Hi Mark and anyone else interested, We are treading close to the Conscious Evolution of Barbara Max Hubbarb http://www.evolve.org/pub/doc/evolve_what_is_ce.html when we assert that mankind will now determine the next evolutionary step. I had a chance to meet with Ms Hubbarb a long time ago in her Washington office twenty over years ago, but an institution of this sort always raises suspicions of whether they are actually premised on hard science. Too much speculation and too little substantiation for me and of course her books have ended up in the new age section of the book stores.. Dave (DT) in September of 1999 did make a reference/enquiry to whether it was a tribute to Pirsig's precognition. There is among others a reference to the Spirit ( and I dont quite know what this means).
I preferred the approach of Eric Drexler who coined the term nanotechnology and his projection in his book 'The Engines of Creation" http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=2420 that we are could ultimately be the last generation of humans; as we get better at cell repair machines, we live longer and my benefit from more medical technologies that allow us to live even longer. His work is formalised in the Foresight Institute http://www.foresight.org/index.html and the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing where we can through nanotechnology now create new materials atom by atom. Nevertheless, what struck me about this "Conscious Evolution" movement was the particular insight of Peter Russell author of the Global Brain, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_73aFQGLcgQ&feature=player_embedded who wrote also on Transcendental Meditation and the Maharishi Yogi, more at http://www.peterrussell.com/. In the Global Brain he observed that carbon based macro-molecules trancended into a stable living cell when they arrived at the magical number of 10 billion or 10 to the power of 9. As life evolved, animals developed brains, which when the number of neurons reached a level of 10 billion or so, consciousness, or self-awareness emerged. Peter Russell postulated that as the population of planet Earth appoaches 10 billion, human society would become more organised, complex, specialised for a Global Brain to emerge. He then goes on to speculate what a global consciousness would be. For the moment I want to focus on the transitory points, between non-life(mere macro-molecules) and life, life and consciouness, and individual/self aware consciousness and global/directed consciousness. If the transitory points are indeed the complexity, sophistication, specialisation, organisation and connectedness that the 10 billion number provides, its is indeed interesting if this is drawn out as a fact. The amoeba is the largest single cell, the dog has the 1 billion neurons in its brain and does any of the primates have something in between but not reaching the magic 10 billion that humans have ? What about the molecular and later neural systems in terms of the critical mass and their organisations that lead them to move from inorganic to organic, from life to consciousness and later reflective consciousness ? Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields may have something to do with it more at http://www.sheldrake.org/books/, which I first read in his New Science of Life, and these all lead me to David Bohm's implicate orders, more at http://www.david-bohm.net/, which really brings us to Synchronicity http://www.fdavidpeat.com/ideas/synchronicity.htm. As we try to bridge between inorganic and the organic, matter and mind, the biological and the social, the evidence of implicate orders is found in synchronicity, the co-incidence of events and happenings. Morphic resonnance, implicate orders that may not be discernable are tracked down by their manifestations on our biological and social planes. My favourite illustration of synchronicity and the implicate order is the phenomenon of often running into people we know at airports. Macro-molecules, which are exactly stable patterns of protons and electrons based on their valences, transcend to cells, and into multicellular life-forms which are also exactly stable patterns of differentiated cells within which are differentiated macro-molecules. As cells transcend into neurons, stable patterns of differentiated neurons transform into brains. At this point, the self-aware brain emerges, but but as biological functions go. Concepts of individuality, roles within communities, family, clans, tribes and nations emerge. The social value is collective existence, survival and expansion. Aggregations of patterns have been generated and have evolved from various competing series and iterations; and have remained "stable". The stabilty of patterns in a dynamic environment is illusory. They are only held stable because they have been found in sufficient systems to emerge as a phenomenon. One indicator is probability. The other is their acceptability to a group. In the physical world it is easy to discern such patterns and understand their proliferation. In the mental sphere, though, one has to go back to the phenomenon of thought. What indeed is a thought ? The Buddhist Abhidhamma describes 17 precise steps how a thought arises. In a electrochemical context of a series of synapses firing across various parts of our brains, a series of thoughts may of course arise. And stable patterns of thought may emerge governing biological and social functions in addition how a sentient being may interact with its environment. There is a category of thoughts which are responses based on sensory inputs. There is another category generated by memory and independent of sensory inputs; the ability to conceptualise, construct an entire world independent of a physical world. Here a sense of self, ego, if you will, emerges with a strong sense of individuality but is actually only a very very persistent set of patterns. All patterns, from inorganic, to organic, to thought have evolved to support life on Earth. Yes the sun has had a lot to do with providing the energy for it. No argument there. However nothing is of any significance if it has not achieved "stability". That very "stability" allows transcendance to the next level of life, so it seems. if none of the systems in a hierachical structure is "stable", the whole structure is threatened. Life, in the form of man, on the other hand have emerged to ask the hows and the whys; whether morphological fields and implicate orders of which we know of thorugh synchronicity also have equally or perhaps more important roles to play. The stability of patterns are usually taken for granted, but they are actually quite fragile, easily dispersed into their constituents once the pre-conditions are not held. The human mind holds a large number of patterns in place for existential reasons with respect to biological survival and interaction with the environment and the bond is strong. A collective of human minds also hold a large number of social patterns in place and the value is the evolution of community. As Barbara Hubbard would put it, humanity now stands on the brink of fundamentally determining its own evolution, and Peter Russell's global brain offers a vista of what the world would be like when humanity arrives at a "stable" population of 10 billion sometime in 2050 with the population of the Earth organised, connected and specialised in a critical mass that would take us into the plane of global consciousness. This leap is about as profound as the transition from organic to inorganic, and life to consciousness. Written in the early 80s in the pre-internet, facebook and iPhone era, it sounded an improbable future. Today with dominance of a second brain in the global google and the increasingly globalised communications infrastructure, the emergence of "stable" global patterns now seem to predominate and at an accelerate pace. As competing and evolving patterns go therefore, which are the "stable" global patterns that will emerge ? There has been much said about defining a Metaphysics of Quality, the question of what is Quality itself and the definition of the intellectual level. Now, not every molecule finds its way into a cell, not every cell is a neuron, and not every animal brain can be consciously aware. Similarly not every human is an intellectual. Every civilisation, every society has a number of people, its so-called intelligentsia, which are called intellectuals. As a class, do they represent a "level" in Pirsigian terms? Or by their influence, the organisation and sophistication of a society or civilisation to support intellect. That a subject-object logic based system emerged and a metaphysics based on this logical system emerged; and to dominate the world through the philosophy of the Greeks is but one pathway of an acknowledged enormously successful and stable pattern. But every intellectual who is not a scientist also engages in intelletual activity and cannot be excluded from the intellectual level. It would seem a number of other patterns are also competing to be a "stable global pattern". There is a much maligned Islamic pattern which does not seem to stand a chance against a technologically superior Western pattern. Efforts, such as Dr Peter Hammond's to make Islam a social pattern rather than to explain its intellectual aspects only serves to colour popular perception. For every jihadist, there is a lot more, tens of thousands more moderate and tens more intellectual muslims who would argue rationally for social justice and human rights. I say this in spite of the fact that I live in a muslim majority country where social/political motivations now try to appeal to the emotions and prejudices to stay in political power. P R Sarkar, http://www.metafuture.org/sarkar/sarkar-historiography-transcendance.htm another maligned individual who founded the Ananda Marga movement, expounded his Theory of Social Cycles where he explained that society moved into four different cycles of governance , the Age of the Labourer, the Age of the Warrior, the Age of the Intellectuals, the Age of the Acquisitors. The transition from one Age to another is precipitated by weakness in the ruling structure. In the chaos of the Age of the Labourer, usually a strong military personage will arise to herald the Age of the Warrior, and as reliance on the priests and advisors become indispensable, the Age of the Intellectual comes into being where ideas prevail. Eventually those with ideas can be bought and the Age of the Acquisitors then begin to control society. In the Age of the Acquisitors, their control of the economy is absolute to the point where the masses revolt and in the aftermath, the Labourers rule. We find that the human attachments to certain patterns can be strong and they rarely move beyond the social, falling back to it over and over again. Best regards Khoo Hock Aun On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 2:03 PM, markhsmit <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Jan 24, 2010, at 9:11:33 PM, "Khoo Hock Aun" <[email protected]> > wrote: > This in no way detracts from the assertion, that I believe Pirsig makes, in > that as societies evolve, an intellectual level emerges, irrrespective of > the context and geographical location, whether in tandem with other > civilisations or in isolation. The value in this is that intellect now > leads > evolutionary development, rather than social drivers. The ongoing debate in > this list, is what constitutes the intellectual level; some assert it to be > the subject-object divide, logic itself and some, Pirsig himself asserts, > symbol manipulation, some assert it to be more, but the net effect, > whichever is the same - the conception of ideas and acting to manifest > those > ideas in the world around us. India and China too had their versions of > subject object logic within their respective philopsophies but this did > not to drive and dominate the development of society as in the West. > Perhaps, the emphasis of the community over the individual arrested this > tendency and what you call the "ego" is not a central character in the > play. > > Mark responded: > > Hi Khoo, > I was struck by the phrase that the intellect leads evolutionary > development, because > this takes it away from its biological setting in the sense of adaptation > to the environment > through survival. I am in agreement that evolution works in many ways. > > For personal reasons I have been studying autism for a number of years. > This is both > from the biological and metaphysical side. Recently, in corroboration of > my "theories" > an epidemiological study found clusters of autism (I don't have a reference > because I > heard it on NPR). The only similarity in these clusters was the fact that > they were in > upscale neighborhoods and autistic children were born to educated parents > more. > The data was significant. The explanation for this as presented on the > radio was that > upscale parents may seek help more and thus be counted more. This may be > true, > but I have another idea. Autism may be showing the signs of evolution as > it is attempting > to create the next level in intelligence. Evolution is not pretty, and > many mistakes > are made before success is reached. Based on my knowledge of autism, I can > pick > out all the positive features of autism and I deduce a high intellect that > also has > extreme empathy. That is, autistics can sense what people are feeling in > highly > specific ways. There are other traits which also indicate a higher brain > power. > Now, just like a child cannot survive and has to be taken care of, > autistics are > in the same position. In some cultures autism is deemed extremely powerful > and such people are elevated to witch doctors and such. The sensory > perception of autistics is indeed different which, at present makes the > noisy way we live quite confusing. > > There is no doubt in the rise in autism. The clusters described above > cannot > be explained though environmental factors, and any explanation for a > chemical > basis for autism has fallen short. While it is difficult to see the forest > for the > trees, an evolutionary explanation may result sometime beyond my lifetime. > It is interesting to speculate where man will go next, and how biology will > play a part. > > Best regards, > Mark > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > -- [email protected] 6016-301 4079 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
