"It's impeded by the knowledge that human thought is not inherently good. It can be amazing, but it's prone to being corrupted - it's greedy and depraving. Huxley would argue that amongst those driven to seek and maintain power, there exists a predilection towards that state."

And this, to me, is at the heart of why we, as a species, are probably fucked. There's a narrative that all the ills of the world can be corrected if only we find the right political solution, and this narrative exists in all political orientations. (The same can be said for religious orientations.)

The narrative is something like, if only we can get this system in place, all will be OK. The reality is that we, as a species, as something in our DNA, have a tragic flaw, something out of balance.

In religion, perhaps that is what's meant by original sin; I don't know, not being religious nor have never studied the Bible or any other religious text, at least in detail.

My working theory is that we have just enough technical intelligence to ruin ourselves, but not enough social intelligence to save ourselves. Put another way, our intelligence allows us to build all these wonderful technologies, but our underlying, base greed and selfishness use these technologies in ways that are ultimately detrimental not only to ourselves as a species, but also to our environment. In other words, we do not have the social (call it spiritual if you like) intelligence as a species to balance our technical intelligence. We are a species run amok by an imbalance of attributes, and that will be our undoing.

And the various narratives, generally, don't address this because those controlling the narratives are not interested in the greater good. They're interested in adding another couple of zeroes to their net wealth.

So if my theory is somewhat accurate, the question is, what would bump our species into the next level of social consciousness, which would include environmental consciousness? Assuming this can't be addressed through an election or a change in fiscal policies, how can we address it? Or, here's the big question, can we actually consciously address it?

Or is it a change that must occur through evolution, which would make it more of a generational process? Will it be a slow evolution, or will it be forced upon us by a cataclysm?