#Thoughts on #human #advancement - are we really trying?
Now, that title could be interpreted as rather dismissive and pessimistic.
To the contrary, it is meant as a challenge. A call for greater effort in advancing humanity.
Given the current climate around the world, ‘advancement’ would likely relate to economic or technological development in the eyes of the mainstream.
However, this interpretation, much talked about in the media, paints a quite narrow vision of our possible future and our species.
I have heard some talk of a growing desire for a cultural or spiritual development within our culture, that materialism has failed us. But I think this is a classic human reaction to any of our great social problems. By this I mean to say that I have observed many times how a populace will flip-flop from one extreme to another. From socialism to fascism, left to right and back again.
It has been a source of great consideration over the years, as to why it is exactly that centrism or moderation has not won out. Once the back and forth between opposite ends had proved unfit for societal stability multiple times, it should perhaps have died down. I’m sure that the debate could keep us busy for a great long time.
All this conflict would look like a confirmation for some preconceived notion of the true human animal, if you were a pessimist. Indeed, in recent years I had become so, a young man frustrated by western capitalism’s increasingly constricted ‘invite-only’ structure.
Unlike many, i’m not interested in being rich. Just enough wealth for a home and family to struggle by in relative comfort. Not a lot to ask of the world.
In the last two years a little self-education on how the rest of the world lives has made me happier with my lot. I realise many material things that I own have blood and sweat from distant climes built into them. Strange then that my adult life has been coloured by the desire to create something, make something for others but have been obstructed. Sometimes by lack of experience, but often by a lingering previous generation and their economic requirements. These things are beyond my personal control.
So my attention has passed beyond the anger and dismay that has gripped many in movements around the world, to ideas of resolution.
Our is a technical age, but has been described as an unscientific one. Great breakthroughs and developments seem to arrive only some days apart. However the populace seem less concerned with this and ever more with simple, streamlined diversions. Searching the channels some time back we came across Nigerian Idol and other signs that the western entertainment model is alive in most cultures with broadcast capability.
I hold a small but growing concern that unless more of us come to understand the complexities of our technology, these advancements could slow to a crawl along with the diluting of our culture and intellectual desire. Perhaps that is a little melodramatic, but i’m thinking in terms of many decades or a couple of generations ahead.
Thus it is that I ponder on where advancement is truly needed for man. After all, capitalism and democracy for all their faults have given us many benefits in terms of survival and fulfilment. It only seems now that we are at a crossroads of sorts, where it is obvious that some in positions of power would seek to undo some of our collective advances for their own advantage.
The question of whether it is better to live in comfortable restriction than in an independent struggle to survive are perhaps best answered again in terms in terms of our advancement.
To elaborate, we have moved through stages of foraging and subsistence farming into an industrial era. Between some of these stages, it has been restriction by governmental, feudal and religious authorities that has been mainly responsible for restricting the flow of new ideas. The restriction of fresh concepts and scientific discovery hampers the forward motion of a larger mass culture, whereas the persistence of a unshaken status quo seems to make for a sustainable tribal community only.
This is our dilemma, where conflict and risk to a way of life causes authorities to act with a mind to preservation no matter the cost to their own. We face unprecedented attacks on our access to healthcare, personal freedoms and involvement in our political processes. These increased controls will have an effect on the flow of innovation and development.
In the grand scheme of things, why is this important? If this is our evolutionary apex, if we are the crocodile or sharks of our time, then why should we not just settle into a pattern and accept our limits?
We cannot accept limitations because we see the mark of recent additions and changes to our culture that are beneficial. Civil rights victories for women and ethnic minorities are ongoing here and in other place globally and a glimmer of light is starting to be shown with regard to green energy and technology. We know that we are capable of ever greater heights.
This struggle is still only born from the few who would wish restrictions on others. For missing the point they should be cared for and brought around to this naturally, not vilified. Not many of the rich would grind down the poor and not all members of government would wish the restriction of rights. It is only that a single selfish voice can be powerful, which is why all the people must speak peacefully in opposition as a reaffirmation.
To finish, I want to share a thought that may be helpful in dismissing resistance to change. Having read so much about recent science, many themes that persist in religion and spiritualism are borne out by principles that will dictate our emerging technologies.
Quantum Mechanics shows us that space is relative, as position and velocity can be be said to exist in many places at once or without any great certainty. This is leading to wireless electricity and materials that defy traditionally known physical restraints. It also shows that we are definably one and the same.
We have documented proof that we all share genetic and mitochondrial traits and that atomic particles from one person only a few years back will have travelled through water, weather and food into your body. We are all born of stardust and co-habit space with quantum particles in other people with a minute but real probabilistic definition.
Given that time is only given as our perception of entropy, the breaking down of universal order, we can see the life of the universe as a single complex geometry. Meaning that we, from cavemen to the possible space-farers centuries from now, are all connected in one undulating spacial construct.
Knowing this, with no perceived differences between us, why do we fight and not collaborate? What purpose does it serve if we are truly indefinable from each other except in the extreme abstract?
From this base position of relative clarity upon removal of previous conceptions, what is advancement? We can say perhaps that it is a biological pronouncement of entropy, that through evolution we become more complex and less uniform/ordered in structure. This is also true of our non-physical or cultural evolution.
It has been forever our belief that to be human is to become more through life than you were at birth. This bears out in that we are not pre-programmed with language, societal expectations and intellectual knowledge. These non-existent incorporeal things are passed down from our forebears. So it has been our focus to rise in some ways above our animal instincts by degrees into… something else, something we cannot fully describe.
Those people we have held dearest to us throughout time have been defined by what they have given us to pass down culturally. Whether messages of community and love and charity from spiritual leaders and heroes, or knowledge and art from scientists/artists/philosophers.
Economic concerns are merely the transitive passages for value, the means by which we pass around that which we can add to the lives of others and in return be granted what we need to survive and enjoy life ourselves. Our economic value does not pass down the ages to distant generations, only through our contribution to advancement do we show our worth and attain any measurable level of ‘immortality’.
If this is true, should we not refocus the lens of business, culture and belief into the many and not the few? In terms of pure statistical likelihood this would be a greater guarantee of advancement, of a place in future history books for more of us. The unrestrained intellect of more people better educated in physics, mathematics, politics and economics would invariably lead to more ideas, more advanced collaboration in a world of greater complexity and intra-personal understanding.
If we wish to continually advance to meet the challenges of global environment, conflict and population, surely we will need all the brain power and innovation our human race is capable of?
Surely this culture, with its material desire, animalistic conflict for fundamentalist ubiquity and resources is the simpler, less advanced way? Is anger, fear and need to accumulate not the basic pattern of cognition that we wish to challenge and rise against? We all seem to idolise those who have attempted to do this and in part succeeded.
I think it is very possible to for us to achieve.
I am not highly educated, nor a true intellectual. I might sound pretentious and long-winded to some, but I just want to create some definite outlines for discussions moving onward through uncertain and unfamiliar territory. I feel I can comment only as the outsider I have always been, which provides an excellent alternative viewpoint. It can be easier to see the larger shape of a problem from outside of it.
If you read this far, maybe we can discuss it. Then we will have started something together. I look forward to it in anticipation.
creator@kuzimu.co.uk - drop me a line with any thoughts, they’re all good.
