The Great Reset and Evolutionary Humanism
Homo sapiens seems to be the culmination of the long development that transformed matter into life. Once life started, information was essential for the evolution of species, especially through the encoding that improves the organism’s chances of survival. The appearance of RNA and DNA was critical for this evolutionary jump in which a simple combination of elements could code and then build an organisms’ characteristics.
The long evolution that culminated in Homo sapiens allowed for the development of civilization, technology, and progress. Technological advances have led the species into a belief that trans-humanism is quite possible. Trans-humanism is a belief or theory about the possibility of the human race to evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations through science and technology. This notion is complemented by the theory of evolutionary humanism, a belief in the right of the most civilized humans to direct human evolution. The Great Reset and especially the Fourth Industrial Revolution 4IR, which includes a drastic increase in automation, is a semi-veiled proposal for those evolutionary humanist’s techno-dreams.
When Darwin proposed his theory of evolution in the 19th century, the culture at the time wasn’t ready to accept a less than human ancestry for their civilized species. The creation by a God who designated humans as the rulers of nature, though not based on the rationality that the Europeans prided themselves on, was much more of an ego-booster than the pedestrian evolutionary process that few people even understood.
Darwin’s theory of evolution talked about natural selection as a physical process that has no end-point, no lofty design for a superior species that should rule over the rest of nature. Life evolved following the laws of physics and chemistry which depended on the amount of free energy and resources available; the evolutionary information that was encoded was tailored to the needs of the organism according to its environment at the time. Scientists have found that natural selection is a mathematical inevitability proving that there was no particular aim in how evolution molded life; our arrival to the scene was a combination of a long line of complex processes interacting with the environment.
Darwin’s proposal had no special place for Homo sapiens, but soon two scientists, Francis Galton, the coiner of the term ‘eugenics’ and Herbert Spencer coiner of the term social Darwinism, adapted the evolutionary theory to fit the ego needs of the supposedly most civilized Homo sapiens, the European. Spencer believed that evolution had a direction and an end-point, attained by a final state of equilibrium. For him, this equilibrium was reached with humans, especially the ones at the top of the civilization pyramid. The application of his evolutionary theories to sociology led to a proposal for a social hierarchical progression from the low to the highly complex within the same human species, with winners and losers in this fitness survival game.
Spencer’s Social Darwinism held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by the survival of the fittest. The most important characteristic of humans was reasoning, it allowed for the accumulation of knowledge, progress, and a continuation of the evolutionary process provided by technology. Knowledge was divided into two kinds, the one gained by the individual and the one gained by the different races. Humans are the pinnacle in biological evolution -the fittest, but within the species, the races that have accumulated the most scientific knowledge and capital are the fittest of all. From the point of view of 19 Century England, the top colonial power, European culture, had won the prize of fitness to survive.
Spencer’s social Darwinism view of society as a competition in which only the fittest will survive was one of the bases for eugenics. Late 19th century luminaries in England like Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, and Julian Huxley were very enthusiastic about the promise of eugenics. Julian Huxley, Aldus Huxley’s brother, was the first director of UNESCO and instrumental for the founding of the World Wild Fund, the proponent of the New Deal for Nature within the Great Reset framework. Huxley’s views about humanist evolution, loosely based on Spencer’s Social Darwinism, were the basis for the philosophy of UNESCO expressed in his essay: “UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy.”
Though Huxley talks about helping to preserve the cultures of the world and the advancement of all of humanity, his further explanation betrays a belief in the superiority of an elite group who has earned the right to direct evolution. For Huxley, eugenics was the key to the optimal direction of human evolution and he expressed it quite openly in the following quotes:
‘It is, however, essential that eugenics should be brought entirely within the borders of science, for, as already indicated, in the not very remote future the problem of improving the average quality of human beings is likely to become urgent; and this can only be accomplished by applying the findings of a truly scientific eugenics.”
His Philosophy of Evolutionary Humanism required a change in ethical values as he points out here:
“It (Evolutionary Humanism) will accordingly relate its ethical values to the discernible direction of evolution, using the fact of biological progress as their foundation, and shaping the superstructure to fit the principles of social advance.”
“Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
UNESCO appears to us as a UN organization for peace and progress, so it comes as a surprise that its philosophy is heavily based on Social Darwinism disguised as evolutionary humanism peppered with frequent proposals for eugenics. Sir Julian Huxley was essential for the 1948 creation of both UNESCO and the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), the precursor to the WWF. After WWII, conservation was a top interest for much of the European elites. Huxley’s conservation ideas were echoed by the first director of WWF International, Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands, and the first director of the WWF UK, Prince Philippe of England. These conservation entities were imbued with evolutionary humanist ideals of eternal progress that would only be possible with population control, particularly in developing countries (less fit), combined with an assured Western authority over the world’s raw materials. These ideals have endured the test of time and remained at the forefront of later institutions like the World Economic Forum, the proponent of the Great Reset.
In 1961, when the WWF was created, most of Africa was struggling for independence from its colonial rulers, and this caused alarm in Europe, especially in England. As colonizers, they were able to control the populations and raw material extraction in their jurisdiction, but independence and democracy would bring all these privileges into question. Under the guise of conservation of nature and fauna, the WWF was a convenient green façade to mask the need for European control over the mineral-rich Third World, especially Africa.
Despite its eugenicist philosophy the WWF, proponent of the much-vaunted New Deal for Nature, has evolved with an impeccable pedigree based on propaganda that relies on cute pandas and baby animals that lure people’s donations for their supposedly worthy campaigns. What most people don’t notice is the crude reality that goes on behind the ecological and friendly façade that betrays Humanist Evolution values that have nothing to do with conservation.
The Great Reset was announced by the World Economic Forum in June 2020 and it will start its implementation in January 2021. It is supposed to be a reset of capitalism that includes an increase in nature conservancy with the launching of the World Wild Fund’s New Deal for Nature and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), a speeded automation of our lives that implies eternal technological progress.
The New Deal for Nature is a continuation and increase of the conservancy strategies of the WWF. Conservancy has been the domain of the West, a masked continuation of colonial practices in which the knowledge and needs of the Global North, the fittest, are more important than those of the indigenous population. Conservancy is presented as the protection of nature, fauna, and flora, but it is really about land ownership. The control of land is essential for the corporate domination of raw material resources essential for the 4th Industrial Revolution and other corporate interests like palm oil and soy plantations for biodiesel and manufacturing.
The World Wild Fund has been displacing people from their native lands for years, and the New Deal for Nature’s promise of dedicating 30% of the world’s area to conservation, will ensure that this practice increases even more. The Great Reset’s green promises are top-down proposals, planned and promoted by the Global North, without much possibility of input from the indigenous populations.
One case in which the WWF nature conservancy project directors were found at fault is their abuse of the Baka Pygmies in Messok Dja in the Congo River Basin. Though the aggressive and dispossessing practices of the WWF are rampant around the world, this is one of the few that has been investigated by the UN, mostly because the project was co-funded by the United Nations Development Program, UNDP.
The so-called conservation effort in the Congo Basin has been characterized by a prevalence of armed rangers who kill, beat, rape, and abuse the inhabitants of the area. These institutions claim adherence to their strict policies and standards for their projects, yet they never sought consent from the Baka, arguing that any conservation project would be beneficial to them. The project measured its success in the number of anti-poaching patrols and numbers arrested, causing a high incarceration rate of innocent Baka people. Despite the suffering and displacement of the indigenous people of the region, the project didn’t manage to diminish poaching or dismantle the criminal networks behind the illegal wildlife trade.
The project worked from the point of view of the WEF and UNDP: the emptied land will be used for the creation of a park costing millions that will be divided among palm oil, logging, and Eco-tourism corporations. This is the World Wild Fund’s definition of conservancy: abusing the human rights and displacing the inhabitants in the area, to give it to corporations. The abuse and displacement make the land available and since the people have no money and no legal recourse, they have no defense. The Baka Pygmy case was the first time that the UN paid attention to such egregious behavior masked as ‘the conservancy’ that will save our future on this planet.
In the wild areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, people have lived with nature, using it for their survival but respecting and protecting it. The Global North assumption that only they have the answer to our climate and ecological problems betrays a hubris that can be backed only by a belief in humanist evolution and its hierarchy of civilizations. Their claim that indigenous people around the world are the ones responsible for the nature loss that is causing problems around the world is gross misinformation that conveniently hides the fact that most of the nature loss has been caused by the rampant industrialization that started in England in the 18th century and has gone unabated since then in a few countries. The climate crisis we are in has been entirely caused by the cumulative emissions of unbridled technological progress that the least technologically advanced cultures are not responsible for.
Adding to the hubris of proposing fake conservancy projects is the concomitant announcement of the New Deal for Nature along with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Fourth Industrial Revolution will not only require tons of additional energy and extraction of raw materials that will destroy nature even more but will also render the jobs of many people obsolete. This is what Klaus Schwab, the founder, and director of the World Economic Forum, the proponent of the Great Reset says about it in his book The Great Reset and COVID 19:
Indeed, automation technologies are particularly well suited to a world in which human beings can’t get too close to each other or are willing to reduce their interactions. Our lingering and possibly lasting fear of being infected with a virus (COVID 19 or another) will thus speed the relentless march of automation, particularly in the fields most susceptible to automation.
In 2016 two academics from Oxford University concluded that up to 86% of jobs in restaurants, 75% of jobs in retail, and 59% of jobs in entertainment could be automatized by 2035. These 3 industries are among those hardest hit by the pandemic and in which automating for reasons of health and cleanliness will be a necessity that in turn will further accelerate the transition towards more tech and more digital.
The combination of the New Deal for Nature that will displace many people using the façade of conservation, plus the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s desire to automate most service jobs, will leave millions of people without means of survival. Schwab anticipates a growth in inequality that will have to be dealt with, though he doesn’t explain how. He instead promises a brave new world in which the people with a good technological education will thrive and consumers will have a cheaper and endless new variety of gadgets to be entertained with.
Schwab doesn’t explain how these people are going to be able to pay for all these wonderful gadgets without jobs and how the post-Great Reset world will deal with them. Technology jobs will employ fewer and fewer people, which will cause more inequality. The financial side of the Great Reset proposes a change in banking that will get rid of cash and implement a basic income scheme for all people. This sounds quite wonderful but the Great Reset proponents aren’t explaining how is our present world, economically bruised by the pandemic’s lockdowns, going to magically fund this universal basic income. The economies of the Third World have been greatly affected by the lockdowns with unemployment and debt soaring, and even the rich Global North is suffering.
The Great Reset projects imply the alienation of big parts of the world population, most of them in the Global South, most of them brown. For evolutionary humanists, the Great Reset presents the opportunity to fulfill Julian Huxley’s dream of modifying public opinion about ethics so that the public consensus has no qualms to accept technology-driven eugenics and take over the responsibility of directing human evolution.
From an evolutionary point of view, we find ourselves in a very strange situation. The systems of the Earth essential for our survival are exponentially degrading, much faster than any climate model could have predicted. The already triggered feedback mechanisms will increase the exponential curve of climate calamity and quite soon render our formerly benign planet completely hostile to our survival.
The survival of the fittest implies that the elite fit group should understand the reality that our species’ actions have caused to the Earth’s systems and the trouble this poses for the survival of the species. The Great Reset’s proposals for a Fourth Industrial Revolution betray a huge cognitive dissonance in the minds of the Great Reset’s proponents that is completely incongruent with a claim to a superior knowledge that gives them the right to dictate the future of the world’s population.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is based on the idea that more technology will fix everything, even when it was our overuse of technology and industry that has caused our current problems. A strategy of adding fire to the fire of our climate woes by professing a blind faith in technology is not conducive for survival. Survival implies acknowledging the real information from your environment, thereby enabling a possible adaptation. The Great Reset resorts instead to a gross manipulation of the truth replaced by rosy scenarios that prioritize their profits to the detriment of survival.
Strangely enough, the people considered the most unfit, are the ones that understand true sustainability and can see the handwriting on the wall that our environment, the Earth’s systems, are signaling to us. These are the people that the New Deal for Nature blames for the ecological and climate problem, the people who have not yet even joined the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd industrial revolutions, the people who live simpler technological lives but who end up being the fittest to survive at this climate disaster juncture.
If the survival of the fittest theory is supposed to give these elites an advantage to survive, how come the self-appointed overly fit refuse to face the facts and science showing the precariousness of our current situation? Why do they instead choose a convenient set of limited facts to create a misleading picture for a future that is impossible?
