Sanity is for chumps. -- Guru Higbigiggy
Last July, I wrote It's too broke to fix. I continue to believe that the mess this world is in cannot be repaired. The evangelic imbecile, George W. Bush, will go next year, Australia's pragmatic imbecile, John W. Howard, may or may not go this year, but France, of all countries, just elected "an American neo-con with a French passport," the arriviste, Nicolas W. Sarkozy. In other words, mankind is not yet fed up with dog eat dog.
There is no solution because the present mess is based on centuries of greed, apathy and small-mindedness. We are simply getting what we deserve, because we are a species suffering dual identities: our religions teach us tolerance and compassion; real life teaches us to be fearful and greedy.
A species whose survival and wellbeing is based entirely on the exchange of goods or monies, and consequently the hoarding of these, is either doomed to extinction or further evolution.
I've never been enthused about the blinkered bourgeois view that this reality -- the one where we are born only to toil in the service of others and then die -- is the only one. I prefer the sometimes wacky worldview of assorted visionaries who would rather see a fairy at the bottom of the garden than settle for the obscenity represented by a world leader sitting in a fabulously expensive fauteuil with his legs crossed like a debutant in a room of other politicians doing ditto as they discuss the fate of their subjects based on how much they can get out of them.
But the force of this "reality" is overwhelming. No matter how much we want to escape it, its tentacles reach out to suck us back in. We have to continue in our meaningless job to pay the mortgage or the rent, to send the kids to high-fee schools, to buy the toys that link us to the world as owned an operated by America. How can we think outside this planet-size square if we are constantly bombarded by the holy exhortation to consume, to watch the next episode of the latest clever series of between commercials filler?
Some of those wacky folk out there think this cycle of dumbed down humanity is coming to an end.
The Christian fundamentalists interpret the coming years as the end times, the destruction of the world, where the believers can finally be swept into the arms of The Patriarch in the Sky. Unfortunately, their anticipation for this future salvation has caused them to turn their brains off in the present. They have traded their humanity for the ideological equivalent of the Easter Bunny.
Others regard the conclusion of this cycle as the end of history, in the sense that the human species will be transformed so completely that bodies may no longer be required.
Well, now…
Beginning with Australopithecus ramidus through homos habilis, erectus and sapiens neandertalensis, we, the current crop, known as homo sapiens sapiens, cannot justifiably think of ourselves as the crowning glory.
There are some who believe Neanderthals are still among us, chiefly as politicians, military leaders and business people. But if not, we homo sap saps have to take the blame for the larval state of our evolution.
If the present historical era is coming to an end, let's hope it won't be through the Armageddon prophesied and longed for by increasingly popular Dick and Jane religions. We don't know what will happen, but it sure is tantalising.
One of the postulations for the end of history is based on the acceleration of innovation, from the beginning of recorded history to now. In 2000, Terence McKenna wrote:
Technology, population, speed of travel, food and materials production, communications capabilities, computing power, the decrease in computer size, [the] amount of information known to humanity, and a gamut of other things, are all increasing at an accelerating rate. That is, they are increasing, and the rate at which they are increasing is increasing.
Some mathematicians plotted the asymptotic graphs of all of humanity's technological developments and projected them out to the point where they all, relatively simultaneously, hit infinity. The day that they arrived at is December 21st, 2012, one projected date of "The Singularity." That's the day that some say is when everything as we know it will...change. Drastically.
Now I realize that this is a mathematical model, and that things never seem to happen on time, but as a good thumbnail reference point, it makes a convenient time to aim for. There are other models, other calculations, and other dates. The idea is more important than the specific date, IMO.
[An interesting aside: I've heard that the ancient Mayan calendar was calculated forward but ends on...you guessed it: Dec. 21st, 2012. I've also heard that the scientists aren't quite sure why that is... :-)]
Essentially, if we take a look at some of the really species-changing events in our history, we see three really MAJOR developments that changed the entire course of human history. 1) The Agricultural Revolution. 2) The Industrial Revolution. 3) The Information Revolution.
30,000 years ago, we learned how to farm. 350 years ago, we learned how to mass-produce machines. About 50 years ago, we learned how to build computers. As you can see, the rate of change is increasing, as is the ability afforded by the change. With computers, we have the ability to build more efficient things, fly planes and spaceships, educate more people, etc. Each of these enabling technologies will build further development, and at a faster rate.
According to the mathematical model, we should see approximately *61* more of these species-changing developments before December 21st, 2012! All of the same magnitude as the three noted above! Again, it's only a model, but they predict 18 of those changes on the last day, and 13 of those to happen in the last FRACTION OF A SECOND, as things accelerate towards that infinity point.
How about that, singularity fans! What, you don't believe it? That's good, because beliefs and belief systems are the great causes of the chaotic, dead-end world we live in. As the late Robert Anton Wilson said, "convictions cause convicts". Our great minds relegated to containers of dogmatic stasis.
But say, haven't you noticed throughout your life how things appear to be speeding up? Maybe they really are!
Terence McKenna again,
As we approach the lip of this cascade into concrescence, novelty, and completion, time seems to speed up and boundaries begin to dissolve. The more boundaries that dissolve, the closer to the concrescence we are. When we finally reach it, there will be no boundaries, only eternity as we become all space and time, alive and dead, here and there, before and after. Because this singularity can simultaneously co-exist in states that are contradictory, it is something which transcends rational apprehension. But it gives the universe meaning, because all processes can be seen to be seeking and moving in an effort to approximate, connect with, and append to this transcendental object at the end of time. [some italics mine]
I don't know about you, but the idea of homo sap sap evolving out of the material world into the spiritual (and that excludes religion, which has rarely been spiritual) sounds a lot more fascinating than what we've been stuck with for eons: first you're born, then your naughty bits have a go, then you become a slave, then you die. And sooner rather than later everyone forgets you even existed.
Years ago Sting and The Police recorded Spirits in the material world. Those with imagination will be looking forward to the breakthrough. Those without will keep on voting for the sad old same old.
There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolutionWe are spirits in the material world
Our so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail you
The subjugate the meek
But it's the rhetoric of failureWe are spirits in the material world
Where does the answer lie?
Living from day to day
If it's something we can't buy
There must be another wayWe are spirits in the material world
-- Gort Slypesunder
Good post Mr Slypesunder. Something to look forward to and not too far. But I'll vote for the party that panders to the bit of the time frame where the naughty bits have a go.
Posted by phil on May 10, 2007