09/16/97 2:21 PM It is the nature of humaness to both know the self.

Knowing the self involves the experience of unity of consciousness. Unity of consciousness, in turn, involves awareness of the connectivity of all of nature, both the inorganics forms of galaxies, stars, planets, mountains, lakes, oceans, rivers and deserts as well as plants and animals. There is a growing consensus among intellectuals, writers and academicians, that a cultural transformation is immanent. It originates in a view of reality involving the unity of the human psyche with nature and the long evolutionary development of the cosmos. It is comparable in scale if not more sweeping in its nature than the cultural transformations that are identified with the rise of the first great civilizations that occured with the development by human populations of agriculture and the transformation from hunting/gathering societies and belief systems. The cultural transformation discussed by late twentieth century writers is also comparable to the cultual change that historians and cultural anthropologists and others associate with the emergence of the industrial age and industrial culture. A thorough study of the historical record with regard to human cultures suggests that cultural evolution occurs in a similar fashion in many respects to the evolutionary development of biological beings. Biology uses the term species to delineate a whole population of organisms with a shared genetic heritage as defined by the number of chromosomes in the cell nuclei of the memebers of the species. It is proposed here that human cultures embody many of the characteristicis that are employed in biology to organize, simplify, systematize and understand the complexity of the species. In biology the simplification that permits understanding of the complexity, has resulted from the discovery that all plants and animals share the use of chemical entities known as chromosomes and genes and that the genes of all living organisms utilize the

chemical known as deoxyribonucleic acid. Further, the DNA of all living orgamisms is made of of complex assemblages of the same four elemental bases, guanine, adenine, cytosine and a fourth. It is proposed here that human cultures, like biological species also evolve by transmutation like developments but rather than originating as chemical trasnmutations of the genetic material, cultural species originate in technological transmutations. In this respect, the technological patterns adopted by human societiescultures, are equivalent to the genetic patterns that underlie the biological nature of organic species. It is also proposed that the first human cultures, began with technologies that utilized naturally available implements with a minimum of human fabrication required. Stone tools used for hunting animals and gathering planst are examples. Early human cultures appear to have learned how to shape rocks to improve their utility. Later human cultures learned to cultivate crop plants, then to utilize the chemical energy contained in fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. As in biology, evolution developments rely on survival advantages due to patterns of conduct endowed in the various species. A cultural species becomes extinct if its pattern of behaviour, fails to provide what its members need for survival. Study of the survival needs of cultural species reveals that the survival needs are many but can generally be specified in terms of food, water, shelter, clothing, educationm transportation, health care etc - all of which must be in harmony with the life principle rather than the death principle for the species to survive. The cultural species associated with the fossil fuel/industrial age has been patterned on behaviors that originate with the scientific study of the nature of matter and the technology that developed from an understanding of how to utilize the chemical energy contained in fossil fuels.

It is generally recognized that the fossil fuel based technome, has lead to such a large expansion of human population, that it has reached a point where profound changes in the planetary life support systems are inevitable and that the changes are of such a scale that the human species and other species faces extinction or at least that continued proliferation of the fossil fuel based technological pattern of conduct will inevitably lead to its extinction as a cultural species. Human societies of the past have developed and perfected mutant cultural/technological forms that have survived by adaptions that have improved the survival advantages in their patterns of conduct. Growing realizations of the limitations of the fossil fuel-industrial cultural patterns, have already resulted in the emergence of mutant cultural forms that are internally patterns by design to respond to the characteristics of the fossil fuel-industrial technome which make its extinction inevitable. There are few if any observers of technological forms (technomes) whod be brave enough to predict that the industrial technome can continue to proliferate. The burning of fossil fuels results in changes in the chemical constitution of the Earths atmosphere which plants and animals depend on for survival. Combustion of fossil fuels results in the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Realization of the inevitable limitation of the industrial-fossil fuel technome has already given rise to a variety of mutant technomes that are internally designed to minimize changes in the life support systems of the planet - its atmosphere, its oceans, water supplies and soils. Earlier human technomes were based on a scientific and technological knowledge base of first rock and masonery, then crop plants and farmings, then fossil fuels and mechanizal engineering. A new science began when Max Planck in Germany discovered quantum effects in the study of the nature of black body radiation. A new physics and new technologies have already emerged from the study of the microscopic structure of matters just a new sciences and technologies emerged from the study of rocks, crop plants, and fossil fuels which gave rise to the previous

great human technomes and culturons. The new physics has given rise to technologies that can be described as electronic and electrical. Some examples of the technologies that have emerged with the new science are radio and television broadcasting, telecomunications, comuters and the internet. All rely on the scientific knowledge associated with radiation and with the hidden atomic structure of matter. The technologies of the science that forms the base of the fossil fuel-industrial technome include the internal combustion engine that remains the core of the industrial technome in the form the automobile which consumes fossil fuel.