The Human Journey is the journey of the human mind, how it developed, the world it made and the problems it solved, why and how it solved them; and how those solutions affected its evolution and subsequent decisions.

Modern discoveries have shown that qualities that we thought were the unique provenance of our human brain in fact belong to other species as well. Rats will sacrifice food to help other rats, even strangers. Bonobos show altruism and empathy, and a sense of fairness is seen in many animals.

Religion was thought to be the birthplace of morality but morality is now understood to be an innate characteristic in us and other animals. Virtues popularly expounded as providing ‘a ticket to heaven’ are now understood as evolutionary tools through which a necessary ‘selflessness’ is cultivated – a selflessness which enables a more comprehensive understanding to stabilize in the brain. Our spiritual leaders and prophets, although often misunderstood, all spoke of this. Now our neurobiologists and evolutionary psychologists do as well.

The human brain is flexible. It has enabled us to adapt, survive, and even flourish all over the world. We are the only animals that can do this. But this flexibility has a downside: we are easily manipulated and influenced by the group or culture in which we find ourselves. We are wired to be social animals, to connect beyond our immediate circle, but we too often limit ourselves to thinking in terms of “Us and Them.”

Again, this has been pointed out by spiritual leaders, thinkers and psychologists, and most succinctly recently by the scholar Idries Shah, for example, in the book Reflections:

“Tolerance and trying to understand others, until recently a luxury, has today become a necessity. This is because: unless we can realize that we and others are generally behaving as we do because of inculcated biases over which we have no control while we imagine that they are our own opinions, we might do something which would bring about the destruction of all of us. Then we will not have any time at all to learn whether tolerance is a good or a bad thing…

“People cannot handle prejudice because they try to deal with the symptom. Prejudice is the symptom, wrong assumptions are the cause. ‘Prejudice is the daughter of assumption.’”

Tolerance, farsightedness, liberality and humility can now be seen as vital necessities to our survival since we are all one, interdependent humanity. The dangers of ignoring this fact puts our modern civilization in jeopardy – just as it was 3,000 years ago when the first interdependent global economy collapsed, resulting in a Dark Age of more than three centuries.

Today, we have the information that can prevent what will otherwise be a far greater collapse. We understand that because 75% of a human infant’s brain develops outside in the world, our individual worlds are molded by our families and culture, creating very different worldviews. That is one reason why individuals in different cultures have such difficulty understanding each other: even their visual systems are not the same. Nevertheless, these differences can no longer stand in the way of solving today’s worldwide problems.

Today, thanks to advances in science and technology – studies in animal and primate behavior on the one hand and in psychology and neuroscience on the other – we can reassess what it means to be human. We humans inherited much, and the most important thing we inherit is the ability to go beyond our inheritance. This is what we have done throughout our journey. We can look to our history, from our origins in Africa, to our expansion throughout the world; to the bands, tribes, city-states and civilizations we developed throughout our time on earth. We can examine the rise, development, and rationale of our institutions: religious, political, economic, ecological, educational and humanitarian.

We face a world that is far different from our ancestor’s world. But we are equipped to understand and solve the problems of today, many of which are man-made, if we first understand who we are, and how the past has made us. We must know what is unchanging about human nature, and recognize what we can and must consciously change to participate in our own evolution.

Our human journey began more than 300,000 years ago, understanding it will lead us to the next step. One that is uniquely human.