30A: Origins of the Corruption of Being

Brain emerges and evolves to support increasingly complex life forms

So what is this pollution of Being? And how did it occur? How did Being get mixed up with Person? How was she corrupted?

In the Beginning there was just pure unadulterated Being - the new Born Baby - Pure Experience. However, in order to survive the Baby had to organize the incoming Data.

The lower life forms are hard wired to self organize and survive without any choices. These tiny organisms behave automatically - by instinct - as it were. As the self-organization reached a critical mass with regards size or complexity, these organisms acquired a Brain with which to organize the incoming Data. The Brain emerged to aid the survival of the Body. It was a successful emergent principle and began to evolve by process of natural selection. Those early Brains were just an extension of the automatic body functions. While they analyzed situations to maximize survival and make proper choices, these choices were fairly automatic. It didn’t involve ‘stepping out of the Box’.

Social structure of Animals doesn’t evolve

Some examples: The organization of animals and insects doesn’t vary within the particular species. For instance, ant colonies have similar components whether they are in Africa or South America. Studies on ant colonies done in the 1930s would still be relevant in the 2000s. Wolf pack studies in the 1950’s are still applicable 50 years later. At any time in the future, it should be posssible to replicate studies on beehives, sheep herds, or schools of fish, no matter which year they occurred, if the studies were performed with sufficient detail.

In other words, the social structure of Bees doesn’t evolve, nor does that of Sheep, Cows, Wolves or Chickens. While the species might evolve, especially in isolation (maybe on an island somewhere), the social organization of the species does not evolve. The hard wiring of the Mind-Body connection sets the organization. Dogs organize in Packs, not out of choice, but out of hardwiring. This is why movies about animals or machines organizing to overthrow humans - Secret of Nimh, Planet of the Apes, 2001 Space Odyssey, The Birds, to name a few - are so entertaining.

Possible to imagine a group of animals revolting, while unbelievable

Humans can imagine the scenario of animals or machines choosing a different type of social organization because of our tendency to anthropomorphize everything. Yet, we don’t seriously entertain the notion that another species or machine could possible organize to take over the world. This is the realm of science fiction writers - not scientists. While it is possible to train animals within the limits of their hardwiring to serve the corrupted ends of humans - it is unbelievable that elephants, lions, wolves, insects, chickens or rats could ever organize in any other way than they always do. We certainly don’t seriously believe that they have the mental capacity to organize sufficiently to take over the Earth. Animals revolt individually to survive. They do not organize as groups to revolt and overthrow their owners, even though it is an amusing idea. While true of animals, this is not true of humans.

Animals and their social organization evolve simultaneously

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For animals, excluding humans, any evolution in their social form has to with species evolution. (Note: as always there are some notable exceptions to this statement, but the range of social variation is slight.) As species evolved so did their self-organization, always in slightly more effective ways to survive. Those whose genetics didn’t lead to a more efficient (‘fit’) organization didn’t survive. Evolutionary processes selected for both social organization and biological attributes over long periods of time. Hence the evolution of the species was intimately connected with the evolution of their social organizations. The evolution of species and their social organization occurred relatively simultaneously. This evolution was also in relation to their environment - their ecology.

Social organization of humans evolves separately

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The converse is true of humans. Their social forms evolve independently of their biological evolution. Spencer applied the term social evolution to human organizations before Darwin ever conceived of biological evolution. In fact, Spencer’s ideas inspired Darwin.

Social Evolution linked to human ability to self reflect, which leads to choice

What’s the difference? Why does the social organization of humans evolve, while the social organization of animals does not?

This Author suggests that it is the human ability for self-reflection that allowed us to think ‘outside the box’ and thereby see different alternatives. Because of Choice we were able choose which social organization to belong to - setting the stage for social evolution. For humans, Self Reflection, Choice and Will are all intimately connected in one emergent package.

Mind is another type of container designed to protect the Body

We talked about the importance of containers in storing the energy in order for emergence to occur. The single cell was contained by its porous walls, which allowed energy to come in, but not to escape. Then came the body with an armor to contain and protect its internals from harm. Then came the Brain/Mind, as another type of weapon or armor to protect the organism from harm - to protect those self-organizing cells from destruction.

Brain -> Automatic: Mind -> Choice

Brain = Automatic Logic determines optimum Self Organization for survival

Thus the Brain of all Life forms is there to assist the Organism in its quest to survive or self-actualize. Under this definition the Brain is based upon an automatic logic, which takes over to dictate survivor behavior. This includes the tendency to self organize in set patterns, depending on the species. With its species-specific Logic, the Brain dictates the distinct types of self-organization that have allowed the species to survive for millions of years. While the logic might be flawed in terms of the survival of the individual, it has proved to be successful strategy for the larger organism. While perhaps unsuccessful for a minority - it has worked for the majority - the species.

Our System powerful enough to Self reflect, which has proved to be successful

While the social organization of all other species is fixed, the social organization of humans evolves. Why? We speculate that this has to do with our unique ability to self-reflect. According to our theory, self-reflection was an emergent property of the evolving mental capabilities of animals. Once the human Brain became big or powerful enough, the ability to self-reflect emerged spontaneously. From self -reflection came the Will to make choices. This proved to be an effective evolutionary tool, as witnessed by the survival of our species for over 100,000 years.

Choice = Potential for right and wrong decisions

However, with the ability to self reflect and make choices - came the potential for good and bad choices - positive and negative - true and false - good and evil choices. False choices led to demise. True choices led to survival. Note that in this context true and false have no morals associated with them. They are merely based upon survival or not.

Survival = Success = True = 1

Extinction = Failure = False = 0

Animals don’t have ability to choose social organization

While animals also made choices that led to demise or survival, these choices only led to biological extinction or evolution - not social evolution. In contrast, even though biological evolution has stopped for humans, our social forms continue to evolve. Reiterating for integration, the social organization of animals is tied to their biological organization and doesn’t evolve unless the organism evolves. This is not so with humans. Our social organization is constantly and rapidly evolving.

Logic + Self Organization of Animals is Hard wired into the system.

We suggest that the mental hardware of animals is not powerful enough to support the potential for self-reflection. Animal logic along with their attendant ability to self-organize is hardwired into their system. Due to this hardwiring, animals don't have the ability to step outside of their social box.

Self Reflection = Observer => Step out of Box => Survival in Odd Environments

In contrast, the mental hardware of humans is powerful enough to support self-reflection. We have referred to this unique component of humans as the Observer. While animals only have a Brain that makes relatively automatic decisions, we speculate that humans have this same automatic Brain combined with an Observer. The human Mind is the combination of Observer and Brain. Due to the Observer's ability to self-reflect, Mind has the potential to participate or not in Brain's relatively automatic decisions. Accordingly, Mind can choose whether to participate in one social organization or another. This ability to choose allowed humans to adapt to hostile environments in a lifetime - rather than having to evolve into the new social organization over generations. Because of this relatively instant social evolution, humans were more able to flourish in harsh environments through ingenious solutions. Our ability to self-reflect allowed us to make choices outside Brain's box.

As an example: While the Neanderthal used the same tools for hundreds of thousands of years - the human tools have been evolving from the beginning. Indeed, our tools are evolving so quickly that the copyright office is months behind on its task of ratifying new inventions.

Humans have the unique ability to make really bad choices

While this new tool, self-reflection, was successful, evolutionarily - at least for the time being - it also led to some unusual distortions, not possible with the non-reflective animals.

On the most basic level, the ability for self-reflection enabled Mind to choose whether to participate in Brain's automatic programming or not. In other words, Humans have a Mind that is somewhat independent of Brain's automatic directives.

Note that the Animal Brain with its potential for self-organization combined with relatively automatic behavior enabled many species to survive for millions of years. In other words, this strategy proved to be an incredible evolutionary success. 'Don't mess with the System, if it works,' is the underlying motto. Only changes that facilitated species-survival over generations were retained. All others were discarded. Changes were slow and dependable.

This situation changed with the emergence of the Observer. Due to Mind's ability to choose whether to participate or not, social organization could change rapidly for better or worse. We are only cognizant of the relatively successful social experiments. The rest perished. Rapid experimental changes are not all good. This is also true of mental reorganization of priorities, as we shall see.

To counter this potential for excessive experimentation, social organizations, in all parts of the world, incorporated a resistance to change in their cultural fabric. This strategy enforced the continuance of a status quo that had successfully preserved order. In China, Confucianism emphacized the importance of ritual as a way of promoting social stability and thereby preventing the breakdown of society. India had its caste system to enforce the ordering of roles in society. For centuries Europe had a rigidly enforced social classes combined with the Catholic Church to slow down, if not prevent cultural change. In the United States until relatively recently, personal choice was limited in terms of life style, presumably to to minimize the possibility of bad decisions. In fact many in this camp maintain that the late 1960s marked the breakdown and degeneration of American society because of the expansion of cultural options that occured during this time period – for instance birth control and women's rights. The proliferation of these types of institutions devoted to resisting change is no accident but a successful strategy in terms of social evolution. It provides the necessary drag that prevents a drift towards chaos and disintegration. The point is that the unique human ability to self-reflect and thereby resist instincts and social conditioning has many dangers associated with it.

This same tendency is also seen on a personal level. Many organizations have emerged to help us to control our thoughts, presumably to prevent the same potential drift into unproductive or even destructive thought patterns. Besides religious organizations we also have psychologists and Alcoholics Anonymous to keep individuals on course. Because of our ability to choose, we also have the ability to make some really bad choices that are counterproductive to our best interests.

Mind has power to rewire the Brain and shift from Being Present

Due to the self-reflective capability, Mind can also rewire the Brain to some extent. Once the Brain has been rewired, his responses are based on this new, supposedly improved, automatic logic. Without the ability to rewire the Brain, the Organism would immediately revert to the old behavior patterns as soon as Mind's Observer shut down. Even though our social forms are built to resist change, our cultural organization is constantly evolving, as should be evident by now. This requires a Brain that can be reprogrammed to address a different set of contingencies.

The human ability to reprogram Brain also includes the ability to reset priorities. Without the ability to self reflect and reprogram the Brain, Plants and Animals can luxuriate in just Being. Not tortured by the potential for making good or bad choices, animals and plants can focus their entire attention upon the present. In fact they don't have any choice in the matter. They just are. In contrast, because of our ability to reset priorities we can attach a greater importance to events in the past or potential circumstances in the future. This shift in priorities occurs at the expense of the Present. Instead of residing in Being, humans can get trapped in future agendas or past regrets. To counter this tendency to drift from the Present many social institution have emerged to encourage meditation and residing in quietude. These practices are presumably designed to reprogram the Brain to give the Present Moment a greater priority.

In summary, the Brain reached such a state of complexity that the ability for Self Reflection emerged. This state we call Mind. The potential for Self Reflection led to the connected features of Choice and Will. Because of this complex the self-organizing ability of humans evolves. This was in contrast to other animals whose social organizations don’t evolve. The ability to Self-Reflect also conferred the ability to reprogram the Brain. This ability to reconfigure priorities enables humans to shift their attention away from the Present to the Past and Future. Being resides in the Present. Because animals don't have the ability to self-reflect they reside entirely in Present, for better or worse. Because humans have the ability to self-reflect they have a tendency to shift from the Present, where Being resides. Therein lies the Corruption of Being.

 

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