In this talk, Michael explores how converging crises catalyze organizational transformations biologists have come to call "evolutionary transitions in individuality." As electronic media and ecological catastrophe converge to unify individuals in a new planetary culture and identity, we can look back to the emergence of multicellularity, the advent of social behavior, and the appearance of syntactic language (all of which have occurred numerous times in separate groups of organisms) for insight on how humankind will make it through our own apocalyptic era.

Watch the first ten minutes of this talk:
bit.ly/transitionvideo

NOTE – If you want an immediate feeling of the planetary scale of which our species is increasingly aware, watch this time-lapse video from the International Space Station's flyover of the Western Hemisphere:
bit.ly/flyovervideo

Talk delivered and recorded on 3 September 2011
at Red Lightning Camp, Burning Man / Black Rock City, NV