Searching for Solutions in our Current Quandary
It is quite remarkable to see how the human species has evolved. A couple of the most transformative events in our specie’s history have been the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution.
What I want to talk about in this piece is the absolute quandary we as a species are in right now. The quote by E.O. Wilson sums it up very succinctly, “ we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.” Our biology comes programmed and designed for a different world and environment, we have very powerful institutions with very low morals that make very poor ethical decisions, and we have the power to blow up the world hundreds of times over. Medieval institutions are driven by paleolithic emotions that use godlike technology to take advantage of others by their paleolithic emotions. (I hope you can track that last sentence.)The rate at which our biology evolves has not been able to keep up with our technological and cultural evolution. This equation has left us with a world that has engineered technology to maximize profits and benefit the medieval institutions. The common citizen has been targeted and is suffering the harm of technology that exploits our reward circuitry that was once very adaptive. It was adaptive for an environment that was a lot more wild and natural, one in which we lived in tribes around the size of dunbar’s number. Our default genetic urges move forward in time but can only look to the past to see what’s worked. This becomes troublesome when we account for how quickly our technology and civilization is advancing.
It is interesting to note that our biology alone wasn’t selected for by nature, it included our tool making ability. Humans without tools don’t make it through the jaws of nature. So the evolution of our tool making capacity( which was absolutely crucial and necessary to our survival) has turned into technologies that can and are causing a mass extinction.
We now live in a time with relentless access to hyper-normal stimuli which gives us a sense of pleasure and reward without the actual evolutionary value of what was once coupled with the feeling of reward. So we are chasing the same feelings that led our ancestors to success. Much like a moth that is programmed to fly in the direction of light even if it commits suicide by flying into a fire, we are in pursuit of pleasure that can severely imbalance us and lead us to some dark places. Good examples of this are: what porn is to real sex or a romantic relationship, what fast food is to a healthy nutritional meal, what social media is to authentically deep connections.
So our tech has allowed us to decouple the dopamine hit from the actual evolutionary advantage that this reward was bound to in a paleolithic world. We are left as disconnected and isolated consumers. The rate at which people are suffering from depression, anxiety disorders etc. (the list is long and due to so many factors) has gone sky high especially in the richest and most “advanced” first world countries. The advent of material surplus from industrialism and subsequent marketing has created a culture that believes the good life means chasing material wealth and having a lavish life of maximum comfort and convenience. All the while being completely blind to the negative externalities caused by a linear materials economy. Trying to have infinite growth on a finite planet is a byproduct and a generator function of a flawed humanity that is acting as a cancer to this planet.
I have more or less attempted to set a stage for our current predicament of how we are acting foolishly by making collective decisions on multiple levels that benefit us in the short term, but will punish all of us in the long term. Companies are competing to maximize short term gain which usually always has long term harm to the whole. So the current culture is trying to win at a game that self terminates. The paleolithic emotions with god-like technology has resulted in unsustainable activity that has a global externalities. So this begs the question, what will it take for us as a species to develop the wisdom and prudence to responsibly regulate the god-like technology we have found ourselves with?
So solutions… This is a very open and broad topic that books upon books can be written about. So I think it is best for me to keep it relatively vague. Honestly it comes down to the perennial wisdom that you find in spiritual traditions, but that combined with our capacity for innovation and problem solving. It is cliche but all the answers lie within. The perception and belief in separation creates a lot of suffering. There are states of consciousness and perception available to all of us that fill us with a sense of oneness, love, interconnectedness, and many other words that are always going to be short-comings of the actual experience. Spiritual practices unequivocally reduce suffering and breed altruism. In order for us to develop the love and prudence to wield godlike tech, we must earnestly and genuinely care for the whole. It requires a somatic understanding that we are an inseparable part of the whole, and that we are wholeness in a part.
Spiritual practices have always been about softening the ego and opening up to awareness of our interbeing with all that is. An overdeveloped ego will drive selfish and and toxically competitive behavior in individuals and in groups. Egocentrism and Ethnocentrism. Being born and raised in this culture at a default will cause you to over-identify with the separate self. So what I am talking about here is really about taking the leap from the separate self to the interconnected self that identifies as a part of the whole and the whole in a part. And the way to make this transition really comes down to having awakening experiences. Now you don’t have to force yourself to care about the environment or look at it as a chore, but rather you feel your connection to the planet as our mother in some way, and you actually feel good and connected by taking care of the land. This is just one example in a change of mindset that switches our incentives from selfish to selfless. When we inhabit our interconnected self, we actually feel better contributing more to a system than we are taking from it. We begin to feel fully big and small in an interconnected universe. We begin to seek dynamics that simultaneously benefit the individual and the whole.
If we can organize in communities and raise our consciousness as collectives, and then integrate these spiritual insights into ways of governance, then we stand a chance to be competent stewards of godlike technology. It sounds easy and nice because of how vague I am talking. These ideas are true in principle, but the question comes down to, what does this actually look like applied and in practice?
