Our species evolved in large part through natural selection, but it is no longer the main form of evolution for human beings.  Nonetheless, we are evolving.

 

As we evolve, our mode of evolution is also evolving.  This "meta-evolution" has taken us from creatures that evolved primarily through natural selection to creatures that now evolve in large part through innovations to symbol systems such as law, economics, and politics.  These innovations are proposed by individuals and then adopted by larger groups.  

 

The moment the software of symbolic thinking became more important than the biological hardware that supports it, we moved beyond the Darwinian mode.  But there are still residual aspects of natural selection within our present human practice.

 

The evolutionary challenge that we presently face is this:  despite the fact that society now evolves symbolically, many of us are stuck in the Darwinian competitiveness of attempting to survive, as well as we can, as individuals.  

 

Some do this by manipulating the very symbol systems that define our new evolutionary mode, misusing them for their own individual benefit – a process that Dr. King has called "survival of the slickest."  Social Darwinism is an attempt by these slick ones to rationalize and justify their behavior.

 

Others live within the symbolic web woven by this first, rather diabolical, group, as if it were a fixed, given natural context, similar to the actual natural context within which our pre-human ancestors played out the drama of Darwinian competition.  This more sheep-like group complements and enables the more diabolical group.  This complementarity is the root cause of domination hierarchies.

 

What is missing in this arrangement is the conscious exercise of citizenship through individuals putting forward ideas that can move our symbolically-organized systems forward, in the hope that those ideas will be resonant with the needs of their communities, and will therefore be adopted by them.  That is the only mode that is neither devil nor sheep, neither a victim nor an executioner.

 

For the sheep, punishments and rewards dispensed by the devils based upon the sheeps' behavior take the place of the pre-human natural (and therefore not alterable by individuals) conditions that punished or rewarded certain behavioral traits.  Threats to the individual and to its immediate network of support have the effect of narrowing the sense of identity and therefore reducing the ability of individuals to operate in the mode of activist citizenship, which requires identification with the larger community.  Such individually-focused threats and punishments form the core of the classic "divide and conquer" approach to domination.  Internal domination hierarchies within movements, (e.g., gender hierarchies within unions), increase susceptibility to that approach by narrowing identity to one's particular group within the internal hierarchy.

 

If a movement's culture can expand individual identity into more inclusive communal and biological realms, this will ultimately lead to an identification with the Infinite and the Eternal (as the limiting case of a "larger community"), and therefore to a state that is usually described as spiritual.  In such a state, the individual cares more about the integrity and consistency of its relationship to the All, as expressed through its relationship to the larger community (as a concrete universal), than about the threats and rewards offered by the "devilish" group's control systems.  

 

Once such a "movement identity" has been attained, the focus of individuals is on the integrity of their own relationships, and that integrity is viewed as being its own reward.  Because this reward (for integrity) does not depend upon the ultimate outcome of the struggle, the effect of any setbacks on the morale of the movement is diminished, resulting in a lessened tendency toward movement entropy in the face of attacks from dominating groups.  In this situation, people stop thinking in terms of the "high cost of altruism," because action on behalf of the larger community is seen as part of preserving one's own integrity, which in turn is understood to be identical with one's being.  Since nothing is more fundamental to one's interests than one's own being, self-interest and action on behalf of the larger community are no longer perceived as being in conflict, even in the face of individual punishments or rewards intended to prevent such action.

 

Such spiritual traits were notably visible in the movement led by Ghandi for Indian self-determination (swaraj).  Such traits are extremely difficult to develop, both personally and within a movement, but Gandhi's movement proved that it was possible to develop them to a very high degree.