The destiny of humanity.

We may survive.  We may develop means of ACTUALLY caring about the less fortunate among us, and raising them up without feeling the need to tear anyone else down.  We might develop–no, the information is already there–we may be able to DEPLOY methods generally around the world such that all peoples become happy in peace.  This is what we want.  Peace is not the absence of violence: prisons in general are quite free of violence, as are graveyards.  Peace is a system in motion in which all the components interact harmoniously, effectively, and which works to generate increasing informational capacity manifested as joy.

Dan Siegel, in his book Mindsight, defined mind thus:

the mind is an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information.

Now, as far as I can tell he is an atheist–so he seems in the book, although his views may have evolved–so he is simply using Complexity Theory to describe mind as an Emergent Property of processes happening throughout the nervous system, and between our nervous system and those of others, and even our environment.

What I would suggest is that in  important respects the regulation of the flow of energy and information is also the task of human culture.  Culture plainly is a part of mind.  It directs the flow of energy and information.  We see what we are conditioned to see, and fail to see what we are conditioned not to see.  We do what we have been conditioned to do, and avoid what we have been conditioned to avoid.

I have argued in the past that Free Will mainly consists in what we pay attention to, and it consists in what I have termed “non statistical coherence”.  Much of what we do every day is automatic.  We are on autopilot.  That is not free will.  But I feel there is something that we can allow emerge, a light that appears spontaneously within us, which brings with it the capacity for more.

Wealth is the Emergent property of the confluence of the rule of law, free markets, enforceable contract law, and property rights.  We have solved the problems of how to generate wealth, and if you think about it, wealth is really a form of energy: it is sufficient food for our bodies, and in the modern world the ability to light our homes, to heat them, and to cool them.

Information is what directs the flow of energy.  And here is the point I wanted to make: the destiny of individuals as well as societies, is to transition from mere survival, to inner, non-material growth, which is to say quantum increases in informational complexity. Our destiny is to move from a wealth of things to a wealth of being, with the sense of being increasing as a result of greater awareness, which is to say informational richness.  We see more.  We feel more. We taste more. We smell more.  We hear more.  And we sense more intuitively.

It seems to me very wealthy, very powerful, outwardly intelligent people worry about resource depletion on this planet, about overpopulation.  Seemingly, their solution is the use of blunt force trauma to coerce humanity into a path of reducing resources by being dead, and by a vastly diminished quality of life.

But this is stupid.  As I have likely shared, the spiritual technology exists for all of us to live in grass huts and be happy.  We can combine the best of technology for getting physical things done, with the best of spiritual technology to make it all worth it, to build a sort of heaven here on Earth.

It is possible.  But only if we are not fucking idiots in large enough numbers to survive all the attacks on morality, decency, humanity, and liberty.