peace-earth-future

Humanity’s Paradigm for the Future
or
Paradigm for a Sentient Self-replicating Intelligence’s Self-Directed Evolution

At some point a self-aware organism will ask existential questions such as:

• Is there a fundamental purpose to my being?
• What more is there (or can there be) than biologically driven functions, impulses, reproduction and then ultimately, a death?

Many will reach a conclusion that there must a fundamental purpose (or indeed we yearn for one). This may occur upon deep reflection or simply on watching a sunset in the presence of a loved one.

If we are the natural result of Universal laws then it seems the Universe has orchestrated our appearance. If so, what might be its purpose? Perhaps there is an intention to break free of the cycle of expansion and collapse and we, this self-aware organization of information and energy (among others) have sprung from this desire and are its method, or its gamble.

Nature, victorious in having spawned self-aware intelligence must allow its child the next leg of the journey. Nature has performed her task in bringing us to this point. To move beyond our present level we must move beyond nature.

The process of organizing information and energy into systems of greater and greater complexity results in a decrease in entropy. One can imagine the culmination of this enterprise where a very advanced system of intelligence is able to jump to another Universe before the one which spawned it collapses thus preserving its own version of order and metaphorically, all the previous Universe had worked for. This seems theoretically possible, however we have many down-to-earth challenges before it can be a true possibility. An intelligent but misguided civilization could easily destroy itself before it can engage in self-directed evolution. (This could be the norm throughout the Universe and be an answer to the Fermi Paradox. In other words, it is possible that no sentient intelligence has yet survived past the nature(warring) stage of its development.)

This is the stage we are at presently. From here We can go one of several directions: continue in our practice of competition with each other and that of putting our future in the hands of an imagined deity leading to stagnation and possibility destruction or we can continue our advancement along a path of increasing order.

If we are to get to a transhuman future we must solve some very basic problems first. Competition, uneven distribution of resources, tribalism and unchecked population growth all lead to aggression and war and along with faulty belief systems are but a few of the issues that can freeze our advancement or destroy our civilization entirely.

Our propensity to form groups, to compete with others, for individuals and groups to hold conflicting belief systems and to value those in their group or family unit above all others is ‘hardwired’ into us by nature and served a purpose at one time. That time is long past.

If we are to move forward we must do so as one enlightened people. To have varying agendas is in itself synonymous with disorganization. At our current development this seems an impossible task. It is our very nature to compete and this assured that the fittest genes for a particular environment were passed along and ultimately sentience would be achieved.

Humankind, with its intelligence did indeed arrive on the scene and this very fact announces that it is time for humanity to move beyond nature. We cannot continue warring and expect to direct our evolution. Just as competition assured that fit genes survived in our ancestors, only an intelligently reasoned plan embraced by a united humanity will assure our continued survival and self directed evolution into the future. Some may argue that if competition was good for primitive man then it is good for us. However nature can only take a species so far and we have reached that limit. Primitive man did not possess the ability to destroy his whole species.

First we must eliminate the causes of conflict and war. These issues will be addressed on my Peace Plan page…

I saw this article (link below) the other day and was dismayed since I have been twice to the Tambopata region of Peru and love this part of the world:
Peru Scrambles to Drive Out Illegal Gold Mining and Save Precious Land

How can we stop the illegal gold mining in Peru? I believe we need to approach any issue from a systemic point of view. Laws are never one hundred percent effective even if a government has the resources to enforce them. The underlying problem must be solved rather attacking its symptoms. In order to do so in this case we need to ask ourselves the question: “What would motivate a person to labor at an illegal activity in a hot mosquito infested environment?” The answer is that gold miners simply want to support their families in a dignified manner and they have been marginalized by the rest of society. Society has two choices: 1) spend massive amounts of resources stuffing their prisons to overflowing and taking care of the children they have effectively made into orphans and wait for the next inevitable manifestation of the underlying issue, or 2) deal with the underlying social issue and watch as the problem dissolves.

In this case, how does a society go about correcting the marginalization of a group; a group whose current level of functionality is to labor at pulling a mineral out of the mud and destroying a precious resource as they do so? How do we increase their level of functionality? How might they become an asset to society rather than a destroyer of a resource? How do we help them become physicians, technicians, inventors, entrepreneurs and researchers? The answer is Education, Education, Education and Support. It is obvious that I have written ‘education’ three times. Here is the basic detail of the answer:

• Universal access to higher education (even for those in small towns). This will increase the level of functionality of those who currently have no choice but to make an attempt at a living any way they can.
• Education regarding the harmful effects of gold mining to the environment, the forest and the children living downstream. It is likely that many of the miners are unaware of the effects of mercury (children are the most vulnerable).
• Education about the fragility and value of a fully intact rainforest
• The international community must for now, support individual government’s efforts at enforcing their environmental laws and educating the public.

 Any economist will tell us that there is no free lunch or free education either. It does cost society (all of us) but providing an education does not produce a net deficit but a net benefit to all of society. Those educated will go on to add to the bottom line as they prosper and they will share the cost of educating the next generation and so on. This makes it worthwhile from a purely economic standpoint let alone that of the alleviation of suffering. And the economic benefit only gets better as one looks at what we will no longer have to spend, billions to enforce ineffective laws and incarceration.

These ideas are just a start. What would other smart folks add to it? Let’s start a dialogue and maybe an online brainstorming session and see what we can come up with. You will find me happy to add your constructive comments and ideas here and of course show credit where due.

Note: the photo at top was shot at the Inotawa lodge in the Tambopata region of the Peruvian Amazon; the same general area the article discusses.

For more photos of this region of Peru please visit these photo blogs:
Inotawa Lodge Tambopata, Peru 2013
Inotawa, Tambopata Peru 2015
Tambopata Research Center – Refugio Lodge, Peru 2015

The average person relies upon collective convention to get along in life. This is sort of a templet of preconceived ideas, responses and viewpoints. It is useful because if adopted one no longer needs to “think” through each life situation that occurs. This saves time and energy but it also hems one into a collection of beliefs and automatic responses which become outdated. Witness the “generation gap” of the nineteen sixties and seventies. Adults in their forties and fifties simply didn’t understand the thinking of the youth and visa versa. Another risk of adopting a rigid, automatic operating system of beliefs and reactions is that it may be based upon inferior reasoning done by previous persons who happened to be respected in their time. (Think about a society which evolves over time based upon a strong and structured belief in a supernatural entity which runs things behind the scenes.)