Space-Age Science and Stone-Age Politics - Learning Development ...

Preface
Modern science has, for the first time in history, offered humankind the possibility
of a life of comfort, free from hunger and cold, and free from the
constant threat of death through infectious disease. At the same time, science
has given humans the power to obliterate their civilization with nuclear
weapons, or to make the earth uninhabitable through overpopulation and
pollution. The question of which of these paths we choose is literally a matter
of life or death for ourselves and our children.
Will we use the discoveries of modern science constructively, and thus
choose the path leading towards life? Or will we use science to produce more
and more lethal weapons, which sooner or later, through a technical or human
failure, may result in a catastrophic nuclear war? Will we thoughtlessly
destroy our beautiful planet through unlimited growth of population and
industry? The choice among these alternatives is ours to make. We live at a
critical moment of history - a moment of crisis for civilization.
Measured on the time-scale of genetic evolution, the cultural evolution
of our species has been astonishingly rapid. Humans have been living on
the earth for roughly two million years (more or less depending on where
one draws the line between our human and prehuman ancestors). During
almost all of this time, our ancestors lived by hunting and food-gathering.
They were not at all numerous, and not conspicuously different from other
animals.
Then, suddenly, during the brief space of ten thousand years, our species
exploded in numbers from a few million to more than six billion, populating
all parts of the earth, and even setting foot on the moon. Genetically, we
are almost identical with our hunter-gatherer ancestors who lived 10,000-
40,000 years ago, but cultural evolution has changed our way of life beyond
recognition.
The figure shown on the next page illustrates the dramatic information-
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