end. Mankind has always had two and only two goals: to expand awareness or to expand happiness. All human desires are variations on these two prime desires. The two goals are not mutually exclusive; they are interrelated in many complex ways.

The development of the human species has resulted mainly from man's desire to be happy. While there was Darwinian competition, man could not be happy without becoming aware. If he did not grow in awareness, he was quickly made unhappy by competition from other animals, men and/or by the forces of nature in general. Therefore, man became increasingly aware as a means of being happy.

Man became aware, in part, by building machines which enabled him to predict and control ever greater aspects of his total environment.

In the broad sense of the word, tools, language, clothing, computers, and drugs are all machines. The process for creating and using machines is technology.

Technology has advanced to the point where a decreasing number of persons can create and operate all the necessary machines for making an increasing number of men happy. In the near future it will be possible for all men to be happy without necessarily being aware. This would be the case in a completely automated society where all machines are operated, maintained, and even created by other machines. That this is possible is shown by the exponential growth in computer technology.

The basic technology already exists for making super-computers in which the logic and memory units are packed with a density approaching and perhaps exceeding that of the human brain. Such computers could completely control an automated society, even though they might not be as creative as some human beings. This is not a vision of the distant future. A completely automated society might be created in twenty years; however, it would probably be ungovernable.

Under our current social structure, a nation in which everyone had unlimited leisure time would result in chaos. The chaos already being wrought by the youth in the democracies is, in part, a direct result of excess leisure time without creative purpose. The central problem facing the human race is, therefore, how to bring about a realignment in values so that a common, creative purpose may replace the obsolete goal of happiness. The only adequate substitute seems to be the direct pursuit of awareness.

Happiness and awareness can be causes and effects of each other. In the past, happiness was the prime goal and awareness was the prime effect. Today we must make awareness the prime goal and happiness will be the prime effect. If we do not, the pursuit of happiness without creative purpose will destroy the human race.

In our highly-automated society it has become possible for most persons to survive and reproduce independently of their awareness. Deleterious mutations are a constant and possibly unavoidable process of nature. Unless something is done to reduce the deleterious mutations that decrease awareness, the human race will become so degenerate that it will become extinct. This will occur because the genetic potential for awareness will disappear before the capability to reproduce disappears. The result will be a society of intellectually degenerate human beings who are completely dependent on an inherited, self-sustaining technology that they can no longer understand or control. By the time the machinery broke down, humanity could be too degenerate to care for itself. Genetic decay is the inevitable consequence of structuring a society solely to make men happy.

Of course, this is a long-term danger, which most persons think is secondary to such immediate problems as pollution, war, and over-population. These latter problems have the same basis as genetic decay. Man's problems all stem from hedonism — the pursuit of happiness without awareness.

We have pollution because societies are structured to maximize happiness, not awareness. Pollution can only be stopped by making many persons somewhat unhappy and a few persons very unhappy. Pollution is, at this time, only a minor irritant. Therefore, most persons, in effect, prefer pollution to more expensive machines and/or restricted freedom. The problem is that by the time pollution becomes sufficiently irritating so that people will seriously wish to stop it, it may have begun an irreversible process which will destroy the human race and perhaps the entire biosphere.

War is an analogous and even more dangerous process. We have wars, in part, because most nations, particularly the leaders, are more concerned with happiness — usually their own — than with expanding awareness for themselves and others. The hedonistic structure of nations makes it possible for unethical men to achieve a monopoly of power by promising ever greater happiness to their people, who have been conditioned to want and expect nothing but happiness out of life. These unethical men control highly-automated, increasingly-lethal weapon systems that can destroy civilization and perhaps the human race.

Compounding the problems of pollution and war is over-population. Excess human beings are rapidly depleting the natural resources and producing increasing amounts of pollution. Every new person partakes of technological advancements that have the stated purpose of making persons happy by giving them more leisure time and consumer goods. These "advancements" cause an ever-increasing depletion of resources and an overwhelming amount of pollution. The shortage of resources causes increasing international competition and this causes even greater tension and danger of war.

The pursuit of happiness without awareness is, therefore, likely to destroy the human race by war, pollution, genetic decay, or the gradual depletion of resources until it is no longer possible to maintain an expanding civilization. The latter would represent a gradual extinction of a humanity that no longer had the resources to continue its evolution.

Those who value and desire human survival must perceive the danger and join in a determined, common effort to restructure world culture so that the expansion of awareness becomes the central goal of mankind. Once this is accepted, then the methods for achieving the goal may be derived logically and scientifically. Methods can always be modified by reason; only ultimate goals are beyond reason. In order to see that ever-expanding awareness is the only goal that is compatible with human survival, it is necessary that man perceive himself in an evolutionary perspective.

From chaotic energy evolved matter; from matter evolved life; from life evolved man. Man is evolving toward ever-greater mind. Mind is that effect of energy, matter and life which creates awareness. Awareness is reflected in the mind's ability to predict and control the total environment. The total environment includes all forms and combinations of energy, matter, life, and mind; the total environment includes the self. The highest form of awareness is creation. The greater the awareness of any mind, the greater is its potential to create. The highest form of creation is mind as an effect of itself.

To create is to cause the formation of new relationships that increase awareness. That mind creates by organizing matter and life into new patterns is self-evident. Once mind begins to organize energy, matter and life as a means of extending itself, then mind becomes less an effect of life and more an effect of itself. An extrapolation of this process implies that, asymptotically, it should become possible for mind to produce the entire spiral of creation from itself, thereby creating energy from thought, matter from energy, life from matter, and ever-greater mind from itself until mind becomes an effect of itself. Thus the mind evolves forever toward pure thought, always getting closer but never reaching it. This is the ever-ascending, infinite spiral of evolution that has no beginning or end. Those who choose to ascend the spiral of evolution will be a part of an infinitely-growing awareness within an infinitely-expanding universe.

The one common denominator in evolution is ever-greater awareness through increasing complexity. Chaotic energy becomes elementary particles. The elementary particles increase their collective complexity by organizing into more complex systems of particles. These complex particles join to form atoms. The atoms join to form molecules. The molecules become increasingly complex until new complexity results from giant organic molecules joining to form cells. The cells then become increasingly complex until further complexity can only occur by further joining. At this point, multicellular animals — the metazoa — come into being. The metazoa continue to develop and grow in complexity and awareness until man, the first metazoan aware of its own awareness, evolves. Awareness of awareness produces a new type of evolution; awareness catalyzes itself by becoming increasingly an effect of itself.

Once man became aware of his own awareness, he began to evolve psychosocially by acquiring knowledge and building machines to predict and control the total environment. As this process continued, he became increasingly dependent on collective human knowledge and machines until he has almost stopped evolving biologically. Indeed, he may be degenerating biologically. Today man is a gestalt of men, collective knowledge and machines. Each part of the gestalt is essential to the totality of man.

An extrapolation of evolutionary trends in general, and human evolution in particular, indicates that mankind is about to undergo another evolutionary joining in which the whole becomes more aware than the sum of the parts. Similarly, a metazoan is more aware than any group of individual cells. However, the human joining will not be a biological occurrence in which the elements lose their individuality. The existing evolutionary patterns indicate that the human joining will be a psychosocial process in which men, machines, and collective knowledge become a single super-organism in which each person remains free and individualized. The awareness of each person will become part of the collective awareness of all persons. The collective awareness of all persons will amplify the individual awareness of each person until each man possesses all human knowledge. This new organism (the Moral Society) would have the same relationship to a man as a man has to a cell. The collective awareness produced by the billions of cells that make up a human body enabled man to spread his awareness over the Earth; the collective awareness of the billions of persons who make up the Moral Society should enable mankind to spread his awareness throughout the Universe. The purpose of this book is to begin the creation of the Moral Society.

The world is dominated by unethical men who have rejected the principles of life (awareness) and embraced the principles of death (happiness without awareness). The ethics of life are the pursuit of awareness for ourselves and others. Ethical men and women who value awareness must join together in a common cause. There can be no compromise with unethical men. They must be removed from power before they destroy the human race.

The actions to be taken are:

• 1. All ethical persons must join together in a determined effort to create the Moral Society.
• 2. Withdraw all support from the political bureaucracies that are dominated by unethical men.
• 3. Teach the ethics of life widely and effectively.
• 4. Form an ethical political party to promote ethical candidates.
• 5. Create an Ethical State.
• 6. Expand the Ethical State to include all men who wish to join it.
• 7. Create the Moral Society.

Ethical ends can only be achieved by ethical means. The prime ethic of life is each person must do lets best to expand total awareness. This book is an effort to teach the prime ethic as clearly and effectively as possible. Whoever can teach it better is ethically bound to do so.

A man's reach should exceed his grasp

—Robert Browning

Speculation is not science, but it is a necessary first step in the scientific process. In the following three chapters, known facts about evolution are formulated into a coherent pattern that explains the past and predicts the future. This is speculation. These speculations on evolution lead to the manifestation of an overall pattern. But the pattern, like any manifestation no matter how clear and logical, may still be in error. Any statement concerning cause and effect relationships may be in error. Every description, hypothesis, theory and strategy in this book may be erroneous. We can never be absolutely certain when we are right. It is usually easier to discover our errors. In the end, a person who is honest with himself always has doubts.

It will be shown that: 1) it is unethical to be certain; 2) it is ethical to doubt; and 3) inaction is unethical. The problem each person must solve for himself is how to act ethically when the future outcome of every act is uncertain. The concepts of "evolution" and "ethics" are inextricably intertwined. Understanding one is a precondition to understanding the other. To see that this is the case, it is first necessary to understand the concept of "awareness."