on humanism and environmental crisis

Posts tagged ‘niche crisis’

Stories about the invention of language

The stories that help us understand “The invention of language as an ultimate culprit for the environmental and social crisis.”

I liked this essay, but my friends think it could be better. Some conclusions and assumptions were too hastily made. The text was too dry and not personal. My persona, apparently, was too pushy and annoying, as I would act as “the strident scientist who knows all.”

  The language was invented by humans very late, as a simple communication social tool. With the recent dominance of the left hemisphere, it crazily determines our reality.

   Danka was an incredible woman. The times must have been ready for a big, almost magical transformation in the living beings on Earth.

She lived about 50,000 years ago in the hunter-gatherer group somewhere in Eastern Turkey. During her single long life, she witnessed and participated in the invention of a new communication method.  As a toddler, she was saved from a tiger attack by possibly the last surviving Neanderthal, Adam. Later, Adam, recovering after the fight with the tiger, observed little Danka learning to communicate, pointing at objects trying to repeat the sounds. Adam was unusually motivated, loved The Beautiful, Danka’s big sister, and wanted to understand and belong.

The life of these people was simple and routine; it was about executing inborn instincts prompted by a changing environment. Sun was rising, and the men went hunting gazelles, which were plentiful there. The women did the rest- gather nuts, wild grain, and fruit.  Everybody helped with caring for the children, grooming, and making stone tools.

 The desires were simple: safety, warmth, belonging, food, mating, and social position. Algorithms and neurotransmitters determined the actions and planning, felt subjectively what we would call “wants, fears, and pleasures.”

  When I go for a morning walk with my dog, Tex, it is pretty much the same. The clouds moved away, and the sun is shining in Tennessee. I am breathing, walking, and enjoying the park around me. The dog is happy; he feels pretty much the same.

  No words. He sees me happy; I see him happy. We think about the breakfast we will have on return. I will cook eggs; Tex will have his pellets. I feel alive, slightly cold, though, and getting hungry. We both think about breakfast, and we both know what to do and what will happen: some vague images coming to mind: “inside the fridge’, “cutting tomatoes,” “Remember the toasts!” and such. You can imagine that these images and thoughts are the pieces of larger instinctual and learned sequences of instructions in my brain. The events in Tex’s mind are pretty much the same: happy on the walk, chilled, hungry, expecting to be fed on return, all parts of instinctual algorithms and learned routines.

   Deep in my “breakfast reverie’ I am startled by the sudden: “Hello, Tom!”. I bumped into Sam, an old friend of mine, with his dog.

“Hello, Sam, “I exclaimed, “what are you doing here?”.

Normal? Well, it looked normal, but it was a neural tsunami.

Until now, both I and my dog utilized our basal ganglia- like the amygdala, and brain stem, maybe some hippocampal memories.

Suddenly (without a second of hesitation), I started to use language. I jumped into a completely separated reality full of people, things, and ideas- all generated in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas while the previous animal system was still active. I was merging both of my realities seamlessly and effortlessly.

Tex was left utterly alone, now playing with Sam’s dog using still the same parts of the brain as before the meeting. (Animal communication uses completely different parts of the brain- chimps with damaged Broca’s area, unlike humans, communicate just fine.)

But neither I nor Sam nor the dogs were aware of the abyss dividing us. The humans couldn’t imagine how such friendly beings as dogs could be so different so suddenly. As we can not imagine it, our brain “explains’ it attaching anthropomorphic features to the dog’s behavior. ”Happy dog, playing with the friend’- we are denying the divide.

Explanations occur in our language-made reality, left hemisphere-dominated world. It is somehow analogous to nature’s “horror vacui”- the fear of void. It is how the famous “a rabbit or a duck’ picture is always explained- one way or another, but not “I don’t know” or “both.”

When we think about Danka’s people, living 50,000 years ago, we create, all of us; anthropologists included, accepted illusions describing humans (and animals) without language.

It is a strange thing; they had brains almost identical in every aspect to our brains, and yet their world before the invention of language was so, so different!

  Max Bennett, in his book “A Brief History of Intelligence,” describes this beautifully, step by step. And yet, he is so wrong. Talking about early vertebrates living on the young Earth half a billion years ago, he says, “brain decodes the pattern of activated neurons to recognize a specific thing” (the italics are mine). Things have specific semiotic (of meaning) boundaries delineated by human symbolic language. These animals recognized not things but choices of behavior, the only thing that could be conserved by the evolutionary pressure.

People can’t understand my theories because they can’t imagine the world without things.

  Max Bennett is an artificial intelligence guru with incredible knowledge of evolutionary biology. He will show you how we are learning to make machines following the evolutionary development of nervous systems from bacteria to humans. For him, like most of us, ingrained since the cradle, the things are the most certain and “beyond question” features of our reality, more than ideas, spirits, and gods. Despite the author’s intention and understanding, Bennett’s book moving along the evolutionary tree and relating the stages to AI advances can help in making in our mind the picture of little Danka’s community. These people grew up with a firmly established system of daily routines, activities, pleasures, and terrors. They did not know things, did not need them, and they did not have them. They did not want them; things were not “on the list of their desires,” not on their vocabulary, they did not have vocabulary!

We can imagine that the things “lay dormant” embedded inside instinctual instruction codes describing, for example, things to buy online.  Can you imagine the Internet site describing the needs or pleasures that can be satisfied instead of describing what to buy?  Or going to the restaurant and talking to the waiter about your thirst, hunger, and anxiety instead of ordering from the menu? (unless the menu would be called “What’s your problem?”).

  It reminds me of my uncle “teaching” me how to swim. He threw me to the lake from the boat. There were no objects and no things, only survival instinct and trusting my beloved uncle’s good intentions.

Remember my encounter with Sam and language reality mixed with non-language (non-things) reality from before our meeting?

Now, watch with me the mother playing with her happy 6-month-old.

Back and forth, taking turns starts this loving play. The smile, the coo, then pause, the response, the sing-song, the pointing and playing with objects around them. The duo engages and slowly accelerates the sophistication and richness of play. Mom knows that the baby will be like her, a person. She listens to it in the crescendo of exchanges and happiness.

Now, stop. We are going to split this scene in two. We’ll separate it into two generations distance, not “any” generations but the generations when the magic happened.

First, Danka’s older sister plays with her, second, Danka’s daughter Ada plays with her baby. Between them is the mysterious “invention of the language.” Were these two baby plays different?

I wondered if they would be. Which sounds are the words, which just play-sounds, sing sounds, being together, touching toys, maybe naming them, learning about myself together with learning about the outside world, learning about being the mother and the child and the self?

And maybe there was the third person. Early humans were under pressure, maybe on the run, they had a lot of alloparenting (parenting by many different members of the group, rather than exclusively by the mother, like in chimpanzees), and everybody was constantly together, maybe the third person observed the scene and translated that into adult communication? Maybe it was Adam, the Last Neanderthal, desperately trying to belong and to understand the exchange. And the parts of the baby’s babbling become the first Adam’s words uttered in homo sapiens language.

  There would be a crucial difference between the two scenarios (a mere 40 years apart, as the generations were short then). I think that in the first case, before the language, when 2-year-old Danka was playing with her sister, the presence and role of the third person, a motivated observer, is essential. The play of name,  the “namer” and the object, had to be experienced by the person, human, being outside the triangle of agreement.

  The origins of the triangle of agreement (no things yet)

              Agency, or You/I, or Reflecting on the World

                             /.                                          `

        Naming (There is no symbol                  See, feel,

without an agency naming it).                              Hear

                        /                                                          `

Symbol/ Declarative label  < > merge <   >     Perception (a piece  

   Translating                                              of code, program, algorithm)

                           Triangle of agreement

Forgotten side.                                                 Right side, used side

                                 A human (“namer”)

                            /.                             `

             Naming.                            See, feel, hear

              /                                                       `

A name.   >  >        >       same.   >   >   >   A thing

So, the agreement is made. And then? Then, the agreement is used for communication, manipulated, “grammarized”, preserved and conserved like a sacred flame. Where? In things!

The left part of the triangle is forgotten and we use the right side.

The things with their names and shreds of perception, (instruction codes) are the bricks with which our reality was built for every human baby, including  Ada’s daughter.  The objectivity, (like DNA in every living organism), is the way to carry and build upon it.

Ada playing with her daughter doesn’t need any observer. The “outside World” is in objects, food, toys, crib, and Mum. For them, like for us now, each of these objects/names has boundaries worked out by humans and preserved in the language. The system, the game, the agreement, really, the charades with names instead of gestures, once in place, was carried and multiplied endlessly, effortlessly. How simple.

Category:

enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, human nature, nature of reality

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“An ultimate culprit for the environmental and social crisis”.

Introduction

  1. There is a crisis. Humanity more mature, wiser, and more reflective wakes up to see a tragic regression and looming disaster. Media lies are mixed with environmental and social problems. Personal anxieties are mixed with the suffering of millions. Conspiracy theories and overwhelming avalanche of facts are racing for attention of our confused and bewildered minds.
  2. I see the invention of language as the ultimate cause of the crisis. That invention saved us from extinction by giving us communication tools and an unbeatable advantage over all living beings.  But the same tool through the invention of things made over millennia the obsession with power possible.

Power involves the ownership of material goods, but also

  the ownership of the people’s freedoms, on the level of the individual, business, national and religious systems. Slowly but surely, lured by this myth of power we developed a thin, filthy layer of fear and greed.

  • This greed is just cultural and psychological and is too recent to be evolutionary or biological. It is not in our nature, which is why my proposed “no greed parenting” systems can shift our worldviews, desires, and habits in one generation.
  • My solution for these problems is based on the evolutionary explanation of some crucial ethological and anthropological facts in our prehistory.

   Human ancestors evolved from apes: huge brains with a prodigious mixture of sensory capacities-smell, sound, vision, touch.

 These already very social animals, great apes, splintered just 8 million years ago again into a new avenue even more brainy, “betting” on continuous growth of memory and communication, “neglecting” the body’s adaptability to changing environment. They were early humans with their empathy, friendship, and social networks, but without language, without syntax, there were no names or selves. They were living in an instinctual world. We can not imagine that like we can’t imagine “how it is to be a bat”.

In 1976, Julian Jaynes wrote a seminal book called “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”. (His work was analyzed in Marcel Kuijsten’s book, “Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes”.) Jaynes tried to imagine these humans as  “listening to the gods”. I would compare their wisdom to insect nest intelligence.

Ethologists and anthropologists understand the “consciousness” of animals and early humans as an instinctual intelligence governed by neural networks interwoven into evolutionarily developed algorithms, a set of “rules” or procedures to be followed in certain critical situations involving choices. Some instincts can be extremely sophisticated (“how to act as the leader of the pack of wolves” or “disgust with eating your own children”) some simple: the eels following electrical potentials.

From the onset, early human intelligence in groups of people such as a family or tribe evolved into a pattern where it was dominantly allocated to an individual: for example, the alpha male or female. All other eusocial species, that is, species showing an advanced level of social organization, evolved into socially complex systems because of group intelligence. For example, bees are a eusocial species; Each bee has limited intelligence, but the bee hive as a whole is incredibly smart.

Reality Models

.Now, with our intellect we, humans, are trying to understand our place in the Universe– so, we are making models. Curiosity and understanding grew into “knowledge about the world’ and from that sprouted “science” with its logic and objectivity principles.

But, alas, we are using “obsolete equipment”, the great ape’s nervous system evolved in the process of working on our niche, making maps of the environment, and creating a “theory of mind.”

Our understanding is made of these animal models, but we described them using our human language: dolphins “playing, singing, chasing the boat” and squirrels “outsmarting us” in the yard. As over the epochs and civilizations our language evolves, so do these models.

I see just three overlapping sets of models of reality.

  1. Ancient, pre-animal ground of being. Like forest intelligence, the spirit of the mountain, Gaia, Sun and Gods. It is a primordial, unexplained, “aha” of existence.

It is also our deepest understanding of physics, mathematics, and cosmology. (For example: in the forest one experiences a myriad of criss-crossing forces creating the forest as we see it. The trees, the fungi, the animals, but also, water and sun exposure, the history of volcanic eruptions, and human exploration, all according to thermodynamics and the laws of entropy.)

Our language can not explain it, (how could it?) but we can feel it. We share this wisdom in our bones, literally, but we know it is beyond us.

AI can’t have this data, and can’t learn it. AI is based on self-learning algorithms, without animals there is no nervous system, and no algorithms to evolve.

2. Pre-linguistic, animal-like, instinctual, emotional, and intuitive.  These models are based on the neural networks in the brains of animals and humans. In the process of strengthening its niche, each species accumulated data in the form of brain algorithms, starting about one-half billion years ago. We observe animals and ourselves, but most of this data we also will never know. It includes our own instincts, pre- linguistic part of unconsciousness, and “collective consciousness”. It’s huge: no sharing of the wisdom, each organism alone, trillions of them.

3. Our tiny human reality, built by each human baby from the ground up, from babbling, grasping, pointing, playing, “bathing” in words, names, and relationships, then, starting in the second year of life, in “things”. It originated in animals acting, and manipulating the material world. The skills are located mostly in the left hemisphere leading to the symbolic, shared language. An Aboriginal Australian man, the famous Captain’s Cook Indians from Tierra del Fuego, you and I, we all share the same one unique reality. It is why we can play charades and chimpanzees or AI can’t.

(Of course, if you attempt to describe the cosmos (#1 model) with human language (#3 model) you’d be literally “lost for words” and justly feel “there is something more”)!

 For every modern human, these models resemble “Babushka” nesting: my own objective reality described by language, consciousness, and reason in the center. (see:#3)

    Outside of that, there is the unconscious instinctual world, a sum of experiences accumulated in neural networks during half a billion years of animal evolution. (see: #2)

     And then we know there is even bigger ground of being, sacred, energy fields, that we know intuitively but also attempt to imagine and meditate about.

When I die, all my ”Babushkas” disappear, when we all die, everything is gone.

Origin of language

This simple, even if startling, concept of reality explains also consciousness, the Holy Grail of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy.

But before that, we have to remember how language was built.

It helps to see the language as a survival communication tool, it is what saved us from extinction, just 50,000 years ago. We built this tool in a similar way a one-year-old baby learns about the world: metaphor over metaphor, over metaphor, each receiving a name and becoming a thing. And the reality was growing as we learned more and more of them. Round things can be eyes, or balls, or apples, or stars… Happy things; Mom, food, toys!

This incredible innovation of communication was similar in its importance to the tool of preserving the structure of the organisms through the nucleotide chains- DNA.

It was based on the concept of eusocial sharing of meaning attached to name (sound)  and perception (things).

Out of these three crucial elements: sharing, sound, and perception, actually only the first- sharing, was really new and very revolutionary. Somehow mother/baby sharing was shifted to the grown-up world. Sharing included the concepts of “you” and “I”. This we later called “self” “reflective” and “consciousness” in different contexts.

Each word is a metaphor, it has similar origins in “social agreement” (context) and contains perceptual, “old” data and a declaration: an agency naming this old data. For example, I say “ocean of your eloquence” or ”apple of your eye”. All words in each metaphor are already simpler, older metaphors.

Sharing metaphors (words) is unique for humans (like DNA for living things), our reality is completely separate from non-symbolic beings. What we see as the mind of animals or AI, with all appearances of intelligence, language, friendship, and happiness are all anthropomorphisms!

No language, no names. No names, no things. No things, no reality. No reality, no consciousness.

See : the “Origins of Language “and ” Triangle of Agreement” diagrams in the next post: “The stories that help us understand ” The invention of language…”

Consciousness

 It is really simple: The reality is everything around you (I mean everything, past, present, and future, down to each of your bloody cells, and each of the distant stars!), the self is you, and the connection and action between the two is the consciousness. These three big concepts are really one.

They are all the gift of language, naturally one can not exist without the others, all just about 50,000 young.

   So, we call this unique feeling, this connection between self and our reality, the state and knowledge related to my active being “consciousness”, but do not fuss about it. You know what I mean, but if you ask me to add some precision, say, into the level of my alertness, it is fine, be my guest. But there is no “consciousness” floating in the universe of information and hominids trying to match it better or worse. Words are just communication tools.

 All animals have some evolutionary wisdom in their nervous system and their group intelligence so they are sentient but not conscious. Some are very, very sentient, they look like us, act like us, maybe feel like us, and we should not harm them.

. Only humans are conscious, by this ancient agreement solely, repeated with every baby, they operate metaphoric, symbolic language, this unique communication system, learned in infancy with names, agents, and things. Most of the time we act instinctually, sharing the sentience wisdom with the rest of our sister beings, sharing the love to nature and to the Earth.

Only humans can at will move one’s attention froma reflection on the meaning of this essay to laughter or crying to the basic certainty of existence. We are the metaphor experts, jumping domains and shifting the reality models in our minds.

. Only we, humans, have a planetary vision, responsibility, and capacity to save us… from ourselves.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, materialism, nature of reality, origin of self

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Bi-weekly email from Dr. Tom

What the nature of reality have to do with the environmental and social collapse of our civilization?

Everything. 

But, how can a mere retired pediatrician explain it?

I plan to explain and discuss it bit by bit. 

I  will write as a pediatrician with 50 years of hands-on clinical experience. I will add the worldview of an introverted eco-humanist activist. And an armchair evolution theorist. Then I will root it in anthropology -there I will explore the origins of cognition. 

Like in the full circle, my proposed solutions of the mess we have gotten ourselves in will go back to kids, to parenting and education.  

I will not talk about hoity-toity utopias, but even minute improvement in these woefully sick areas of our modernity can help a lot. 

Let’s start this old conversation anew.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, Humanism, materialism, nature of reality

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From an instinctual creature to a person. Different worlds, different realities.

I see faces everywhere. In the clouds, on the tiles in the bathroom, on the old Indian carpet, in Sedona Red Rocks, instead of vortexes, I see faces. There are human faces, animals, aliens, or monsters- most often in upright positions- the evidence that it is my evolutionary (scarred of a saber-tooth tiger) brain makes them.

I am obsessed with my brain producing images, questioning and pondering on our ancestors’ concept of reality.

How can I question reality being a mere retired pediatrician?

The reason is global warming.

( I think the term “collapse of human niche”  is more comprehensive than the narrow term-” global warming”- it includes all our problems not only hot summers. You can say “environmental disaster”- but you have to remember about socio-economic, psychological, anthropological, and even philosophical woes, among others. You know what I am talking about – Amazon fires and Arctic Ice- China and Ukraine.)

What does reality have to do with the environmental collapse?

Everything.

Nobody really questions reality, not the caveman, not the modern man. Yes, there is a sticker “Question Reality”, but it means only “be weird, irritate everybody, especially grown-ups”. Philosophers? They do not count. Moderns see reality as the most stable thing in this crazy World. Even if it is a wild, cruel World into which we were chased from Paradise? Yes. Things (our reality) are so easy, workable, measurable, and reliable. It works now and worked ok forever- on the local scale. Now, lift your head from the screen, look around, and you’ll see that it doesn’t work well anymore. While the intuitive picture worsens, let’s do some rational thinking while keeping the intuitive image active. This will be our introduction to our hybrid mind – more about it later.

 In this essay, I want to talk about the magical events occurring in every human child around 9 to 18 months of age (or so).

This would be a base for this new understanding and as a pediatrician,  I know something about it.

So, If we could shift our understanding of reality and see it just as a clever tool homo sapiens invented recently then the task of re-working and improving this tool might be doable. 

Most importantly this solution, the shift in our worldview, by going straight to the source, would help with all types of niche collapse.

 In my understanding, I tried to incorporate new discoveries and ideas from evolutionary neurobiology and anthropology.

1. The concept of hybrid brain unique to humans. (Merlin Donald)

I’ll explain what it means here, because on internet this means human/robot combination.

2. The concept of the recent, sudden acquisition of symbolic language at the dramatic period when Homo Sapiens were almost extinct.(Ian Tattersall, Noam Chomsky) I know, most cognitive scientists disagree, they are “gradualists”-  getting language slow and gradually.

3. Comparative data from Max Planck Institute (Tomasello) on infant human versus non-human development and behavior.

 100 years earlier, Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, working on intelligence testing, tried to understand this magical transformation he observed- from young infants using mostly instinctual system of “learning” based on sensory and motor reflexes to older infant so charming, alert and intelligent. It was a dramatic discovery then, his stages of cognitive development and a pivotal moment of recognizing “object permanence”. An infant suddenly sees that things and people have this incredible ability to continue to exist even if out of sight, and then, against any reason, are being able to appear again just the same!

I spent 50 years of examining babies, hands-on, in sickness and wellbeing on 3 continents. It was a “medical home” type of practice – I saw the same children, often since birth until they went to college. 

Actually, now I do remember one 6-month-old baby girl I was able to help. I saw little Josie for the first time in the well-baby clinic. 

Mom was worried as Jossie cried a lot and ‘did not talk much”. 

I play with Josie, she lays on her back, I smile, talk to her, take her arms, and pull her gently up to the sitting position. She likes it, holds her head up, and looks into my eyes making some happy noises. She was fine! Later I found that the mother, very anxious and with some labor-related depressive mood, was worried about autism.  So I reassured her, “ Jossie is fine, you need to see a shrink, get some pills and psychotherapy. Play more with your baby, talk, if you too sad- sing, dance with her.” This straight talk was only possible because I knew the mother since she was my patient as a teenager.

What I saw did not fit Piagetian stages. He saw babies as small adults going through stages of more and more adult-like levels of intelligence.

I saw them as building new reality. I saw two distinct processes overlapping and beautifully integrated. 

  1. The first one we share with animals. We, like animals, are born with an inherited set of instinctual behaviors. They are automatic like breathing, and some are part of complicated systems of reactions, emotions, and actions. Especially social animals, they have their individual, intelligence and nest intelligence, being a part of a larger system- like a beehive or pack of wolves. 

2. The second process: the young human infant starts as an instinctual being and continues to grow curious and intelligent. Bathed in the world of language, names, and people, she starts to mimic and understand its environment. 

She sees the things – no name for this yet. But she learned for the last 3 months that the World is full of things and they are peculiar- they have a sound related to them, “name?” and the agent related to them, mom or other people. She loves this play, she tries to sound “ba, ba” and grab the thing and make eye contact. Happy. The difference is huge: babies building their shared social world consisting of things and people with their names and relationships. 

   Over the years, my experience showed me over and over that we were missing something, something so big like an elephant in the living room.

 I was reading books and scientific articles trying to find an explanation. Well, the philosophers did not know pediatrics ( Famous Merlau-Ponty lectured in Sorbonne about child development !) and pediatricians were not interested in the concepts of reality.

Human infants in the first few months of life are propelled by a system of instinctual instructions, some inherited, others improving with daily baby experiences. Breathing, digesting, sucking, turning, smiling, crying then grabbing things. 

At 18 month ,we see the same little person, fully conscious, talking, even arguing, loving and sometimes demanding. Magic!

Well, following evolutionary science we can observe a similar process in our ancestral past.

Hominids, at least 27 branches of them,  including our ancestors passed through the last 8 million years along very similar transformations.

From australopithecus , instinctual, almost animal creature to today’s modern Homo Sapiens. Similarities are not only in evolution of behavior but also in anatomical  and functional brain development. ( Our encephalographic waves, even in this crude reflection the brain activities,  shift through different patterns depending on our activities.)

There is one more crucial component of that parallel story, one more domain. That is the dramatic influence of sociality on our species. 

 It is strange, but there is a lot written about human world – which is very complicated- but much less about the World of animal which is definitely simpler and easier to investigate. 

Von Uexkull described 100 years ago the World of a tick ( today we would say- “ a little blood-thirsty computer”) and then 50 years ago Thomas Nagel famously asked “ What is it like to be a bat” and basically answered, “who knows?”. 

Plenty of communication but no language. No names, so no things,  no persons, others, so no self either,  just behaviors.

Darwinists made it simple: the survival of the fittest- it is what animals do and know and live for. Their behavior is directed by the experience and wisdom of the  nervous system, evolution-created and machined. A computer-like system, recently with an AI twist. A system of instruction codes, which in “higher” animals can be incredibly complicated- from bee dance to the alfa-male strategy of a gorilla.

Animal had it tough, no breakthrough for about half billion of years!

Since the development of multicellular organisms, origins of organs and the nervous system nothing new happened. Just painfully slow, stubborn evolution, working with mutations, improving niche, diversity, on and on, and on. The systems become more and more intelligent. Now people say that cognition or intelligence is not brain only, but body intelligence, nest intelligence , like bees and termites and primates, maybe forest intelligence. Others like Ervin Laszlo  and Budapest Club adding  concept of planetary intelligence, Gaia hypothesis.

We humans have all these intelligences accumulated, combined, working together. 

According to some wise cognitive scientists ( Merlin Donald, Ian Tattersall for example) our mind can be imagined as a hybrid system. From animals we inherited all automatic, instinctual reflexive system, like animals have. On the top of that evolutionary old machinery, we have symbolic language, which we use when we talk, think and write. ( like electric motor on the top of combustion engine in Toyota Prius)

Babies are born with a fully functional old system but are getting a symbolic one within the first couple of years.

There are some dramatic and important differences between these two systems.

  1. Old system deals with subjective, not shared with others, elements like my pain, my skill to ride a bicycle, my anger etc. 

“Not sharing “ requires some explanation: Two bees flying next to each other use almost identical, inherited instructions codes for their quest. But, like your fear or hunger can not be shared with mine, bee’s quest can not be shared with others, even being identical.

New system is shared: when me and my wife see a sofa – it is more or less same sofa, “what’s for dinner?” and even “nothing!” means more or less the same for her and for me.

  1. Old system is not only not shared but being pre-linguistic, the language if we try to describe it is poor and difficult- try to describe your pain, your skills, your anger.

The new system is the tool to describe the items of our reality.

  1. Old system lacks things, objects, persons- there are just instruction codes for evolutionary beneficial behaviors. For example: There is no tree, some tree’s characteristics appears in the  “when you run, avoid this hard thing”, and “when you’re chased by a bear- look for something to climb on” and “ you might find some good fruit there”. Also these codes can not be shared! I have to show you how to pick up apples, can not point for the orchard in the distance and charade picking and eating apples. (no, animals do not play charades). 

The baby learning new system, learns names of objects attached to people naming them. She learns and control them.

  1. In the old system, the codes are not modular,( half bee dance means nothing),they are “evolutionary very expensive” and clumsy for the brain to get them, the longer the worse, they “improve” or “branch out’ very slowly.

“Ball, mom, wall, bed”- easy, modular, ready to use, build on, like Lego blocks.

  1. This one is tricky: paradoxically the old system is subjective, organism‘s own, but in the same time is impersonal, maybe you can say- anonymous. It does not have the concept of “you” , and then “I” doesn’t make any sense. 

The new system, being shared with others has somehow this notion of “you” in it even if not spoken. Like a baby, she learns the names of things and people together with the underlining notion of “namer”, which later is dropped and forgotten. I imagine that for the caveman this original translation was associated with acknowledging the person participating in the process of translating.

Off course in our daily life, these two systems co-exist and cooperate seamlessly- you breathe,(old) then you say “hallo” (new), then you are suspicious,(old) then you say “never mind”(new).

Actually the talking World is small, simple and created by humans only very recently and when I say ”Hello Sister, Hello Brother, my readers” with this “hello” we presently occupy such a tiny place, such a pigeon hole, the World of the symbolic language. When I go for a walk, I breathe and look around and wander. Around me are millions and millions of different worlds, they are ancient, almost eternal worlds of plants and animals. They burst with stories and wisdom accumulated since the beginning of the Universe. And I am a part of these teachings, my body, its structure built by evolution, my heart beating and feelings, sadness, love and fear. Would I try to describe it, our language, this simple recent tool, this tool would be so inadequate, missing the core meaning, so I just say “hello” and you answer …”hello”. And we may start to talk about the recent movie or dinner and all these worlds, mute, anonymous, poised to interact, but presently forgotten, or suspended, are waiting until we finish talking.

Philosophers, they usually do, made this mixture of two systems, the World of” raw’ experience much too complicated.   I think, with having in mind the two systems described above, you can make a clear and simple distinction. 

  1. The tiny world of words, things, we humans named since about 50 thousand years ago. This was a minuscule but useful homo sapiens invention creating a shared system of symbols and words assigned to them for us to communicate ( and trash the planet in the process).
  2. All Worlds and Dimensions include all other intelligence, past, present, and future attached to our human representations of the Worlds of plants and animals- a separate World for each sentient being, whatever your concept of that may be. It also includes our human subjective Worlds, also our Worlds when we are too young to talk, too sad, too stupid, or just too lonely.
  3. Remember: the human reality is only one, comes from caveman 50 ooo  years ago, shared by all humans, via their infants, including Eskimos and Pygmies, but each insect has its own world, as each of us also has ( only humans have two). 
  4. Also: imagine you are in the forest. Unless you came with an axe, your world do not participate in the world of an oak tree, but this oak tree is fully included in your (our) world- when you are there, or talk about it, photograph it, write about it- you know, all the business we do with things.

E.O. Wilson  tells us that the core of human nature contains interest in others, the propensity to communicate, and the urge to belong. While, naturally, great apes share some of those characteristics, we excel in these skills and priorities. He says that we, humans, and 18, (only 18) other specia are eusocial. Obviously, the above characteristics of our nature relate very closely to eusociality. These eusocial guys have intelligence in their brains and they have Nest Intelligence. Each ant or wolf is stupid but the ants’s nest and wolf’s pack are very smart.

 In our human case, language connects individuals to the nest intelligence, to the human culture. This unique capacity gives us the chance to modify our reality. Is it cheating?  No, we cheated 10,000 years ago when we linked controlling material things to happiness (a subject of the other essay).

Happiness, EOWilson would agree, comes from being with others, from belonging and from talking. 

—

Tom Voychehovski

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, Inventions, materialism, nature of reality, Pediatrics

Tagged with:

No greed parenting

(Can parenting save the World from collapse?)

I am a pediatrician. I worked with kids and families in Poland, The Gambia (West Africa) and then in the U.S  for the last 40 years. It is no surprise that my solution comes from my experience in that field. I can’t change myself, can you? Forget the existentialists, we can not become anything much better. But as a pediatrician, I’m telling you—we can change the next generation.

Completely? No, but substantially, significantly- yes. I saw it happen many times in my practice.

My research also says: yes.

So, our kids. What we do with the little ones is parenting. With the bigger kids: education. Of course, the younger the child, the deeper and more fundamental changes we’d be able to impart. On the other hand, education, unlike intimate and vague parenting, is more structured, organized, and accessible. Ideally, we should try to address both.

I.   Introduction

Our human niche is severely stressed. Our resources are limited and dwindling. But we,  the consumers want more and more things, gadgets, and material goods. And we’d fight for them to the death.

What is worse is that even if the total number of people is not growing fast (“only” 9 billion by 2050), the number of consumers lifted from poverty and subsistence will double—and they are us, the worst polluters.

But the products need to be purchased. If people would not want them or want less, less will be sold and produced.

This is the beauty of the reversed spiral of capitalism. (The more you grow, the more you must grow, but also the more you shrink, the more you need to shrink.)

 You, my reader, will exclaim: this would be terrible, economies would slow down and people would starve. Well, people will not starve. Actually, agriculture would flourish, while some malls and factories could close. Some people might work part-time, the communities, gardens, not-for-profit occupations, and family life, it is what would flourish. But this is not an essay to convince somebody about the environmental crisis. Deniers, bad luck, don’t read it. Read “Laudate Deum” first.(14)

 Here, the question is: how to make people want fewer material goods, buy fewer gadgets, and be less obsessed about these things, in such a pervasive, pernicious way from birth. How to make us, humans, less greedy?

It is impossible, we are rotten to the bones, I agree.

What we are trying to do, like flushing less toilets, recycling, and such, will not do the trick, really.

And my solution has this neat extra bonus: all real and imaginary powers that enslave us, the governments, nationalisms, religions, corporations, conspiracies, aliens, lizard people—all these powers rely on one thing: our greed. Nobody can force you to go to the mall or click into the amazon.com paradise.

Without our greed they are powerless.

With this in mind, during one of our recent Socrates Café meetings, I asked the participants:

Should we:

  1. embrace the advances in technology and train our children to become specialists as fast as possible and as best as possible, i.e. continue the recent emphasis on science, business, and computer science /artificial intelligence?

Or should we:

  1. make a desperate pivot away from technology and teach our children about lifelong learning and humanities with a new emphasis on the family, relationships, community, nature, history, arts, music, language, literature, and (yes!) philosophy?

The answer was a resounding: “NO” to my call for the desperate pivot. Nobody was ready to compromise our “progress” even if it is responsible for the mess we are in.

I wanted to say, look, guys, alternative education is sprouting everywhere. Well, it was sprouting in my mind. I found these humanistic systems, and they were interesting, but most of them were old, heavy with angels, ghosts, spirituality, and obsolete didactic principles.

Waldorf Schools are the most familiar to me, as my daughter attended this school for a while and my very good friend was the Waldorf School teacher and organizer. The book of M.C. Richards Toward Wholeness (1) makes the concept even more enchanting by the poetic approach of this extraordinary woman—a poet, potter, hippie, and new age teacher at the famous Black Mountain very alternative school. Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, a weird Christianity of the early 20th century, permeates the mood and ideas behind the school but is not taught to the pupils. The schools are fantastic, there is art, dance, music and play everywhere. Education is vibrant and alive, the teachers are enthusiastic and attached to their students’ learning with strong emotional bonds. No competition, no grades are necessary. The love of learning is everywhere, learning is shared by students and teachers as an exciting lifelong journey.

The parents are involved—they’d better be as Waldorf education is expensive. And still, this network is growing, with 1200 schools worldwide in 35 countries, and numerous grants that make the students’ profiles more diverse.(2,3)

This is the best example of a humanities-saturated education I could find. The others: Montessori education (4) Paideia Schools (Chattanooga School of Art and Science), Quaker schools, Unitarian-Universalist education, and “Forest Schools” are much more similar to “normal” schooling in America aimed to produce rich or at least employable people.

But even Waldorf’s students end up in a mainstream university—maybe more of them studying visual art, literature, languages, or history. But wthey were not told why to dance around the fire and play with dolls without faces, so they experience , by and by fades away.

Some recent research (5) suggests that humanistic education or even writing your personal worldview (6) by engaging in the “big questions” and philosophy, especially with a supportive small group of students, can shift people’s personal goals and hierarchy of values towards less materialistic worldviews.

And then, about 1 year ago I encountered the work of Frederic Lenoir. (7)“The Happiness”, 2012, and “Le Desir” 2022.

He has a philosophy and practical system “on the ground,” all in French and in six Francophone countries (including Quebec!) The courses teach children humanities- mindfulness and critical thinking. Since 2016 more than 100,000 children have gone through SEVE courses. (Savoir Etre and Vivre Ensemble: “Knowing how to be and live together.”) We do not yet know if these children have a less materialistic worldview or if their families buy fewer gadgets, living a simpler life. Or if they are happier and their environment is improving.

Overall, my research into existing systems was deeply disappointing. It is not only that we don’t know how to make children less greedy, we do not want it. We need a system with a clear-cut philosophy, conscious of what we would do with our children and why. 

We need parenting and educational philosophy linking our curricula with the vision of sustainable society, linking the worldviews of the new generations with human niche’s collapse.

And, at last , linking consumerism and greed with this collapse.

Lenoir points out in his new book the importance of desires “Without them, life is not worth it” and suggests “redirecting” them away from consumerism. To me, desires make only the emotional part of our worldview. A person’s character, habits, dreams, obligations, and many other elements decide how we act and how we influence the world and people around us.

While thinking about the direction in which we want to “desperately pivot” (I am stubborn), we need to consider two types of happiness. (“Happiness” might be not the best term and not the one you like. But in the end, what is a better term describing the “desired situation”—your wishes, drives, habits, what you want? So, for the lack of a more comprehensive term, let’s stick with the H word).

The first type of happiness is ancient: inherited from social mammals and then fine-tuned during the last 10 million years of primate and hominid evolution. It is the mother’s and child’s love, safety, satiation, and belonging. Then: the awe of the unknown, the joy of figuring things out, and friendship of cooperation. With language, imagination, and a love of pattern we created art, music, dance, love of beauty, and nature. Then curiosity and social bonds produced storytelling, learning, and the love of knowledge. Notice the pro-social nature of this type: doing this with a friend or family member actually enhances the experience.

The second type of happiness is the opposite, it works like pie—the more you take, the less is left for me. Money, social power and position, and material possessions work like that.

The first type, call it experiential, is sustainable on two levels:

It takes a lot of time and effort to get it, waiting for the beautiful sunset, reading The Tempest, so you’ll understand the play in the theater, and visiting your grandmother. The satisfaction is short and difficult to measure and requires repeated tries. The results are vague. (A good example is marriage.) But, you have less time for shopping. Instead, you meditate or read Ulysses.

I hope that, with the first type of happiness, practiced since birth, possessions appear less important, so you do not seek them so mindlessly and obsessively.

The second type is easy: it is the pleasure of things, money, the ownership: just step into the garage and your glistening new Tesla is waiting for you, no effort is needed.  This type of happiness is responsible for the economy to hum, also responsible for the environmental crisis, societal recession, violence, wars, personal loneliness, anxiety, and despair.

I believe, as I tried to argue in other essays, that this second type of happiness is very recent, less than 20,000 years old, and way too recent to have a genetic base. It is closely related to symbolic language. As we named things and agents, (8) the survival advantage was almost immediate, the incredible invention of language saving us from nearly certain extinction, which was the fate of 26 or more other hominid branches and perhaps 90% of the Homo Sapiens population.

Ah, the lure of things, now we paying for this dearly; the new extinction is looming.

II.   No greed parenting

We should continue our efforts to mitigate the collapse of the human niche (recycling, community gardens, etc…) At the same time, we should redirect our desires, as Monsieur Lenoir writes, or pivot desperately our parenting and education to attempt a shift in the type of happiness the new generation will strive for. As I said, we can’t change ourselves, but maybe the new generation can become less materialistic. I am calling this program “no-greed parenting.”

Most parents want their children to be happier than they are. The most common pathway is to help your child to have a successful life. That usually means improved outside circumstances like better, more prestigious jobs, more money, and a better place to live. Sometimes that “better life” includes more personal elements: being prettier, funnier, healthier, stronger, and friendlier.

But here with “no-greed parenting,” we wish for the inconceivable; to flourish in the future world, our children need a different worldview, one which for us is difficult to imagine. Lenoir in his recent book Le Desir plans to “redirect” or “rearrange the set of desires.” I suggest that we work on the different types of happiness.

The Principles of No-Greed Parenting: ( This is not a manual. This short list should start the conversation and give you an idea. If you know how to implement it, tell me).

  1. Provide secure attachment:

Help children feel safe

Help children feel loved

Help children feel respected

Help children be curious

Help children be joyful

Help children be open to novelty and adventure

  1.  Teach a child to like and play with others:

                         Listen to others

                             Try to understand

                        Express yourself

            Be confident and brave

                 See humor everywhere

3.   Teach the child social skills:

                 Surround the child with family, organize visits, cousins, and friends

Parents and family need to spend time with the child, including housework. Make the child a part of the family team.

No TV, no electronic toys, make the child “bathe” in stories, songs, laughter, and dancing.

4.     Teach the child to use hands:

Play with simple toys

Make toys with the child

Draw, and play with clay and plasticine. Use creativity and imagination.

5.     Use magic: for the first few years, everything is magic.

3 to 7- some explanations are not magic, some are magic.

After 7- everything should be saturated by human imagination, curiosity, and love of beauty.

6.     Play outside, climb, swing, make a garden, become a naturalist.

7. Play instruments, dance, tai chi (9), qi gong, hiking, and nature walks(12)

As a pediatrician, for 50 years I tried to talk about these principles to my parents during every well visit, and whenever was the opportunity. My practice brochure (10) contained also some of these concepts.

          III.  Paleo Café

I had grandiose ideas about designing such education ( 11). Now I’ve scaled it down dramatically to a “Paleo Café.” The concept echoes my ideas of Ovids’s Golden Age societies with early human language. Think Atlantis, Stonehenge, pre-Imperial Meso-America or Göbekli Tepe.- These ancient societies are most mysterious to us, we just can’t imagine social structures creating these immense monuments but otherwise, they make no sense- to us. There are no signs of violence, hierarchies, personal richness- no signs of greed. Shared language brought to these humans immediate control over the material world (13)- counting, sorting, measuring, timing- but the lure and the evil of personal possessions and power developed only slowly later. This concept of two separate phases of human becoming materialistic are just my musings, inspired by the strange book (12) but it fits beautifully with my other theories. I am going to write more about the anthropological concepts of that- see the essay:” Zombies, Idealistic Animals and Radical Anthropomorphism”.

But for now, can we create in our neighborhood a glimpse of Golden Age?

The vision:

A small group of 5 to 10 people meets weekly at a community center or even better in a private home. “Paleo” connotes the idea of the simplicity of the setting. No electronics, simple furnishings, few simple toys, Waldorf style.

No money talk, no competition games, no media, no news, no talk about violence and war. There is a lot of sharing, borrowing, and lending. There are young people with children—the gift for the future community. Probably 2 to 5 children would be easiest to handle. There are also old, retired people—the gift of wisdom for the new generation. Among them are also young people without children—friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors.

They all have fun, there is reading, telling stories, singing, and dancing. The religious overtones are fine but in the “Paleo,” mythic form and distance. Instead, wild imagination, curiosity, and openness to the unknown are encouraged.

Everybody is equal, respected, and helped to express herself.

Some cross-cultural activities are important, maybe there is invited an indigenous person, a foreigner, or a newcomer.

The agenda.

The host greets and welcome each person. The agenda and loose schedule are agreed upon.

Somebody is reading to the children, some are playing on their own.

Somebody may make music or sing/dance.

Some people prepare simple food. Everybody eats together, unhurriedly, with gratitude and joy.

The next meeting, the venue, and the agenda are planned.

There is a continuous weekly thread—a story, a book, a play, the art or garden project.

These groups can happen spontaneously but also can be generated with the help of social workers and the staff from the neighborhood’s cultural center—during the monthly meeting to which anybody and everybody is invited.

References:

1. M.C.Richards “Toward Wholeness” 1980

2. Sharifa Oppenheimer “Heaven on Earth” 2006.

3. Jack Petrash “Understanding Waldorf Education” 2002

4. Simone Davies “The Montesori Toddler” 2019

5. Zachary Swanson’s Master Thesis 2021UTC

6. Tom Voychehovski “My Worldview. Dr.Tom’s Method” Amazon, Kindle.2019

7. Frederic Lenoir: “The Happiness “(2012) and “Le Desir” (2022)

8. Merlin Donald “The mind so rare” 2001

9. Tom Voychehovski, Luke Prater “The Dark Attic”  2021

10. Tom Voychehovski, Comprehensive Medical Care,” Parents’ Brochure,” 2001

 11. Tom Voychehovski “The Rome conference or die”, my blog: ecohumanistlab.com 2023

12. David Groebner & David Wengrow, “The Dawn of Everything” 2023.

 13. Ian Tattersall “ Understanding Human Evolution”. 2018

14. Pope Francis “Laudate Deum” Apostolic Exhortation, October 4th, 2023.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, human nature, materialism, parenting/education, Pediatrics, wychowanie i edukacja

Tagged with:

Rome conference or die

Part  1: The vision.

Part  2: The crisis of the human niche.

Part  3: The worldview and the crisis of the human niche.

Part  4: The role of evolution.

Part  5: The prehistory of mind and the crisis.

Part  6: The conference as a metaphor and the process.

Part  7: What we will teach – the vision of Experience Society.

Part 1: The Vision.

    When we observe the world, most events are circular in nature. The day and night, the seasons of the year, first marriage, second marriage, 

First coming, Second Coming, reincarnation.

     This is the natural source of popular and reassuring concepts;  “as it is worse, it will get better.. and worse again, after the drought there will be a flood, it is warmer, it will get cooler”.

Even in science, the cosmos is hugely circular and particle physics too. Glaciations, civilizations, and periods of war and peace come up and down. “ we are fine, we’ll be fine”.

    Not so fast, desafortunamente.

Evolution is one of the basic, and relatively newly discovered mechanisms in the universe that are not circular. 

Also thermodynamics II and expanding Universe.

Sure, Heraclitus pointed to the non-circular flow of the river, but then we’d found out about water circulating in the earth. Maybe you just need to find a bigger circle and “we’ll be fine”?.

What is “fine,” I ask, and I pick the smartest and best-informed people I can find. 

They would – uniformly, uniformly- say” I know it is bad, I do what I can locally, give money to charities, but it is going to be bad.” “ Not in our lifetime” they add sheepishly and walk away with just slightly bent shoulders, as if saying “I know, our children, hopefully, educated and with good jobs…”

There is a fierce battle to position ourselves to survive well forthcoming disasters, not unlike virtual reality video games. As in the game, the blood and corpses aren’t so disturbing if the people concerned were not even born yet, who will live ( and die) in far away countries (mostly imaginary) and even now dying in droves, poor and miserable and we learned to tolerate this fine.

The problem: the more we learn ( and we can not unlearn, and understanding is fun) the more realistic are these corpses. They soon acquire faces, maybe even names, and they start to stink, after they slowly die in front of our eyes. More charities? More steel bars in our windows?

I have a better solution and it comes from 50 years of working with children, studying worldviews, evolution, and the history of our minds.

   The only hope I see is creating a different type of people, actually, the type we use to be for the last 10 million years until the last 50 000 thousand years (0.5% or “December 31st “ of our species’ existence). 

The last surviving hominids, we almost got extinct before. We need again a Houdini trick, we need to shed the last 10 000 years of a thin slimy layer of greed and grabbing. We will retain symbolic thinking, and smart brains but avoid the destruction of the planet.

We are going to create Experience Society.

We are going to teach the new generation to live happily, peacefully, in partnership with other humans, other sentient beings, and the whole environment. 

How do teach them that?

It is what the Rome conference is all about.

We’ll start with infants, then expand to older and older children. 

Let me address some objections. 

  1. “You can not parent and teach something or some ways you are not. It is not what you say, but who you are.” Agree, it has to be bootstrapping and dealing with the chicken or egg ( literally) dilemma. But we can do, and all we can do is the best we can. Certainly, we can do better than we are doing now. And neuroscience and evolutionary anthropology have some good news for us.
  2. “How can you force others about such an intimate subject like parenting. Parents feel they know how to parent and will not listen to any ‘propaganda’”. Agree, that it will be difficult, but it is why we need a broad range of experts and authorities and wise men and women and maybe magicians. I am listening for solutions rather than for naysaying. But every year it became more and more clear that doing nothing will bring to our children unspeakable misery. We are talking about the happiness of your children, nothing less.
  3. “We’ll never agree on the curriculum”- different cultures and nations, different religions, different economies, different worldviews. Yes, I see it as an almost un-winning gambit, but, first, in the beginning, we are talking about parenting babies 0 to 12 months old! everybody wants babies to be happy. Second, psychologically, I see the possibility of some kind of “unity out of desperation”. ( covid-19 in Italy and the response to Putin’s aggression comes to mind.)

Immediately, I thought about Rome with: 

  1. Pope Francis being a good guy and the catholic church being, well, “catholic”, would be somewhere to start. Add Dalai Lama, some more religious leaders, spiritual leaders, maybe some presidents, and UN officials.
  2.  Media influencers, press, and activists for equality, global warming, for peace.
  3. Scientists: environmentalists of all kinds, philosophers, sociologists, economists, psychologists, developmental pediatricians, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and AI experts.
  4. Humanists: wise men and women from modern and ancient cultures, teachers, writers, poets, artists, and musicians.
  5. Pregnant mothers and their spouses, grandmothers, and grandfathers.
  6. Teenagers- possibly the primary target populations?

This is the vision, but there are still many elements we need to convince people about, not only convince, like “ ok, maybe, if you say so” but convince about urgency and gravity and famous “ so, what” or “so what, if no Rome conference?”

Parts 2-6. Convincing, before even starting. 

Part 2. We need to convince people that there is a crisis of the human niche. 

It is important to use the term niche instead of “environment”, “habitat” or, worse “ global warming” (a tiny part of the problem).  Modern and deep evolutionary understanding will be necessary. 

On a happier note, it will not be necessary to argue” whose fault”, is it “human-made” or “just a cycle”- because of the revolutionary and unusual nature of the solution.

Part 3. We need to convince people of a humanistic worldview. 

This has nothing to do with religious belief, spirituality is an important part of the conference. Neither is socialism in disguise (how we divide our material goods, according to capitalistic, socialistic, or communistic principles is still all about material goods). We need the humanistic worldview to know that we can die like died other hominids like Neanderthals died, and Sapiens almost died 50.000 years ago. We need to know that we made this civilization and on this base, on these shoulders, consciously, we can build a new one. And thrive and have fun.

Part 4. We need to convince people of the evolutionary mechanisms including strengthening niche, diversity, and complexity.

It is what species do to avoid extinction. Working to keep the niche strong and healthy. Examples are everywhere, even iconic Darwin’s finches. It is not circular! It is messed up because we messed it up, and until we won’t change our ways, it will get worse and worse. Remember what Einstein said about insanity? 

Part 5. We need to convince people about the hybrid nature of our minds. 

If we want to replicate the pre-linguistic value system with our modern, symbolic brains, we need to trust evolutionary realism and evolutionary neuroscience. The exciting research showing our brains mixing ancient algorithmic beings with language-powered symbolic thinking explained how we are the only hominid that survived. We manipulate this incredible system every day, more and more purposely, like with artificial intelligence, meditation, and psychopharmacology. So, we can stop killing the planet and ourselves.

Part 6. We need to convince people to embark on the project.

  Rome conference is perhaps just my armchair musing. It may be a metaphor for the project, a new conversation involving more people. Or it can end up being a real conference in Rome. 

This would involve an unheard amount of trust and goodwill, maybe desperation. We would need to trust developmental experts, parenting experts, our political leaders, holy men, trust people, and each other in general. ( Going to the moon was nothing compared to this request)

We would need to trust the process, the journey because we do not know the way it’d unfold, we’d have to learn from each other, and use imagination. 

We need to cross multiple barriers: east-west, religious-nonreligious, have-have not, truth -media.

Part  7: What we will teach – the vision of the Experience Society

This will be the subject of the conference. The whats and the hows.The curriculum for the starting but crucial segment- “parenting the infants” seems pretty easy to agree on. Lots of this is in Piaget, Spock, Montessori, and Waldorf programs. And a lot is common sense like the parents need to be present and mindful, the society needs to support the family. No media, no violence. The concept of blaming the materialism of the cavemen is new and startling. The conversation about the non-materialistic source of happiness is very new and very old at the same time.

***

The terrible and cruel truth is that if we fail to work on it now, we’ll be reduced to something similar, painful, fractured, 50 years from now. Possibly Neanderthals had a similar option: “change your lifestyle, your beliefs, your language, trust them”. And they are gone.  

Not all items of convincing are necessary to work for the conference, just this set of opinions makes everything fit together so well…

***

This is the overview of this concept. I am working on Parts 2-7 in the form of separate essays.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, Humanism, materialism, What will happen to the mankind

Tagged with:

Be the best?

Be the best?

 

Because of the niche crisis, I am thinking and writing a lot about materialism, its origin, and its effect on humanity.

 

I am obsessed with the notion that shifting dimensions is something very important in our thinking. Nolens volens American democrats (and I as one of them) were forced to do just that. 

From climate and health care suddenly COVID pandemic was all-important: and now- race.

The ability to shift dimensions is crucial for wise judgment. It is an element of critical thinking, there is no creativity without shifting dimensions. To do it you use imagination, historical, and global perspective. 

 In racism a doctrine selects a group of people, declares them inferior and then other people can use it for brutal advantage, sometimes for generations and generations. And a systemic injustice can persist because the critical thinking, shifting dimension, and perspective are so rare. 

  It is also difficult, requiring effort and training. 

And here the materialism comes back like an old stew. Living and thinking in the world of things offer incredible advantages. Modern school with an emphasis on technology and science is famously one dimensional. Auto mechanics and computer technology don’t require fluency in classical Greek. Actually, it is difficult to think where would you use this skill- still standard in European high school 100 years ago.

One dimensional thinking gives quick and high profit while fosters consumerism and inequality and racism. And it is a hallmark of free-market capitalism- profit is everything.

Fortunately, it is not in our genes, it started only 50, 000 years ago. Like poor people are not stupid- only taught to be poor for several generations, the same – CEOs and financial sharks are not bad and greedy- only taught for several generations to be the best you can be- measured by one dimension- your account. Neither group is happy- so the reversal is possible but it would take one or two generations. If we start now.

What is an alternative to materialism?

Evolutionary, before the invention of material culture and the language of material things- whichever came first- the world of primitive hominids, like animals, was populated with the more or less sophisticated descriptions of behaviors. Now, with our prodigious brains, we call it experiences. We can not completely eliminate material culture, but we can create a world where experiences are valued high and they, not things define the richness and qualities of our lives.

If you share a pie the more you take, the less is left for others. It is where we are. But if you share a beautiful sunset, the more you share, the richer and more fantastic is the experience. It is where we need to be. The experience, unlike the gadget you owe, depends on your input, your relationship you are in, your mood, your knowledge, and your imagination. It makes it difficult but it makes you really happy, content and peaceful. Makes your life examined and your children smiling. It is when you are the best- the quality of experience determines it.

 

And one more thing. It is sustainable, the switch would give us a glimmer of a chance of survival as a species.

Because our share of the pie is dwindling and it will continue to.

I know, we need a whole new conversation, the measuring system, a new language, institutions, and industries…the parents teaching love and relationships, the schools teaching critical thinking and multidimensional thinking. Teaching art, poetry music, and literature.

And who will do it, where is this broad coalition of courageous and hopeful people?

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climate change, enviromnental crisis,, human nature, materialism

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Same horde of cavemen

 Listen, friends,

I do not want to spoil your afternoon but if we don’t do something dramatic soon, our grandchildren will live in misery and many of them will die. We have 40 years or so to do it.

The ecological catastrophe is like a Monster with 100 heads and we are not even cutting these heads. We are nibbling on the tail and this is no good. 

I believe there is the chink in the Monster’s armor. A vulnerable place awaiting the arrow of the hero. 

         The trick is simple. We are almost 8 billion strong hurtling towards a disaster, but each of us is the same human. Same genes, instincts, pleasures, and pains. Same brain structures, same neurotransmitters, and hormones. Just 50, 000 years ago we were an almost extinct horde of cavemen. And now we KNOW THIS, we SEE THAT. we can imagine and understand that the proper action can save us again. It is just the same horde (or community)- so what if it looks like 8 billion strong mad crowds that are high on power, violent, reckless, and…stupid. The solution is inside each of us. Each of us wants to be happy. No exceptions. The way we try to get this happiness has been changing with cultures and civilizations but it seems that until quite recently it was stable, and lo and behold, safe for the planet. We were happy, embarrassingly, in the similar way the animals are, just a little bit fancier. It was all about a good experience- satiety, relationships, safety, awe, beauty, and art. Only just about 20 or 40 thousand years ago we slowly developed “the kingdom of things”. We dig out coal and oil and ore, we got energy, technology, and gadgets. Things are seemingly irresistible, they please all senses, they are reliable( your car will be there and ready tomorrow – your woman might not be)- easy, easy, so easy to get happy and powerful and safe, especially after all these thousands of years of fear, uncertainty, relying for happiness on OTHERS! Oh, the misery of relying on these tiny, fleeting moments of understanding, awe, and fun. 

         But we can make this pivot, we can make this second Renaissance smarter, more robust, the experiences with technology can be more “things-like”.

There is no other way anyway. 

And if we do it later when the resources are gone, we are overcrowded and fearful, then this “old happiness” practiced with the blade on our throats might look more like a caricature of the good stuff.

I think we need to create a broad coalition across professions, nations, and many other “huge” differences, and smarter people than me need to lead and design the details and actions.

I welcome brainstorming on my blog ecohumanistlab.com  and I will post more practical elements. of how to call it- a dream? plan? movement?  I think that the parenting of infants and toddlers would be easiest to address.

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climate change, enviromnental crisis,, human nature, What will happen to the mankind, Worldview Owner's Manual

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Niche crisis, Part 2, ” Materialists and Idealists”

 

Part 2

Materialists and Idealists

 

In the first part of this essay, I made some bold hypotheses and ended up with outrageous promises.

I will repeat then: The niche crisis is in itself not a problem, it is just an inevitable result. Therefore to handle it we have to find the cause. I think that the cause, broadly speaking, is the domination of things of our civilization. (The pollution-related to cars, trucks, and roads is not the problem, it’s the result, the problem is that we LOVE to drive, LOVE the power and feeling related to moving a big machine fast. The problem is not outside the culture but inside the culture) It started, I think, and I will talk about it later, from peculiar language development and now it is literally killing us. We can correct this, but in order to do that we need to start with the conversation, maybe even create a new language, a new set of metaphors and mythology. This is part 2. 

Part 3 will start the conversation about the promises of the new beautiful world.

I thought that this domination of things had to do with the eternal distinction between materialists and idealists. 

I checked a few philosophy texts, some psychology sources, and of course: Google. It all left me befuddled. Nothing fitted the bill. 

  1. The philosophy was as always useless; neither early materialists like Democritus and Thales, or late like Marx and Engels were really materialistic, nor idealists like Berkeley or Hegel had anything to do with the niche. The primordial sin of our civilization must be somewhere else. 
  2. If it was a sin, maybe the religions would do the trick? Oh, I don’t mean the trick they do with humanity for the last 50 000 years. I mean the elusive distinction of believers vs nonbelievers – often understood as idealists vs materialists. But, no, all of them, fundamentalists, mystics, atheists, humanists, all of them want to be good and all are greedy and all want their kids to be successful.
  3. Big psychology- Myer-Briggs tests and others- and folk psychology tell me: materialists are bad (that’s for sure) and unhappy.

-they give babies coca-cola instead of milk.

-they murder to steal money or a nice jacket or even sneakers.

-their science is wrong: Newtonian, solid brick and mortar, not relativity and “observer’s Universe”.

– they are responsible for technology, corporations, gadgets, and consumerism.

-among the believers, the materialists are the worst: young Earth, literal interpretation of scriptures,  seeing beliefs as real and factual, sacred rights, holy wars, and xenophobia.

So, idealists must be good: they live frugally, don’t eat meat, like theater and poetry, hiking, nature, meditation, praying, and dancing.

 

Mahatma Gandhi, Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, Oprah and Albert Schweizer, etc, etc. We need to be like them, but we can’t.  Why? All of these famous idealists were driven, obsessed by humongous overwhelming ideas, usually not very happy, crazy overachievers, rather miserable “I will show them” people. 

We are all good normal people and we cannot be like them, well, do we actually want our children to be like them?

The research shows that typical materialists and famous rich materialists were not so happy and if they were happy it was the idealist part of them which did it.  Like philanthropy of Rockefeller and Gates. And making material achievements a priority in life actually make self-expression and good relationships more difficult. It looks that it is not switching from materialist to idealist that is necessary- it would be impossible anyway.

So, we want our children (and ourselves) to be happy first. Then we have to find a way to be happy without hurting the planet.

These distinctions require thinking. Thinking and discussions and role-modeling. What is necessary and doable is noticing how indoctrinated we are by generations of automatic concepts of success, the meaning of life, and happiness. Things: a well-paying job, a good house, a fast car, and a pretty woman. It is a very one-sided picture of the American Dream, which is actually a dream of most of the people in the world.

If we explain to people that this dream is untenable, that the planet can not support it, that we have to give it up, to sacrifice our dream for the planet, and for others …. We’ll go nowhere. Tell the leaders, CEOs, generals, and clergy to relinquish the power to save the planet… we’ll go nowhere. Tell economist that capitalism needs to pivot and production of things and energy has to shrink and …we’ll go nowhere. 

What can we do? Dealing with things is so easy, the numbers are on their side.

Dealing with ideas, relationships, Unknown, feelings, even art, and literature – all require and benefit from critical thinking, shifting dimensions, using imagination ( some people talk about transformational education). Dealing with things do not… Things are: cheaper or more expensive, hotter or cooler, slower or faster – so easy to deal with, so inviting for the categories, divisions and … ownership. And it is literally how the hell broke loose.

And how did we get like that?  The evolution of the nervous systems and ethology will help here. Animals are not materialists, their brains are full of behaviors ( in the notebook of the observer, like Jane Goodall watching her chimpanzees), for them (say, chimpanzees) they are the experiences. The trick is to avoid bad experiences like pain, hunger, or fear and maximize good experiences- satiation, control, safety even belonging. Not much different than early humans. Hominids, also hunter-gatherers, lived in more or less egalitarian societies, where the leader, usually male, possessed very little, except for mates. 

     In our search for the origins of this worldview dysfunction or of materialism, I’d like to point to the two moments that were pivotal.  50 to 10 thousand years ago communication became a language. Animals and hominid’s “language” followed their world of experiences. It described behaviors (experiences), even sometimes complex ones like bees dance, crows teaching their children about bad people and butterflies astral navigation, but they were still behaviors. And then, at the toddler stage of our civilization, something happened to humans. And to humans only: see the interesting hypothesis of Dr.Hrdy (among others). I said “toddler” because, as a pediatrician, I observed the same magic hundreds and hundreds of times in the office and you might have seen it in your home. A 15-month-old human infant is a pretty complex being. She can talk a little, but she understands a lot, she knows her surroundings, she even mastered the skill called “object permanence”. She knows pretty much how the world around works, what is anger and fear and sadness, hunger, and the bliss of cuddling with mom. But, your dog or even a crow in your yard can do all of these. And then, out of blue, your child will point to the pineapple on the table: “What’s that, Daddy?”

And an abyss opened, a huge difference between humanity and all known sentient and artificial beings. Only humans can ask for the name of an object not related to any function or behavior.

 

    What was first, naming objects or materialistic society? I don’t know, but what is important is that it happened recently, so materialism is not in our genes ( neither are things, really, and their objectivity is perfectly questionable!) 

It is also possible that the” invention of things “ timing is not mere coincidence. Because it is the time ( 50 to 20 000 years ago, when we almost got extinct- about 10 thousand people left, or less!) when our egalitarian society could have changed. Maybe it was the pressure of a shrinking niche related to climate change, after the Toba volcano eruption and ice age. We behaved (we actually were) like cornered animals, we tried to survive against each other. With the rule of violence, fear, and anxiety our worldviews changed. We tried to get happy with things, so we learned to get high on power, violence, and control.  Interestingly, more or less at the same time we developed societies with haves and have nots, (Mesopotamia, Egypt, China), and having was better, and the things to have to be on the top were, well, things.

Our primordial “personality” stays dormant, waiting to be awakened… We need another renaissance chapter in our civilization. With our technology and advances in knowledge of the human mind, we can make a better renaissance than the original Italian One. A mixture of materialism, idealism, humanism, and all that is needed to take care of this planet. We can do it, but it will take the new conversation on being authentic, working on one’s personal unique worldview and on creating unique, personal mythology. James P. Carse in the “The religious case against belief” argues for this conversation, for questioning. It is what the real religious people (read: happy, authentic, mature) do – question belief, use the paradigm and language of their religion just for one, but all-important purpose – to question the world, to embrace the Mystery. To find the meaning, the worldview, the happiness. Well, not to find, to journey on finding it.

It is going to be a renaissance – the rebirth of the type of mind which made us human. We have it inside: the excitement and awe of the Unknown, the curiosity, joy, and imagination. Loving, playing, arguing, making fun and derision, showing others, and ourselves’ foolishness.  We’ll thrive on experiences instead of gadgets- we’ll treat them as assets, cherish them, and make them richer and richer as our complexity and intelligence grow.

This optimistic story does not need to be true. It would be reassuring and promising.  And I am asking for so little. Just start talking, open your mind, and imagine. Well, we are not completely off the hook- this new plan includes role-modeling, right? Somebody has to change first or at least start changing.  This conversation, this work will lead to a new curriculum, more on that unknown black hole in Part 3.

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climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, Humanism, What will happen to the mankind

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Niche crisis II

The initial version was published in December 2019, this is a new, expanded form.

Niche crisis or environmental crisis.

 Part 1. The Hypothesis and the chance.

I am convinced that the niche crisis is caused by a particular cognitive development at the dawn of our civilization. This early achievement turned out now to be our biggest problem. 

“Niche crisis“ is an unusual term so let me explain.

When we look at our world we see our environment. This term for me contains some cloaked feeling of entitlement, may even sound congratulatory. It doesn’t have a biology or cosmology sense. To me, it answers the question your good friend may ask over the beer: “how is life?” You tell him about our environment- not ideal, but our- loud music, stupid people, polluted air, etc, etc, And you wouldn’t answer: “Well, I am just becoming extinct”. 

If we want to talk about the crisis the ecologists would use the term “ecological niche” or simply “niche”. When we look at any species from outside the system, as an observer, that species has its niche – the resources, climate, food, other members of the species, predators, anything that influences its evolutionary fitness. Niche is species-specific- it describes the dynamic situation – niche’s strength- that any given species exists in at any given point in time. Not habitat, not ecology, not environment. It is why I prefer the term “niche crisis”. We will really need this “observer view” as we go along. Homo sapiens is the last surviving of twenty-six other hominids. The one that almost went extinct several times, the last only about 50 000 years ago ( if you forget the brink of the nuclear war in 1962). 

When the ship is sinking and there is water coming in we send a crew to pump the water out. The more the water is pouring in, the more bailing is needed, right? Obviously, no. We need to find the hole in the hull and repair it and it is how we save the ship and ourselves.

I believe that the ship is sinking and we are busy at the pumps.

And our niche, which pretty well fits geographically Planet Earth, is getting weaker again. Even if population growth is slowing down- “only” 9 billion by 2050, the number of people pulled out of poverty/subsistence life into the “consumer’s circle” is growing rapidly and I hope will continue to grow. So, the resources like clean air, diverse forests, clean water, good soil, fish, and plankton-rich oceans are dwindling, especially for these new, vulnerable consumers. And the just feeling of injustice and social conflicts fostered by our wonderful internet (people call it, I guess as a joke, – “global brain”) gets worse.

The ship is sinking, for sure, even if some of my gloomy images might be controversial, but not all of them, for goodness sake. And please don’t tell me “there is always a crisis” or about the Chinese-like “great wheel of history” or “nothing new under the sun” – or as Trump reacted to coronavirus: “ it’s nothing, just a virus, can’t see it”. I see millions and millions of good, smart, young people, who are “at the pumps”. Recycling, electric cars, solar panels, not eating meat, and planting trees, all these are heartwarming.

     Let’s keep bailing, as a compromise, to feel good and keep the troop morale high, but we have to find and repair the hole. Find the cause of the crisis while trying to slow down the disastrous results. 

           Every species survives by expanding its niche. More food sources, more diverse habitats that the organisms can adapt to means more sex and more babies. The survival of the fittest works on the individual organisms’ and it’s family’s level, but only the sum of these changes determines the strength of the species’ niche. 

The ecological niche is all about the flow of energy which ultimately comes from the Sun. The stronger the niche the more energy the species absorbs and utilizes. The complexity increases creating stronger bodies, brains, and stronger social life. You noticed very “broad strokes”, I’m not explaining those mechanisms, just sketching them, but the only difference when we talk about the human’s niche is that the complexity is called the culture or civilization and the animal’s urge to survive and to mate is called the pursuit of happiness.

      And this is our ticket. We have to strengthen our niche otherwise we’ll become extinct. Our ticket is our culture- we are conscious, thinking, and observing our own demise. 

So, what is this cognitive achievement turned out to be a problem? It happened gradually between 100,000 to 10,000 years ago. The primitive communication grew into language. The description of behaviors became the description of reality, including the distinct material world. I will discuss this evolutionary process in detail in part 2. The new reality opened the world of things, of technology. The worldviews and the meaning of life changed. Now we have more shopping malls, more hotels, more toys and gadget factories, more airports and bombers. The image is of emotional regression – a bully sucking his thumb. To understand the situation we need to keep shifting the dimensions: from society to personal and back. We need to see that our civilization is the sum of millions of lives, their successes and failures, their loves and hatreds. We keep trying to be satisfied or happy or just less anxious (whatever is the thing we want!) by consuming the planet’s dwindling resources. Imagine that within the next ten years flying electric taxis will become very popular. In the language of cultural evolution, this means complexity and ability to adapt.

Until recently, such an invention would increase the strength of the human niche. Not anymore: more passengers, airports, parkings, services, businesses, more technology, more rat race, violence, and poverty. We have to pivot and we can do it. The thing we get from technology, call it happiness, call it power or security we have to learn to get from sustainable experiences. We can learn and teach it to our children- this is a matter of a new curriculum and of a new generation.

How can we do it? 

In the book “About time” Adam Frank describes how the evolution of humanity’s relation to time changed the world. This sense of time changed slowly over millennia. We learned and followed how time-related technology changed people’s minds and people’s minds created technology. It is how this civilization works: we see progress outside,- the same “progress” sits inside everyone’s brain, what each person knows, different depending on education, experience, and interests- and this builds the third, elusive“progress” that exists as a conversation (Werner Erhard’s jargon),  as Carl Jung’s our “collective unconscious” or simply as “culture”. This third “progress” is the one that creates our language, metaphors, and our mythology. 

Now we can, paradoxically, use technology against the technology abusing the Planet. With the new global conversation, we can change the language and mythology almost on the dime.

People’s lives will improve. The improvement will involve more and more people but the resources will be spared. The economies will shrink materially, but the access to and the use of carbon-neutral experiences will expand exponentially. This is the only way, otherwise, the suffering of millions will ensue. In my work on worldviews, I see human potential. I read these personal worldviews, work with them and I am amazed: everybody writes about peace, meaningful relationships, and love of nature and beauty. We have to follow our idealistic worldviews. We want this, we just need to be taught how to get it. What for Teilhard de Chardin was a nebulous Omega Point (literally pie in the sky) for us might be a desperate survival maneuver.

There will be two complementary essays – the sequels to this one. 

Part 2: Materialists and idealists. I will attempt to find them, find them now, and find them in the past. I have already hinted at the origins of materialism- will talk more about that. Where did they come from and where did they go?

Part 3: I will look into the future, into a new curriculum to build a new society. This utopia is unlike well-known, worn and failed utopias of the past- one of spiritual and moral perfection. We will teach our children,( and grass-root movement sprouts already everywhere,) to be happy without abusing the planet. Their lives, in contrast to the prediction for the year 2050, will be more exciting and rich than ours. They will have more than we have, but no more gadgets or power. They will have more love and friendship. More creativity, fun, discovery, and beauty.

 They will be idealists.

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climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature

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