Calousia is important for many reasons.
“Man seems to be entering one of the major crises of his career.. he is also groping toward a new view of his office in the scheme of things... Unfortunately he may possibly take too long to learn what it is that he really want to do with himself... Nothing can save him but a new vision...”
-W. Olaf Stapeldon, Last and First Man (1)

Its very existence therefore emphasizes that the process we’re in is not one of endless change, of perhaps cycles of civilizations rising and falling, but one featuring a natural high endpoint. In so doing, it clarifies the major direction of humanity.

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Calousians, therefore, provide themselves with the most advantageous physical and mental capacities and the best environment and living conditions. Regarding the latter, although planetary conditions beyond their compound may be extreme and difficult, Calousians assure themselves of most attractive and comfortable surroundings.

Only Calousian knowledge can equip us to choose the best for ourselves.

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It is enough now to know that the universe, by making us true culture-bearers, has placed us inescapably within that Calousian mold, wherein the more our powers grow, the more closely it shapes us into true Calousians. We also know, as mentioned, that reaching Calousia fulfills our potential and represents our mature state. It’s as if the universe were testing us, to see if we have what it takes to succeed in completing ourselves.

In the following paragraphs, we will give more reasons why Calousia is important. But understanding the large picture is what matters, not Calousian details. We needn’t see Calousia clearly to recognize its profound significance for mankind.

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Note also that we needn’t wait until we arrive at Calousia to enjoy its benefits, but can enjoy ever more of them as we progress. We can, for example, look forward to better health, a longer fit life of increasing capacities, a richer, more comfortable and more advantaged life, more experiences in different places, and a greater understanding of ourselves and our universe.

Now, since the universe places us in a process and condition that offers us this higher kind of existence, this mature state, then isn’t it really also giving us the goal of achieving it, if we can?

And even more: if we attempt to see the human condition in a universal context, then don’t all our other purposes, however important they may seem up close, recede in significance? Since this is so, doesn’t our perception of Calousia expand from it being just another goal of humanity to become our primary goal? In this larger perspective, isn’t reaching our mature state humanity’s primary purpose? Why should we settle for anything less? (2)

Why should reaching Calousia
Be mankind’s primary endeavor?
Because striving for Calousia
Is the only way
Humanity can fulfill its highest potential;
Because straining to be all we can be
Is the only way we humans
Can be all we can be.
Only through such effort
Can we find out
How great we can be.
The best possible form or forms,
The best possible existence
In the best possible environment.
It is because these highest goods exist
That humanity must search for them.
It is because these highest goods are attainable
That humanity must attempt to attain them.
And there is more.

Let us find the role
That high-capacity conscious intelligence should play
In the evolving universe of mass-energy-space and time.
Let us explore the real limits
To the powers that high-capacity beings
Can exercise upon an evolving universe,
For only then will we discover
Not just the true potential range of our powers,
And our own true fully-realized nature,
But our appropriate universal role.
Born of the universe,
Following the universal course to Calousia,
Surely it is humanity’s potential destiny
To become Calousian
And perhaps thereafter to participate
In the further evolution of the universe.

For all these reasons, then,
The very practical ones and the speculative ones,
Calousia is not just an important goal,
It is humanity’s primary goal.

Yes! We should get there if we can.
We are just the bud;
Calousia is the flower.

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Many people trying to understand humanity’s future seek answers in biological evolution. But this won’t work. Biological evolution is not without its influence, but unfortunately, it’s almost wholly negative. Its change-causing (i.e., environmental) factors can harm us. They can do so with asteroid disasters, disease, problems from excessive population, environmental degradation, etc.

Why can’t biological evolution improve us? Because, compared to our self-maturational cultural process, it’s far too slow. A biological advance, a mutation, might chance to improve one human. But to spread from that person by way of his or her children to the entire group would take many, many generations. Knowledge, by contrast, can grow and pass to others almost at once. The existence of Calousia makes it evident we participate primarily in a self-maturational process, not a biological one.

Historians and anthropologists have provided increasingly more detail about our past, helping us understand it ever better. But now, aware of the process we’re in and its potential Calousian goal, we begin to see the whole other side of the process. It’s as though up to now we could see only half the picture, only the past. But now we see the other half, too, or an outline of it. Therefore, for the first time we humans can grasp the entire maturational process.

And this makes a big difference. It helps us understand a little better our fast-changing, apparently chaotic world today. It’s a world of six billion of us struggling to make a living, providing goods or services, each of us with different knowledge in our heads, different cultures, backgrounds and advantages, trying to make the best of what we have. And often, what’s best for one person, works to the disadvantage of another. No wonder all this seething activity appears chaotic and random!

But now we also see that the apparent chaos has, or can have, an underlying order. We see where we are, where we fit, in humanity’s great cavalcade. We realize that activities all around the globe reflect our self-developmental process with all its advances and set-backs. We see rapid changes in our sci-tech, economy, society, environment and attitudes. New knowledge is being discovered and is creating new powers and people everywhere are trying to adjust to these new forces and to the new conditions they create. We see ourselves progressing, and progressing swiftly now. We realize the present is not a destination of particular significance, or just a strange careening from the recent past, but is merely a logical way-station on the road to a potential Calousian future.

We understand also that all humans share the same high potential future and so all of us bear the same responsibility to create it. And this is something new in human affairs. And it’s important. It’s a crucial step to our succeeding. Remember, reaching Calousia is difficult, (see What is Calousia?) and it’s near impossible if we don’t know where we’re going. And up to now, we haven’t known. So we have assumed no sense of urgency. We haven’t committed to the task, or approached it in a logical way, nor have we organized or cooperated as we must. But now that Calousia reveals our true position and the challenge ahead of us, our future course becomes much clearer and we are much more likely to take the necessary steps to succeed.

Cultures and nations have been losing control over their domains as an increasing number of problems - security, crime, pollution, activities of international corporations, etc. – require international solutions. Calousian existence contributes to this decrease in primacy. It makes plain that though cultures and nations are important, they are not primary for humanity. Calousia is, and the influence of these other entities must naturally endure a further reduction under the pressure of humanity’s growing powers.

Being aware that reaching Calousian is our primary task considerably influences our other thoughts and activities. It colors our view of society, population size, education, the environment, the economy, space exploration, the activities of government, corporations, and much else. It helps shape views on what is important and what is not. Being aware of the existence of Calousia not only reveals the best possible future ahead of us, but it profoundly changes our view of the present. In fact, the sum of these changes amounts to a profound change in perspective.

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We have tended to evaluate ourselves in relation to other Earthly species and in relation to our evolutionary origins from more humble creatures. Therefore, we have tended to see ourselves not only as superior, but as finished, as complete, as beings in final form. Perhaps Australopithecus and Homo erectus thought the same. As long as we evaluate ourselves with these references, this assumption of superiority makes some sense. But when we become aware of Calousia, this picture of ourselves changes profoundly. In this larger perspective, we see that potential mature state ahead of us and get an inkling of that transformation ahead of us. And we realize something new: We are undergoing development. Therefore we are beings-in-transition, unfinished beings.

Is Calousia a kind of magnetic end-state that pulls us onward?
No. It has no such power.

Must our developmental process, by its nature, continue to Calousia? No. We are just offered the opportunity.

Will the universe help us advance?
Perhaps. Calousians from afar might contact us and give us guidance. But we shouldn’t count on it. We cannot depend upon extraterrestrial assistance. After all, we may be the first to reach Calousia (or the first reasonably nearby).

Ours is a self-developmental process. Attaining Calousia is something we must do for ourselves. This means we are self-developing beings.

And because our growing knowledge transforms how we live - remember how our ancestral hunt-and-gatherers lived - and because it increasingly allows us to make advantageous changes in our bodies, we find that we participate in a self-transforming process. So we not just self-developing beings. We are self-transforming beings. And just as the oak is chiefly characterized not by its acorn or sapling state, but by its great mature state, and the butterfly not by its caterpillar or pupa state, but by its beautiful soaring state, so we humans are most characterized not by our past and present states, but by our potential future state.

It is our future maturity, that full growth and development of ourselves, far more than our past or present condition, that not just defines what we are, but that chiefly defines what we humans are. We are Pre-Calousians.

The downside is the realization we no longer see ourselves as the summit of creation. Because Calousia exists, we are just pre-Calousians. This seems to be one more in a chain of discoveries that diminishes us. The first struck in the 16th century when Copernicus removed Earth from the center of the Solar System and so dislodged us from the place of honor at the center of the universe. The second shock arrived in the mid-19th century when Darwin showed we evolved over great lengths of time from lesser animals. The third blow came in the late 1920’s when Hubble revealed that our Milky Way was not the whole universe, but just one of many galaxies, over a hundred billion of them, we now know. (3)

So, in spite of our strivings, and in spite of our real accomplishments, in the face of these realities, we seem, in the universal scheme of things, extraordinarily insignificant. And now Calousia shows we aren’t even fully developed yet.

If this stings, we can take great comfort from what the universe, by giving us our character and position, truly offers us. It has given us the capacity to grow in our powers, and in the use of our powers, so it has endowed us with the potential to become Calousian. More than that, it has given us the task of creating Calousians. And because this is extremely difficult, and, as will be shown below, the results possibly quite important, it’s clear we are given a great and high challenge, indeed. It is also a superlative test of our character, our capacity for cooperation, our drive and our persistence.

If our discoveries seem to reduce our significance in the universe, it’s important to realize that there’s a danger in our having too puny a view of ourselves. If we think too little of ourselves, we may judge our abilities smaller than they really are. Then we would shy away from huge tasks, which though difficult, must be accomplished to reach Calousia. And however much the above discoveries reduce our significance, still, let’s not forget the spectacular potential future ahead of us.

These thoughts should lead to a golden mean. On the one hand, we should not inflate ourselves and our position in the universe, to unrealistic and absurd proportions, but also, on the other hand, we should not underestimate ourselves, either, but should acknowledge our enormous capacity to grow and change, and to undertake great tasks, even tasks heretofore considered impossible.

So what does the awareness of Calousia reveal about humanity? It shows we are immature, unfinished beings, but also that we are self-developing and self-transforming beings, with all the responsibility that entails. We are not the end: we are the means to the end. And if we now appear less significant than we thought, it’s also true that the universe has given us an extraordinary challenge to fulfill, and that our potential is far greater than we thought or dared even to hope.

What kind of seed is the Earthly culture-bearer?
Is it the fertile seed of a fine Calousian plant?
Or is it somehow a defective seed
That during its early stages develops robustly
But then withers, dies, rots, and disintegrates,
Leaving no trace?
What kind of seed is the Earthly culture-Bearer?

Our potential is staggeringly great.
(We can grow to do any thing
Any intelligence can possibly do.)
We can grow to be starmakers,
Or at least the creators of starmakers.
Yes. We elaborations of the dust
Of one tiny planet
Orbiting one modest star
In one among myriad galaxies
Must awaken to the fact
That we are the potential creators of starmakers,
And our descendants will command greater powers
Than our ancestors attributed to gods.
Discoveries of recent years
Have profoundly altered our view
Of life and Earth and universe;
Now we must profoundly alter
Our view of ourselves.
Admittedly we are tiny, and frail, and short-lived,
And still weak in understanding.
But we have a unique gift:
The capacity to grow,
The inherent capacity to keep
Improving ourselves.
We have the capacity
To be a million-fold more
Than the best of us have ever been.
Those who dwell on our animal past,
And those who see only what we are today,
Miss the largest, most significant part of us.
It’s as though they see only our toes
And assume we are only toes.
They are blind to all the rest of us,
To all that astounding potential
Open to self-transforming culture-bearers.
Our significance is defined
Not only by our past and present,
But by our future as well.
In fact, it is chiefly defined
By our mature state.

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© Warren A. Musser 2005