You answer that yourself:
"we must engage our best minds to think about how we deal with the fallout from new knowledge, and construct a new and meaningful narrative that will bring us together."
A new religion?
Tezza,
Well it's easy to say, but I suspect more difficult to do - or it probably would have been done.
The difficulty is what narrative can science give?
"We are vessels for our genes?"
"We make enough progress so that the lucky few can leave the planet after terraforming Mars and escape earth's perilous future?"
"We take on our own evolution and see how far we can go?"
"We try to discover the Theory of Everything?"
"We try to make a paradise on Earth?"
The problem with these is that they are only unifying in as much as people decide to buy in to them. My current understanding of humanity tells me that this is entirely unlikely.
The other problem is that they are global drives and seem to offer little to the individual, who is unlikely to be the beneficiary of any of them. I suspect that none of them are powerful enough to unify and will not stop us raping each other.
The other point I would make is that if the drive to take control of our own evolution was strong enough then we would be doing it. Is Richard Dawkins religiously championing DIY evolution? If he isn't who will? It is something we do anyway, but is not a unifying narrative.
I don't see any narrative that will unite humanity except fear.
Sad to say, fear always works - when the planet is suffering the worst effects of Global Warming then we will unite against the common enemy. When a major pandemic reduces the population and ruins the world economy then we will unite (or jockey even more for power in the aftermath).
Sorry for being negative - just saying it as I see it.
The question then is:
"What will unite humanity in a common purpose?"
Blacknad.
