The Strange Future of Human Evolution

By: Greg Schmalzel

What if I told you… Human evolution isn’t over?

Not even close.

Right now — as you scroll, click, and watch this video — something strange is happening. Something bigger than any one of us. While we are still evolving biologically very slowly, we’re also evolving socially, culturally, technologically… and possibly into something entirely new.

Throughout Earth’s history, life has reinvented itself — both gradually, and in massive, game-changing leaps. Single cells teaming up to form multicellular organisms. Ant colonies acting like one super-intelligent body. Tiny strands of chemicals becoming self-replicating code. These weren’t simple changes — they were revolutions in the way information is stored, shared, and organized.

And now? All signs point to another leap and this one is centered around us.

We’re becoming more connected than ever — wired together through culture, data, algorithms, and shared consciousness. We’re building systems that think faster than we can. We are specializing, cooperating, syncing — just like the cells in your body evolved to do.

So what’s really going on?

This will be a little more speculative than most of my videos. But, it’s all grounded in what we have already observed in the biological world around us. So let’s think about how evolution’s next chapter might already be unfolding — and why the future of humanity might not look so human at all.

Today, we’re going deep.

Watch the full YouTube video HERE.

Major Evolutionary Transitions

To understand where we’re headed, we need to understand how life has changed in the plast.
I made an entire video looking at these changes you can watch HERE. But I’ll briefly summarize it here to catch us all up.

Evolution isn’t always gradual — it’s marked by massive leaps called Major Evolutionary Transitions, as described by biologists John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry. These are moments when life redefines how it stores information, reproduces, or cooperates.

From self-replicating molecules to genomes, from single cells to multicellular organisms, and from animals to societies and cultures — each leap followed the same pattern: independent units come together, specialize, and create something greater than the sum of their parts.

At the heart of every leap? A new way to share information — chemical, genetic, neural, cultural… and now, digital. The flow of information is faster, more global, and more integrated than ever.

That’s why some scientists believe we’re entering another major transition — one where humans, technology, and culture are converging into a new kind of superorganism. And this time, the leap might happen in our lifetimes — with us inside it.

Humanity’s Interconnected Nervous System

Zoom out far enough, and humanity starts to resemble something beyond a crowd — more like a neural network, a planetary-scale brain. Every text, video call, meme, and algorithm is a connection point, wiring us together into an increasingly synchronized system.

Just like neurons in a brain, our individual actions form emergent patterns of communication, memory, and reaction. The internet — powered by AI, social media, and real-time data — isn’t just a tool anymore. It’s becoming a kind of global nervous system, sensing, adapting, and learning.

No one controls it fully. No one designs the thoughts. But the more we connect, the more this system begins to behave like something greater than the sum of its parts. And in this new mind, we’re not just participants — we’re the neurons.

Division of Labor and the Cultural Immune System

A key sign that life is leveling up is the emergence of division of labor. Just as cells in multicellular organisms specialize — skin, blood, neurons — humans, too, have evolved into a species of specialists. From the Neolithic Revolution onward, food surpluses allowed people to focus on specific roles: builders, weavers, priests, soldiers. Today, that interdependence has scaled globally. For the most part, no one person can build a smartphone or grow all their food alone — we rely on a vast web of coordination.

And like any complex organism, this human superorganism requires an immune system — not just a biological, but a cultural one. Disease has long been one of evolution’s most consistent threats. Our response has been twofold:

• Social-psychological defenses, like the emotion of disgust, help us avoid contaminants and strangers who might carry disease.

• Material defenses, from fire and soap to vaccines and sanitation systems, physically block or destroy pathogens.

Together, these form our cultural immune system (CIS) — a distributed, evolving defense mechanism. Other superorganism-like species, like ants and bees, have evolved similar systems. Their colonies use behavioral tactics and antimicrobial substances to protect themselves, and over time, this has even reduced their reliance on individual immune responses.

In humans, the CIS has grown from instincts and rituals into science, public health infrastructure, and digital hygiene. Like in any organism, the suppression of internal threats — be they viruses, misinformation, or social instability — is a prerequisite for larger-scale integration.

If we are indeed becoming a global superorganism, then what we’re seeing isn’t just social complexity — it’s evolutionary structure taking shape. And just like the body has immune cells and circulation and signaling systems, humanity is beginning to exhibit these same functions at planetary scale.

The next question is: why do these transitions happen at all? And for that, we turn to multilevel selection theory — the evolutionary engine behind each leap.

Multilevel Selection

At the heart of every major evolutionary transition is a shift in the level where natural selection operates. Evolution doesn’t just act on individuals — it can act on groups, and even groups of groups, when cooperation increases and internal conflict is reduced.

This idea, known as multilevel selection, helps explain how once-competing entities — genes, cells, or individuals — began to function as cohesive wholes. Researchers like David Sloan Wilson argue that morality, social norms, and institutions evolved to suppress selfish behavior, allowing group-level success to outcompete individual advantage.

Human civilization may already be a proto-organism, with systems like healthcare, food distribution, and communication networks acting as mechanisms of coordination and conflict suppression. If selection pressures continue to favor large-scale cooperation, we may be moving toward a planetary superorganism.

But that future isn’t guaranteed. Multilevel selection can collapse if internal division outweighs collective unity. The question isn’t just whether this transition is happening — it’s whether we can guide it… and whether we should.

The Next Transition

For humanity to fully transition into a global superorganism, we must build systems that promote interdependence, suppress internal conflict, and coordinate at a planetary scale. It would mean functioning like a body — with people as specialized cells, working in sync toward collective survival and adaptation.

But this path isn’t guaranteed, and it comes with serious risks. Integration means giving up autonomy — not just personally, but culturally and politically. It requires trust in shared systems, which are already under strain from polarization, inequality, and disinformation. We’re building the structure of unity, yet still acting like rival tribes.

The dangers are real:

• Systemic fragility: In a deeply connected world, failure in one system (energy, finance, communication) can cascade globally.

• Informational capture: If a few entities control the flow of information, the entire system could become misaligned or manipulated.

• Value lock-in: Early choices — in law, tech, or culture — could become permanent, even if they no longer serve us.

• Irreversibility: Like cells in a body or ants in a colony, once integrated, we may lose the ability to return to a more independent form.

If we get it wrong, we might build a system we can’t escape — one where unity replaces flexibility, and failure becomes catastrophic. But if we get it right, this could be life’s greatest leap yet — and for the first time in evolutionary history, a transition we consciously choose.

Sources:

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