Panmobilism and optimism in teilhardian humanism

6.3. The Internet as a Noospherical effect

Crucial to the process of human evolution, that is, to progress, is, in Teilhard's view, scientific research. In the past such investigations were isolated, sometimes no more than the hobbies of individuals. He says:

Today we find the reverse: research students are numbered in the hundreds of thousands-soon to be millions-and they are no longer distributed superficially and at random over the globe, but are functionally linked together in a vast organic system that will remain in the future indispensable to the life of the community.^'

One can't but think of today's "Internet," yet this was written forty-six years ago before the Internet came into existence. Indeed, Teilhard de Chardin was acquainted with the early forms of the key element in that "organic system." He writes,

And here I am thinking of those astonishing electronic machines (the starting-point and hope of the young science of cybernetics), by which our mental capacity to calculate and combine is reinforced and multiplied by the process and to a degree that herald as astonishing advances in this direction as those that optical science has already produced for our power of vision.²

Obviously Teilhard de Chardin had only a faint hint as to what was actually to occur. As far as the ultimate future is concerned, if evolution does in fact reach a final stage it will be the self-subsistent centre and absolutely final principle of irreversibility and personalisation: the one and only true Omega. As such, evolution finds its fulfillment only in the Omega point, point of universal convergence. It is this Omega point, as the Logos of Heraclitus, that harmonizes the forces of diversion and that gives

^I Pierre Teilhard de Chardin quoted by Phillip J. Cunningham, Teilhard de Chardin and the Noosphere, in http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/I997/mar/cunning.html.

² Id.

meaning to evolution in such a way that the cosmos is not gathering itself in a way that is haphazard, but in a way that is orderly, under the influence of the Omega point. It is this principle that inspires us with love, a love that is based on the giving of the self for the happiness of the other. It is only loves that unifies us by bringing us together despite our differences, despite our specificities. Love accepts diversity and does not seek unification but union. Through love, peoples, civilizations and cultures are able to come together to build the civilization of the universal.

In this way, evolution is meaningless if it does not aim at reaching the Omega point. In this way, evolution is impossible because love alone moves us to harmony, to communion and to solidarity. This is why Teilhard de Chardin exhorts humanity to build the earth by spiritualizing it with love. Love is the leit motive that pushes man towards woman and towards fellowman. The earth will be a better place to live in only when the force of love will surpass the forces of divergence, hatred and disorder. In this third millennium where conflicts are still the living bread of some peoples in some parts of the world, much still needs to be done. We need a new form of conviviality that takes into account the needs of the poorest and the weakest peoples in the planet, while at the same time controlling the destructive and exploitative acts of the richest and the strongest.