Excerpts from Introduction to Third Phase Transition: Solving The Anthropocene Crisis

On human nature and free will

“[P]ersonal will, as an isolated matter, does not exist. It never has. It never will. It should be a no-brainer, that desire produced within and executed by an isolated brain, is a pure abstraction from reality.

The human brain is a biological organ, firmly entrenched behind a thick skull within the individual body. It is stimulated through five bodily senses, capable of filtering into it a quite restricted range of external impressions. The human mind develops through this organ. But it is extraordinarily impotent, taken in isolation, being the prime cooperative organ of the body. It evolves human consciousness only within the socially progressing relations of the cooperative species. Posing the so-called body-mind problem, or the question of free will, on any other footing than this elementary one, is absolute nonsense and produces nothing else.”

“Natural history has reached a point, where the question of human will might and must be posed seriously as a scientific problem. It cannot be posed as a simple research question, but rather as a problem-complex-hypothesis. Our species has reached global impact, of a magnitude that trumps earth system balances. This result is produced through abundantly developing means of cooperation. The design and use of these means are biased and distorted, fitting the unsustainable and destructive social interests of a small human minority, threatening to end in global catastrophe. So far, an overwhelming human majority remains socially paralysed. In short, class society still obstructs a solution to the Anthropocene crisis. Tough insight to reach, orient within, and decide upon! But such has become the conditions of free will.”

“The questions are: Do we want to use this power for constructive ends, solving the Anthropocene crisis in saving biodiversity at Planet Earth and reaching cooperative abundance within humanity? Are we ready to face the real preconditions for doing so, by commonly taking the challenge of the third phase transition? Has our understanding become mature, that this is incompatible with class society and perpetuation of its linear metabolism? It is into this human-planetary level that the possibility of exerting free will has moved. It is there that it is evolving. That fact is not random. And it is testable. The choice is not easy to exert in practice. But it is essentially free. What is required is that the options, and their concrete conditions, start to clarify themselves to all and sundry.”

“Our species, the only one capable of translating natural regularities, into information for proper interaction, has got a choice to make. Free will is only free in the meaning of choosing the right thing, in a situation where the options become so clear that it can be done, at exactly the very level of human association where the opportunity presents itself. The Anthropocene crisis presents us with a choice, that is so clear and so great, that united will needs to set free human cooperation in globally principled association. This corresponds to overall realisation of human nature – in both the mental and the practically active sense of the word.”

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