Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by Luis J. Rodriguez on Substack on June 5, 2026. If you would like to subscribe to his Substack please click here.
Evolution in nature is real; it’s the science of natural development. It results in greater diversity and complexity. This doesn’t necessarily mean things are “better.” Some relatively important species have been driven to extinction. What we have now is what has survived, based on natural selection, what is often called “survival of the fittest.” The fittest being what has been able to adjust and adapt to changing conditions. Not “better” or “stronger” in the conventional sense. But what has been able to meet the challenges of ever-evolving circumstances. Evolution in the environment forces all life to evolve or die; as this happens, the environment must also change or die.
In societal terms, we have ever-evolving advances in tools. Humanity started with basic tools made from hands, where the word “manufacturing” comes from, more or less “hand maker” from the Latin root. The first hand tools were discovered in Africa some 3.3 million years ago. Fire became harnessed from 1.5 to 1 million years ago. Use of clay for pottery and bricks, woven fabrics into clothes, and the wheel evolved 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. Irrigation began around 8,000-9,000 years ago laying the foundations of agriculture. Sailing ships appeared about 5,000 years ago. Iron production around 2,200 years ago. Jump through many other developments such as gunpowder, windmills, compasses, and clocks to the year 1455 CE when printing was invented. Civilizations from Africa, Asia, Middle East, so-called Americas, as well as other oceanic land masses, contributed to all this, not just Europe. Harnessing of steam, which occurred in the Arab world, ended up happening in 1765 in Europe, the innovation most responsible for the industrial revolution. Railways and steamboats became key. Photography, telegraph, telephone, electric light, and internal combustion engine developed through the 1800s. In the 20th Century came radio, airplanes, rocketry, television. Also in the 1930s, the first computers arrived. Nuclear power in the 1940s. The transistor and spaceflight became reality in the late 40s and 50s. In the 70s, we had the personal computer and the Internet—vital to the information age. We had “robot” hands in manufacturing. In the 2000s came smart phones, gene splicing, and artificial intelligence.
All this time, the human mind made leaps. Consciousness grew exponentially. The more we developed material means to adjust and adapt in the environment, the more our consciousness impacted and changed that environment. Our “hands” became smarter; our minds helped architect the world around us.
According to computer scientist, inventor, and author Ray Kurzweil, machine/computer intelligence is supposed to surpass human intelligence by around 2045, what’s called Singularity. The way things are going, this may happen sooner. With the accelerated and transformative innovations, we are at the precipice of redefining human existence.
But is this better?
With all this growth and possibilities, why are we still struggling with basic issues of hunger, disease, ignorance, war? Instead of making life abundant, I mean in the collective sense, for all humanity, we see erosion of the earth and environment while a small number of wealthy and powerful people benefit.
We have the means to end misery, want, and disorder, but not the mode.
That’s because the economy, politics, and even science are held back by what humanity has had to contend with during all this growth: power dynamics, greed, corruption. The few over the many. The social relations are incongruent to the forces of production, life, and mind.
Presently, the largest public offering for capital investment is dominated by three companies: OpenAI and Anthropic are in artificial intelligence; the other, SpaceX, is in rockets. Generally such large offerings are diverse: pharmaceuticals, energy, manufacturing, technology. Not this time.
The dominant system of global production, infrastructure, and governance, what’s known as the capitalist social order founded on conquests, slavery, and colonialism, and built on the exploitation of generations of laboring masses, is holding all the potential of this technology in a stranglehold.
Either capitalism gives, or humanity does. Singularity means an immense shift in society. But it can also open the door to a human-made path of destruction.
It’s not enough to oppose capitalism. A new way has to emerge beyond private property (the means of production owned by capitalists). Sure there’s socialism and communism. But look around you–even these have become stuck. All of this has to be re-imagined. Yes, like everything else. We need a bigger imagination beyond the old forms. Forms must change to liberate the content.
A guide is the original instructions from the ancestors, the Indigenous cosmovision of shared well-being, interdependence, and fuller and proper relationships to nature, our own natures, the nature of “others” (respectful and meaningful connections between humans and nonhumans), and whatever provides us the morality and ethos to keep all this going.
More truth (science), more beauty (art), more goodness (morals).
The present drive for maximum profits is also why our current sense of ethics, empathy, and caring is also being eroded. There are now many “christianities,” including those who think Jesus’s message of love, forgiveness, and peace is too “woke.”
Just the same, the ancient wise teachings can be brought to bear in modern times. This includes the principle that technology should be in accord with nature, not against it. That we must align our vast resources, intelligence, and technology to the healthy material, mental, and spiritual development of humanity and Earth.
These teachings help us understand that the means can find the right mode for a truly abundant and integrated world.
No more dominant power relations. No more class divisions or other divides based on race, gender, sexual orientation, abled versus differently abled… all the splits that have impeded our growth these thousands of years. No more haves and have-nots. Everyone counts. Everyone matters.
We are at the end of doing things that stop working, and at the beginning of drawing on and encompassing massive possibilities. It’s time to remove the societal shackles. It’s time to take off the ”corpses” society carries around, burdening our forward motion.
This should be the most important conversation we can have as AI data centers are being built alongside concentration camps. As mansions rise up while unhoused encampments grow. As jobs diminish while the stock portfolios of a small number of billionaires (and now a possible trillionaire) keep rising. As wars and genocides continue with AI and drone warfare.
Who needs to go to Mars when we can re-green and re-nourish this planet?
If we are so advanced, show this by the betterment of the whole world, not just parts of it. We need a true index of liberty and happiness for all, not indexes of GDP or stock markets.
If human “advancement” isn’t about this, who needs it. It’s about aligning the technical/intelligence capacity we have to meet the full needs of people and the planet.
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