Our Cosmic and Spiritual Destiny

What makes us humans are our aspirations, our awareness of ourselves as beings in the world' including our limitations, our failures and success, our ability for self-contemplation and reflection, and the desire to attempt to change what we see. This is what philosophy is. It makes us aware that we are not designed or made to remain "passive, inert players in the game of life." Our uniqueness as humans is the ability to shape our own destinies according to our desires-and genetic and other enhancement technologies provide further means for enhancing our own and our fellow humans and the environment and to a certain extend directing the destiny of the world itself making it for a better tomorrow. In this sense, enhancements and the desire to avail ourselves of them are an expression of our essential humanity. Thus the advent of new forms of human enhancement on our technological horizon does not, therefore, signify, as some have warned, the end of humanity. Rather, it is just the next step in a continuing process that human evolution, which stretches far back into the dim past and might hopefully continue into the future for many thousands of years to come. This is what this book titled, Our Cosmic and Spiritual Destiny: The Evolving Scientific and Philosophical Quest Based on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, is all about.
This study is also related to international relations in today's world and it is not a mere armchair philosophical treatise. It is concerned with today's world's current affairs and about billions of human lives. This study is concerned with relations across the boundaries of nation-states. It speaks of human relations beyond religious barriers and cultural differences. It addresses international political economy, global governance, intercultural relations, national and ethnic identities, foreign policy analysis, development studies, environment, international security, diplomacy, terrorism, media, social movement and more. In this sense, it is a multidisciplinary field of study. Thus it is related to a variety of approaches or methods such as analysis, statistics and comparative and historical analysis. In a globalized world today, it calls for promoting understanding and crafting policy in the field of science, religion, politics, economics and business to find creative solutions to meet the challenges of today and the future. This is the contribution of the author to humanity by this work.