It's odd how things work out...(part 2)

So let's get one thing straight, right from the start:

The scientist in me rejects the notion that Fate is anything more than a mind-made association between un-related events, to give us humans a nice warm feeling that we are not living our lives at the whim of random events, or in an uncaring Universe which is oblivious to our existence.

The spiritual side of me is not so sure, as my day-to-day human experience is that at critical moments in my life, events do conspire (usually) in my favour.

And yes, I know that my human experience is distorted by the lens of my psyche.
And that even if Fate is in fact an observable phenomenon, it does not mean it is real in the sense that there is some Universal force or principle at work behind the scenes, rather than an artefact of the human mind doing the observing.

The fact remains however, that it appears real to me, and there are times in my life when if I put my Faith in Fate, things invariably work out more easily and more in my favour than if I try to engineer or plan the same outcome.

As an example, since my last posting, my life has become even more hectic than usual: mounting work pressures, personal and family health issues have all contributed to this.
As a consequence, I realised that I had lost balance between the work, family and personal aspects of my life, and needed to regain that balance before my health suffered even more.

It was clear that the only way to achieve this was by changing the conditions of my work. Of course that is easier said than done, whilst still meeting the responsibility I have to my family and myself to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.

Given that I have a great professional and social relationship with my line manager, I discussed this issue with him, and we agreed that something needed to be done, though it wasn’t immediately clear what could be done, without jeopardising my financial situation.

While pondering what the possibilities were and how to create more options, a colleague of mine contacted me, out of the blue, with a job opportunity that superficially seemed better suited to my current needs.

That in itself was a startling coincidence.

Upon further consideration of the opportunity, I realised that while it was indeed better than my current situation, it was not that much better, and did not really support my long-term plans: it would do for a while, but it was not the direction I wanted my career to take longer-term.

So I began to consider what opportunity would constitute a significant step forward in my long-term goals, which would also afford me the freedom and flexibility to re-balance my life in the short-term.

After a few days’ contemplation, I figured out what the ideal opportunity would be: to start my own business, offering consultancy services initially to my current permanent employer, and then broadening my scope to a wider clientele.

However, it seemed to be very much a pipe-dream: an unrealistic expectation to set that such an arrangement might be acceptable to my current employer, or that I could start the venture without an established client-base.

So, without mentioning it to anyone, I set the thought to one side, as the ideal against which to measure other opportunities, but not one that was itself attainable.

Within a day of this, my line manager asked to see me for a working lunch, to discuss a proposal he had for me.

It turns out that he was thinking that the best solution, in his opinion, for me, for him, and for my current company, was that I start a consultancy business, with a guaranteed minimum amount of work from them initially, decreasing over time, as I extended my client-base.

The details were to be worked out, but he’d already got approval in principle from his management.

Now there is no guarantee that this opportunity will work out, or even make it beyond the negotiating table.

But as these events unfold around me, I have the unmistakable feeling that this is meant to be, and that I am being guided and assisted by Fate’s gentle hand.

It's odd how things work out...

I'm due to go on a business trip to the US in the next few days, and will be flying to a number of different cities in different timezones, with a relatively tight schedule.

One of the cities I will be going to is LA, somewhere I've not been before. When setting up the meeting and flight schedules, I tried to arrange to get an extra day in LA, so that I could maybe do some touristy things. However it was clear early on that was not going to be possible, so I left it and did not try to "engineer" anything.

Oddly, and without any involvement on my part, at the last minute, the customer I was going to see in LA had to re-schedule the meeting.
The result being that the only way I can accomodate the new meeting time, without rescheduling my other meetings is to spend an extra day in LA.

This is not an isolated event, in fact, this tends to happen all the time: serendipitous events, where I get what I want without trying.

A lot of people who know me personally, believe that my life is really complex (which it is), and filled with adversity (which to some extent it is), and often comment that they don't know how I cope.

The answer as to how I cope is simple: by focussing on these moments of incredibly good fortune, I believe that I live a charmed life, where the Universe conspires to give me Gifts.

And all the other cr*p in my life is just random noise to distract me from realising how blessed a life I truely have.

Where are they now?

There are approximately 6 billion people alive today on the planet.

That is more than have lived and died in total since humanity first evolved.

While that is a worrying thought for the ecological burden we are putting on our planet, to me it inspires a somewhat different line of thought:

Consider all the people throughout history who have made such a mark on the world that we remember their names today (for good or bad): Moses, Alexander the Great, Plato, The Buddha, Julius Ceasar, Nero, Confucius, Genghis Khan, Gallileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Van Gogh, Mozart, Einstein, Ghandi, Hitler, Martin Luther King etc etc.

Unless one believes strongly in pre-destiny or fate, then the occurance of historically noteworthy people is essentially a random event, with a certain statistical probability of happening within a large enough population size.

So based on that, and on the fact that the living population today is greater than the sum of all people who have ever lived, statistically speaking, there should be as many figures of historical significance living today as there have been throughout the whole of history.

So... Where are they now?

Are you sitting next to a Mozart? an Einstein? a Stalin?
Did you drive passed a Rembrandt? a Kepler? a Nero?

And how would you know?

Point of no return?

I've always been fascinated by the evolution of societies and cultures.

In particular I find it intriguing that no complex society seems to survive for more than a few thousand years at most, before it decays or is overthrown and replaced by a younger society / culture, with a huge loss of the body of knowledge and cultural beliefs and drivers of the original society.

You see this pattern repeated from pre-history through to today: Mayans, Incas, Ancient Greeks, Roman, Ancient Egyptians, Native American Indians, various Chinese Dynasties, etc etc.

The parallel between that and evolution of species, emergence of a dominant species or class of species, followed by mass extinction events is also interesting... it's like evolution follows a pattern, whether it is genetic evolution, or social / cultural evolution.

My personal belief is that classical Darwinian evolution is just a facet of an overall evolutionary pattern that manifests at a number of different levels, not just genetic, but also at a more macro level (e.g. evolution of cosmic structures such as galaxies, solar systems, stars etc), and also at a more micro level (e.g. evolution of colonies of animals, societies, cultures), and even at a more individual level (e.g. the learning process and "evolution" of an individual's experience and psyche).
There seem to be common patterns that all of these follow. But I am letting myself get distracted, that is a subject for a future posting.

In terms of social and cultural evolution, I have long wondered if there is a crucial point where a society becomes so dependant on the artefacts of its success that it is no longer able to survive without those artefacts.
i.e. A point of no return, where it has created a “virtual” environment around itself, which so cocoons it from the real environment that it can no longer survive in the real environment; and further, that this virtual environment is itself so brittle that:

a) it cannot support continued growth, expansion and evolution of the society that developed it, and

b) it cannot tolerate significant changes to the real environment without the virtual environment breaking down, resulting in the collapse of the society that depends on it.

Let me explain... or rather let me explain (b), as I think (a) is too complex and worthy of a future posting.

Take Stone Age Man. If you were to remove all stone tools, shelters and other artefacts of Stone Age Man's success away from him, would Stone Age Man die out? Almost certainly not... he would simply craft some more from the raw materials around him, and be back in business before you knew it.

Iron Age Man? Bronze Age Man? Same thing, just it would take them a bit longer to recover.

In fact I suspect that until the middle of the Industrial Age or maybe a little bit later, if you removed all (man-made) artefacts of our existence from the planet, humans could have recovered and returned to the previous level of existence within a few years, maybe one generation at most.

If you look at modern (Western) society though, could the same claim be made?
Definitely not. Chances are that the ensuing chaos would be so great, that we would not survive even one generation- but there could be many factors that cause that.

What if you took a representative cross-section of society, provided them with a library / knowledge base that represented and detailed all of man's discoveries, inventions and understanding of the world, and used them to colonise a new planet?
And let's make it easy, let's say this planet was hospitable and had an abundance of natural resources.

Would they survive? Almost certainly.

Would they rebuild a society of equal sophistication and complexity to the parent society from which they were transplanted?
I would argue not. Or at least not within one generation. And if they don't do so within one generation, then I believe the motivation to rebuild the parent society would be lost, and the new society would eventually develop independently from the parent society.
Eventually, I believe, even the body of knowledge from the parent society would be lost, or become part of some mythical / legendary cultural background of the new society.

Some years back I wrote a short story on this called Re-Genesis. Don't look for it, I never tried to get it published, and it resides somewhere in the pile of other short stories I've written for my own amusement. In any event, it was set in the far future, and was more of a classic Sci-Fi short story than an exploration of the socio-philosophical phenomenon itself, and the last time I came across it, I decided it was way too superficial, and more akin to a collection of hooks for plot-arcs to be expanded in some larger epic story, if I ever get the time.

The odd thing is, we see exactly this kind of situation occurring in human societies today: the Renaissance was perceived as a rediscovery of the wisdom and culture of the ancient pre-Christian and early-Christian societies. There are also those that believe in the existence of advanced civilisations that pre-date early Egyptian culture. It can even be seen in the theories of benign extra-terrestrial visitations since pre-historic times.

Why is this of concern to me?

Well, for one thing, I enjoy this kind of philosophising!

More importantly, we are clearly seeing signs of environmental change, and I wonder whether the virtual environment we have built around ourselves is going to withstand that, or whether it is so brittle that it will collapse and take the human species with it. And more importantly whether there are measures we can take to maximise the chances of our survival.

And finally assuming humanity survives the short- and mid- term threats to its existence, longer term we WILL need to start colonising the rest of the solar system, and beyond. Exploring the dynamics and issues associated with such colonisation efforts will be necessary to its success.