Enter Homo Integrans
I would like to suggest that homo sapiens is giving way to a new kind of human.
Homo sapiens has been an evolutionary phase, an experiment that brought great knowledge, creativity and expansion of possibilities to planet Earth. This period has also created separation, disconnection, and a lot of destruction. The stressors that humanity has brought upon itself in the Anthropocene, have become the breeding ground of a new species - one in tune with nature, energizing the emotions and mind with abundance and embodying the quantum and cosmic aspects of existence.
The latin word integro refers to restoration, integration and renewal. Thus, homo integrans restores what has been lost, fully integrates what has been learned and welcomes new chapters that bring deep renewal into the human narrative.
Restoration
Around the world animist cultures once prevailed in the human realm. It has been well documented that many of these lived (and still live) in right relationship with the natural world. The stone people, the plant people, those that slither or crawl, the 4 legged, the 2 legged, the finned, the furred and the feathered... all an animate part of the natural world. To be in right relationship is to be in a co-creative relationship with other animate members of the whole in a way that honors their essential nature.
Homo sapiens has been an experiment, a successful acrobatic stretch of the emotional and mental body. We have refined the rational mind, and manifested what is possible when self expression, commitment and curiosity work together.
But we have become enamored by these new faculties and possibilities, at the expense of other ways of sensing and responding and being in the world. This myopia is what is at the heart of the polycrisis, in which we have lost this sense of right relationship.
Homo integrans first recognizes that it is time to restore right relationship with the natural world.
Integration
When messy and painful learning has taken place, the results and methods are often discarded completely. And so the pendulum swings from one extreme to another as history marches forward. In order to truly graduate from the memetic evolutionary stage that we have called homo sapiens, its lessons must be fully integrated. When this integration is built on the solid foundation of right relationships, then it is centered around a shift from scarcity to abundance. How, then, might we engage with the world as mental-emotional beings from an embodied mindset of abundance?
How would it look if self love overflowed into others, nourishing communities whose social fiber is woven by loving care? What if joyful expression overflowed into inspiring collective purposes? When will our inner clocks pour into the synchronous rhythm of our heart-felt common goals? Why not allow generous curiosity to take knowledge where it is most needed openly and freely? Might abundant self understanding pour into a co-inclusive shared reality?
Homo integrans is ready to bring the abundance and vitality of life into the social, emotional, mental realm which humanity stewards on this planet.
Renewal
Gaia is experiencing a deep renewal that goes beyond restoration and integration. When the urgency of survival and scarcity subsides, and spacious navigation of emotions and concepts sets in, then subtler forms of sensing and responding come into our awareness. The human vessel has the potential to sense and respond to the dynamics of entrainment, resonance, entanglement, superposition and beyond. It is by renewing our sense of who we are that we can mold these subtler layers of existence to co-create the deepest forms of renewal with Gaia, the ones that lead to the futures that are most beneficial to all beings.
In addition to living abundantly in the physical, biological and social realms of reality, homo integrans is ready to explore, contribute and co-create from subtler layers.
What might the world become if we start to co-create the ways of homo integrans?
If you also want to exploring the world of homo integrans, consider joining my exploration here.
Can we rescue human evolution from this arc?