Cultural evolution, has been progressing rapidly, and has brought man to many major turning points in civilization, such as "the adoption of upright posture, early man's first use of tools, the development of language, culture as an adaptive strategy, food sharing, food production, social stratification, urbanization, state organization, and now industrialization. All of these changes have been decisive ones - crucial developments with critical implications for the future. However, industrialization is a crisis in the true medical sense. If for a moment we consider civilization a disease, then at this point the patient will either recover or die - as a species and as a cultural type." (Bodley p. 2) Bodley writes that man has culturally evolved in a wide variety of ways, however that evolution is a dangerous one. Bodley writes that the world is in danger right now, due to our civilization, and that we are facing a point and time where we are on the brink of world destruction. .
"Many of the most significant technological innovations, including antibiotics, TV, computers, nuclear energy, mass produced organic compounds, and jet propulsion have arrived within the past 25 years." (Bodley p. 3) Bodley writes that our generation is experiencing the fastest most profound changes that humankind has ever seen, and we are not yet prepared to deal with the impact of such rapid change. There is a concern that technology is advancing at such an increased rate that we do not have time to understand the consequences of such actions that we do take. Man has made an impact on the world like no other species on the earth, and as rapidly as we are changing ourselves, the geological world is changing as well.
It is disturbing, as Bodley writes, that we have such an impact on the earth. Our massive industrialization has become a global process that has either destroyed or transformed many previous cultural adaptations and has given us the power to not only bring about our own extinction as a species, but also to speed the extinction of many other species and to change the most basic biological and geological processes of the earth as well.
