Evolution at Play

Though during my spare time I've been quite engrossed in working what next step I want to take with A Simple Indulgence, I've managed to find time to comment on not one, but two of Deepak Chopra's posts on the Intent Blog recently.

It struck me how relevant one of my comments was to where I intend to go with A Simple Indulgence, in terms of describing A Universal Evolutionary Principle.

So even though it may be slightly out of context, and slightly out of sequence, I thought I would quote it here.

This was specifically in response to a comment that churches of essentially any religion or denomination are political machines of control and manipulation; my (slightly edited) reply follows:

I agree that "Churches" of any religion end up being less interested in spreading the Message of their respective Faiths, and more in their own
self-preservation, self-endorsement, and the growth of their own power and
sphere of influence.

And they do so first by making themselves self-appointed guardians of the integrity of the Message, and then perverting the Message to support their own agendas.

[TWC: On re-reading the above, I realise how similar this is to the behaviour of
Conspiracy Theorists that I posted in The Truth is Out There.... Anyway, back to the reply...]

I am not sure they all start that way intentionally, as you imply Richard, or whether it is simply a fact of any organisation: the drive for self-preservation.

Which applies equally to man-made socio-political organisations, and to organisations of cells, organs etc into species and individuals within that species.

It is part of the natural evolution of things, first to seek their own survival, and then when that is secure, to expand that survival instinct to include other individuals, species, social organisations etc.

The problem comes when the survival instinct persists longer than it needs to, and turns into xenophobia (in its broadest sense), or simply a disregard for the rights of anything other than "self".

And in this case I don't just mean "self" in terms of an individual, but in terms of the "self" of the tribe, species, social/political group etc

And that leads to a perception that the "self" is in some way distinct from the whole.

So I agree that it is a fiction to believe that there is any separation of "self" from God / The Divine Whole, and that the truth is that we are all one and connected.

I am not sure that I agree with the implication that this distinction is motivated by Evil powers. I think it is part of the process of evolution and enlightment that we go through this, and that any "Evil" we see is more the act of the un-enlightened.

And that to me answers the question as to why God created Satan: because it is through Satan and his acts, and the understanding of both how harmful but ultimately futile they are, that we evolve and reach the enlightment that shows us the Truth.

[TWC: Richard had mentioned a "Masters' intention", which I took to mean a Divine Plan, but adopted his terminology for what follows...]

I do not think we are straying from the Masters' intention. I think we are simply going through the process of achieving it: i.e. we are evolving away from the instinct of self-preservation, towards a more enlightened future.

However that can only happen once a species' survival is no longer under constant and immediate threat, and the intense need for self-preservation as the number one priority passes.

Until that point however, the self-preservation instinct is vital, to ensure the continuity of evolution and spiritual sophistication of that species, to a point where it can reach enlightment.

Oh, and I am not entirely convinced humanity is necessarily the vehicle by which the Masters' plan will be achieved.

I think it is arrogant to believe that the Masters play favourites with species, or that we are "favoured" by them.

However I do think we are currently the best bet of all the species we know (and therefore may receive extra attention and assistance from the Masters), but I think we have yet to prove that we are capable of rising to the challenge.

That does not mean the Masters' plan is either flawed or will fail.

It simply means that if WE fail to achieve it, then following our demise as a species, eventually some other species will evolve to a similar degree of spiritual sophistication to achieve their plan. Either on this planet, in this solar system, or in another one.

I kind of touched on this in a posting on my own blog.

The Truth is Out There…

…or is it?

Following on from a very interesting and thought provoking discussion with a work colleague, I decided to peruse Loose Change 911: a Web site exploring / promoting a conspiracy theory for the atrocity of 9/11.

My position on this has been that while I don’t believe that the Official Story presented by the 9-11 Commission report is the whole truth, I also don’t fully buy into any of the conspiracy theories.

Sure there are omissions and inconsistencies in the Official Story.

But equally, I have issues with the numerous conspiracy theories that exist.

The problem that I have with (any) conspiracy theory in general, is that there is usually some element of the theory that states something along the lines of “If you don’t believe what we say in its entirety then you are part of the conspiracy, or too dumb to see the truth.”

Now I have a number of very big issues with that kind of attitude.

Firstly, it smacks of religion: most major religions state that you have to accept the whole body of their religious texts / scriptures, or you are not a believer, and indeed are influenced by or in league with Satan (or whatever name / icon / symbol is given to the primary apostate of that religion).

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against religions per se, and that kind of attitude is totally appropriate in a religion, where Faith rather than proof is the primary requisite for belief / acceptance.

But I don’t believe it is appropriate in a conspiracy theory, where proof rather than faith should be the primary requisite for acceptance. Once faith becomes the primary requisite for acceptance of a conspiracy theory, then it comes down to what you wanted to believe in the first place, and you loose the objectivity and impartiality that is key to a conspiracy theory having any kind of real credibility.

Secondly, it places the promoters of the conspiracy theory in to a kind of exalted position of being Guardians of the Truth on the matter. Except that it is a self-appointed position, and therefore meaningless.

After all, in the case of 9/11 the American Government has appointed itself to the same position. So in many ways, there is little to distinguish between the Official Story and the Conspiracy Theories, except the intent and (hidden) agendas of the people promoting them.

Now of course one could argue that the Government has more to hide and loose, but that is a symptom of being in a closed and secretive Government rather than an open one.

One could also argue that if the conspiracy theorists were any less closed and secretive why do they need to have rules / premises that cannot be questioned? What do they have to loose if those rules and premises are questioned?

Oh sorry, that is one of the questions that cannot be asked…

Thirdly, the very fact that there are things that one cannot openly question in a conspiracy theory without being labelled a conspirator means that the conspiracy theorists are less interested in finding out the truth, and more interested in protecting their theory.

The road to the truth is one of open-mindedness. When a piece of evidence or alternative explanation or opinion is offered that challenges currently held beliefs, it needs to be honestly and earnest considered. And if it is found to be worthy, the old beliefs need to be willingly let go in favour of new ones. Change is embraced.

Real truth seekers welcome these challenging ideas, rather than reject them, as they are the means by which the Truth is ultimately reached.

By rejecting, ridiculing or banning challenging ideas or sceptics of the theory, conspiracy theorists are behaving exactly like the authority or government they are accusing of a conspiracy. Like I said earlier, the only difference between them ends up being their intent, (hidden) agenda, and what they wanted to believe in the first place.

Finally, and perhaps the most disturbing aspect is the affect on the ordinary members of the public who read and accept at face value the conspiracy theory, especially the restrictions imposed upon what is acceptable to question and what is not if you don’t want to be labelled a conspirator.

If you do accept that, then you are opening yourself up to manipulation by the people promoting the conspiracy theory. And the same goes for people who accept the Official Story with out question: they are opening themselves up to be manipulated by the government or authority promoting the Official Story.

And once you do that, you stand no chance of finding the truth.

All of this applies equally to any conspiracy theory, not just 9/11 Conspiracy Theories.

Having said all that, I do not believe that all conspiracy theories are entirely without merit.

In the case of 9/11 in particular, clearly the Truth is not to be found in the Official Story. There are too many inconsistencies, omissions, and illogical explanations for it to be accepted as is.

But equally, I don’t think the Whole Truth can be found in any one of the conspiracy theories out there, for the reasons stated above.

So where is the Truth? And what is it?

Bottom line is that I don’t think we will ever know for certain.
So it comes down to what you want to believe in.

Essentially, the Truth lies within you.

Which really means, keep an open mind and an open heart. Don't dismiss or accept anything just because it challenges or supports what you currently believe in.
Eventually you will find the Truth, or at least a Truth that is meaningful to you.

For my part, I believe that the thing that is really important is to remember that thousands of people were needlessly killed on that horrific day, and thousands more were deeply and tragically affected by it.

Who did it, and bringing them to so-called justice is ultimately an act of revenge.
That won’t help bring the victims back, repair the damaged lives, or stop it from happening again.

If we really want to end this kind of species-wide self-destructive behaviour, we need to stop ourselves from being distracted both by the Official Story, and by the conspiracy theories.
Both of which only serve only to perpetuate hatred and distrust.

To me what is most important is to focus on what we have in common with each other, and on developing a truly compassionate, understanding and considerate society.
Not just within individual nation-states.
Not even just towards our own species.
But globally, and towards all species with which we co-habit this planet.

And I guess that is what I was really trying to say in Weird Timing.

Weird Timing

So on Tuesday I publish a post on the need to start acting in harmony to save the Earth from man-made or natural catastrophes, and on Friday Sir Richard Branson announces the Virgin Earth Challenge: a $20M prize for the inventor of a device / technology that can counter-act global warming.

Now, ignoring how bizarre the timing of this is, I also noticed on Friday a tabloid headline claiming a £250M global lotto was being planned. The Times published this article on it today.

So the prize for saving the Earth is $20M, but the prize for buying a lotto ticket is £250M. I find this difference very telling, if slightly amusing in a "how perverted our value system has become" kind of way.

Anyway, when I first heard of the Virgin Earth Challenge, two things struck me:

1. Global warming is a symptom of a bigger issue, so any "solution" cannot be just about scrubbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, but must include something to address the cause: basically a major planet-wide socio-political change, with a program of education aimed at multiple levels (governments, multi-national conglomerates, small/medium businesses, Joe public, children etc.) spanning many years, possibly even generations, until a more balanced and harmonious (co-)existence with our planet has become part of the collective psyche of our species.
2. The man-made planet-wide climate disruption is not just due to global warming. There is also Global Dimming to be taken into account. Basically this is an effect where small particles in the atmosphere reflect sunlight back into space, and surprise-surprise is increasing due to pollution. The really worrying aspect of this is that it is masking the full effects of Global Warming, and vice versa: reducing one without the other is likely to have a very profound and damaging effect on the planet. So the real challenge is not just to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, but to detox the atmosphere itself, and return it to the kind of composition it had prior to the Industrial Age. This is a much more complex task.

I have to admit, I was very pleased to read in the full article about the Virgin Earth Challenge that Sir Crispin Tickell, a member of the overseeing committee said:

"We should not think that technology will be the only solution. We need to realise that this is a societal problem. This is the beginning of a period of transition and we can't expect it to happen tomorrow. We need to start thinking differently as a society."

Well said!!!

He also called the Virgin Earth Challenge "a symbolic gesture".

Wouldn't it be great if this symbolic gesture spurred other multi-millionaires/billionaires or multi-billion dollar organisations to sponsor similar planet-saving Challenges?

Who will be the first to sponsor a greater understanding of super-volcanism (e.g. the super volcano that is Yellowstone Nation Park), a thorough survey of the skies for Near Earth Objects, etc etc.

Who knows?!

Maybe, given the weird timing of things recently, I will wake up one day next week to hear that Bill Gates is donating $1B to the formation of a Centre for World Peace and Harmony: a place for cross-cultural education, a place for research into solutions for planet-wide problems, a place for diplomacy.

Sounds an awful lot like the Season 1 opening sequence of Babylon 5:

It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the
Earth-Minbari war. The Babylon project was dream given form.

It's goal: To prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call; home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanders. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night.

It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace.

This is the story of last of the Babylon stations.

The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

I can't help thinking that we are the planet's current last best hope for survival, and that we need a last best hope for our own survival.

Point of no return (revisited)

In the "Bodies..." posting of his Great Adventure, the Maltese Donkey said:

And no doubt with the population requirements, and export, they have to increase efficiency of agriculture like everybody else, which can lead to pollution runoff.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are creating an artificial environment around us, which is too brittle to sustain the continued growth and evolution of our own society / species.

The above quote is a perfect example of this short-sightedness, which will result in the self-stablising evolutionary principle leading to humanity's extinction.

The Point of No Return is upon us, yet as a species we are doing too little too late to avert this.

Where ever you look today you see adverts for Personal Growth courses, Lifestyle Changing seminars, the latest set of DVDs from Life Coach gurus such as Tony Robbins etc.
It would seem that despite our success as a species, our lives have become hollow and meaningless, and we are searching for something with which to connect, to feel whole again.

Again this is evidenced by the growing number of fringe religious movements, and the rise of "pop" spirituality that is so fashionable these days.

While some of these have a valid place (and some are dangerous or misleading "instant fixes"), the problem is more fundamental than that: it is not a "personal" loss of the individuals that comprise the species that is at the heart of this, but a species-wide loss of connection / understanding of our unity with our environment, our origins, and our purpose.

In essence, the species as a whole needs a Lifestyle Change, to allow us to reconnect with Nature and our Role on this planet.

Humanity as a species, has a singular position on this planet, in that we are the only species to combine industry, intelligence and creativity to such a degree that we can either destroy most life on this planet, or save it.

We are unique amongst the millions of species with which we co-habit, in that we are reaching out to the stars, and exploring beyond the confines of our Earthly abode.

Make no mistake, there will be a mass-extinction event soon, in cosmological timescales, either of our own making, or otherwise. The evidence suggests these are regular phenomena, and part of the natural process of evolution, and that we may be on the cusp of one now.

However, currently, Humanity is this planet's last best hope to minimise the effect of these, or to avert them.

But only if we step up to the challenge, by putting aside out petty tribal, xenophobic differences, and act in harmony, in our and the planet's best long-term interests.

It may seem a bizarre segue, but the 90's SciFi series Babylon 5 (probably my all-time favourite SciFi series) dealt with this. Though it only became apparent in the last two series, you can see the seeds of it right from the start. It's a masterpiece rivalled only by The Matrix, in terms of having layers upon layers of hidden meanings and interpretations.

The bottom line is: If we don't step up to the challenge, we are already extinct, and are merely fertilizer for the next species to achieve a similarly unique position during the next round of evolution.

And with us goes the vast richness of our culture and heritage: Mozart, Bach, Van Gogh, Turner, Da Vinci, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Dickens etc etc all gone. Forever.
And obviously other species will be wiped out too.

Surely we owe it not only to them, but also to our own ancestors, and for the sake of that which is good and that which we value of our Human culture and heritage to rise up and grasp the Destiny that is offered to us, and protect this fragile Earth for as long as we can?

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.