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November 2nd, 2008 by Gary
Hipworth
In my scan of the newspapers, there were two items that show how insane our world is becoming:
Story number 1: Los Angeles. A blue car drives
past a couple walking along the street. The male who is walking with his girlfriend is fifteen years old and is
wearing a red shirt. One of the occupants of the car shoots the red-shirted male. He dies, on the footpath. This is
a youth gang incident. The blue shirt gang versus, you guessed it, the red-shirt gang.
Story number 2: A well-known Australian Rules footballer is convicted of assaulting a stranger in a bar, because
the stranger "looked at him".
We have to go back a long, long way to understand why it has come to this. Hang in there!
The first information revolution occurred some 4 billion years
ago, when the first life form discovered a way to
replicate itself, without making too many errors.
This "miracle", the miracle of the self replicating gene, maximises the number of copies of its own self-image,
whenever and wherever it can, without limit, ad infinitum.
Open-ended reproduction ability was necessary because living systems are fragile things, easily destroyed by
environmental accidents of time and place. To counter this reality, nature plays a numbers game, producing
enormously large numbers of individuals. This is called exponential growth.
Genes also developed special "tools" that
enabled them to replicate precisely and with "best fit" molecular structures. These tools were shared by all genes
and adaptation was initially a cooperative enterprise. However, genes learnt from the harsh reality of experience
that the good toolmaker gains little from its own invention.
Hence, genes encased their tools in a "box" ( ie cells). Genes had become selfish and life had become a competitive
process. Genes competed selfishly to perpetuate their own kind, and an incredible variety of more and more complex
life forms evolved.
As creatures got bigger and more and more
complex, the cost to the organism of repairs and "damage control" became too great. It made the creature less
competitive in other ways. Nature's novel solution was to create a class of cells with a programmed limit to life
ie body cells that are not integral to reproduction.
"Death" (of the throwaway body) was therefore invented as a cost-effective way to optimise the spread of genes.
Note however that the body that contained the genes was not aware of its own mortality.
The one constant embedded in this process was the self replicating selfish gene, concerned only with its own
survival and reproducing as many as possible of its own kind.
No one life form was dominant, but changing environmental conditions from time to time meant that only those life
forms that managed to adapt effectively to their new environment survived.
Nature has no favourites and killing another creature for survival purposes, particularly of different species, has been an integral part of life for the majority of the last 4 billion years.
Suddenly, about 3.9 billion years after
life on earth began, the second information revolution
occurred.
Less than one hundred thousand years ago, the human animal evolved language and the serial passage of time, which
enabled humans to predict events from experience.
The human brain is the most highly developed brain of all species in that it "models external reality" much better
than other species by using words, symbols and ideas in an integrated way and these symbols can be communicated by
way of the spoken and written word.
The human brain retains a memory of past experiences in time sequence and these memories enable individual and
collective learning to take place much more rapidly than random mutations of genes, particularly since the
invention of written language about six thousand years ago.
The human species continued to be as ruthless as other life forms had been and with far superior technology and
social organisation than other species, genocide and environmental damage and extinction of other species
accelerated and was an integral part of the human race's rise to world dominance.
But the human animal has paid a terrible price for its conceptual ability.
It is the first brain in history to foresee its
own end and the first brain to be aware of itself!
The conceptual, thinking process occurs in a "one thing after another" way; challenge, perception, recognition,
response (desire or avoid), knowledge, memory. The next challenge that is similar in kind to the previous one is
met with a conditioned response from past experience which has been committed to memory.
The human brain has been conditioned by the outer challenges of life and the inner challenge of the awareness of
its own death for thousands of years. It has been programmed by its society and its own experiences to react in
predictable and habitual ways, with a compulsive need for personal survival, permanence and
security.
How are humans self-aware?
The mind (thought) has invented a psychological entity -- the self, the ego, me, which acts on behalf of the
physical organism as the director, the coordinator, the thinker, the experiencer, the observer of sensory inputs
and challenges from the environment and chooses the appropriate response.
This entity is a changing "bundle of memories" that has no physical or concrete existence in reality. It can only
continue to exist in our memories and imagination because society and our fellow human beings go along with its
existence as though it were a fact. Why has this happened?
Firstly, we need to be reminded that before
humans came along with their conceptual ability, no creature had ever been aware that it existed.
To be aware that one exists, there must be an entity that "can stand back from itself" in an objective way and "be
aware" that it is alive, not dead. That is, it must have some objective information on its own "aliveness" and be
able to see this fact whilst also being alive at the same time.
The only way it is possible to remove oneself from the active present moment so that one can be aware of one's
existence is by the reference to the past knowledge of one's existence - which is stored in memory in time
sequence. This core memory of ourselves gets deeper over time as the "me" is built from each experience.
Without a memory of our past and without the mind inventing an imaginary thinker, there could be no
self-awareness. One could only be aware of what was happening in the present moment.
Why has the human brain "invented" the imaginary world of the psyche, complete with self, pleasure, suffering, fear, hate, love and all the other opposites?
In a word - the need for
security in an uncertain and
dangerous world.
Remember, it is the first brain in history to foresee its own end.
This forecast is a fact, it models reality exactly.
There is no escaping physical death.
This fact has created an existential crisis for humans. There is no way out, except to create an illusionary
reality, and to repress the truth. At least humans , for a time, can get some comfort from this
situation.
But there are some alarming signals coming from nature. It is estimated that half the existing species of plant ananimal life will be extinct within one hundred years. These are the facts, unless some major downward changes occur in the world's consumption and production and population patterns.
But people still perceive these facts through
their personal ego filters. We are still thinking, feeling, and acting as Australians, or Italians, or South
Africans, not Earthlings. The same goes for different religious beliefs and various ideologies. We are still
basically tribal in our world views.
We are still inherently selfish, both biologically and especially psychologically.
How do we change very quickly to a sustainable society from having an egocentric perspective to a global centric perspective?
This seems like a very remote probability,
given the heavily conditioned "selfish" human brain.
But we have seen that information is the key to transformation, and it just
so happens that the third information revolution is unfolding before our eyes!
It is computers, the Internet, Artificial
Intelligence, the Information Technology revolution that is changing the way we manufacture things, the world of
work, the world of leisure, every aspect of our lives is affected.
This current information revolution has the potential to do incredibly good things or incredibly bad things, for
humanity and all living creatures. It all depends on the nature of our understanding of reality and the power and
influence of the players in the Information Technology game.
It has the power to create global models of the earth's capacity to cope with humanity's seemingly insatiable need
for growth. It has the power for individuals from any country to communicate with individuals from any other
country or region, without government interference, via the Internet.
The world is "getting smaller", thanks to the third information
revolution.
It is beginning to dawn on more and more people that one country's problems may turn
out to be a world problem. We are beginning to see the world as one total system, economically, ecologically and
biologically, but not yet socially due to our tribal origins.
The real problem is one of the whole history of
life on our planet. It has never experienced such a situation before, and the selfish individual is programmed by
his genes and his mind to look after number one.
Maturity, compassion and wisdom are in very short supply.
How do we to learn how to "think for ourselves, in a holistic way and a
factual way, and in a global way"?
The path of least resistance is still via the
selfish gene and the selfish ego.
If we are to survive, it would seem most essential that our 'normal'
behaviour changes from 'me-first' competition to 'enlightened cooperation'.
A tall ask.
It probably comes down to one critical choice.
Do we adapt to nature or continue to expect
nature to adapt to us? And we are all in the same boat.
We all sink or swim together.
Major References
Beyond The Limits - x & DL Meadows, J
Randers
The Rise And Fall Of The Third Chimpanzee - Jared Diamond
What Is This Thing Called Science? - AF Chalmers
The Death Of Forever - Darryl Reanney
The Awakening Of Intelligence - J Krishnamurti
Values, Ends & Society - Ian Davison
