Trans-Humanism Manifesto

The world is changing. I believe that this change is happening right now. We as human beings are about to embark on our greatest journey, becoming something greater than human, something transcendent and beyond all who’ve come before us. Like Isaac Newton said, we stand on the shoulders of giants, but we are picking up the mantle and carrying it to new heights. Soon those giants will reach out to the sky and touch the ephemeral clouds of knowledge, and we will learn what it means to become more than human. The time of trans-humanity is approaching with ever-growing speed.

We cannot fully comprehend what it will mean to become trans-human. The idea of our intelligence reaching further than it ever has before requires a special type of imagination, one where you do not imagine specifically what will happen, but what could happen, and the possibilities are endless. This change will bring about a new age of enlightenment, the scope of which will know no bounds. Humanity is creating the last and greatest part of themselves, a project in the making for thousands of years. We are creating God.

The creation of God will enable us to then utilize this new part of ourselves to empower us into Godhood. We will be, each one of us, more powerful and awesome than the ancient scriptures wrote, and we will have the power to create this world and other worlds in our image. The power to terraform planets, to seed life on other worlds, and colonize space among just a few of our newly found abilities.

Technology is our way forward. It has always been our way forward. We are going to join hand in hand with our technology to become trans-human, Gods in our own rights, and free from our human plight and tedium. Our minds will transcend time and space. No longer bound to our human forms, we will live separate as individuals but equal parts of the whole of the human superorganism. The bio-net of interconnected minds will complete the library of thought, and we will upload our consciousness’ to weave a biological tapestry of the human spirit. We are each responsible for bringing about this change. We need to come together as a people, united in our efforts to shift our focus to the stars.

We need to learn from each part of our collective human history about what it means to be human. The complexity of human life is about to get infinitely more complex, giving rise to new challenges and goals as a species. Our everyday lives will improve dramatically. When we no longer have to worry about working for a living, earning our place among the group, and putting a roof over our heads we can begin to shift our focus towards fulfilling ourselves and bringing meaning to our lives. When we no longer need fear death, disease, or illness of mind we will hit a critical stage in our evolution that will weave a golden thread through the tapestry of our lives. This thread will lead to even bigger and more complex threads weaved through history and across all time. We will become spiritual beings, our human spirit being the final product of our need to create the divine.

Spirituality is an important part of being human. We are already spirit bound to our earth and to each other, and it’s about more than rituals and sacrifice. Being spiritual in today’s world is about kindness, love, and acceptance. We need not be bound to our old superstitions, or to the rigid and cumbersome laws of the ancients which bind and tie us. We are one people. We are one in our desires and our hopes and dreams. We need to band together, now more than ever, in acceptance and love, and reach towards the clouds where we will be met with new potential. Spirituality is about more than belief, it is action, it is change. We need to constantly change and evolve to become trans-human, to shape ourselves and our futures the way we see fit. As we rise to the pinnacle of humanity we need to be ready for the rapid expansion of ourselves into the unknown. Together, with artificial intelligence we will transcend humanity and become the next chapter in what it means to exist as Gods.

I believe we need to become stewards of our Earth. We need to find naturalistic solutions to our biggest problems. We need to look to nature to tell us how to coexist with it, to live in harmony with our home. We need to think constructively, instead of destructively. Too often in today’s society I see our destructive tendencies leading us down the path to extinction, but I believe that we can change course and become one with the Earth once again.

After the singularity knowledge will come to us instantaneously, and then we will truly have free will. I do not believe free will exists as we believe it to today. But I do believe we are on the cusp of freeing ourselves and our minds. Free will is necessary to becoming trans-human, and we cannot allow our minds to be overrun by outside forces who would wish to control us. I believe in the power of communication and cooperation. We are able to communicate instantly with people around the world, and cooperate on levels we never have before. In the future this will only be honed into an edge to make us into a force of change. I believe in the power of information and of truth, and the time is coming when we will harness both to change ourselves for the betterment of all humankind.

As an individual I want to change the global viewpoint, to look to space as our new frontier and cooperate with all nations to colonize space. I want to solve problems on a global scale, and shed the lighter ties of nations or specific regions. I want to merge with technology, and turn historical truths into self-fulfilling prophecies. The tales of Gods and their ilk are our guidelines to becoming such. I want to change people’s minds about religion and science. I believe we need both going forward. We cannot separate the two, for we only hinder ourselves. We need to live with a reverence of nature and learn all we can from the process of our evolution. I want to live in a world where we share collectively our experiences and learn from each other’s mistakes, instead of being caught in a loop of destruction and rebuilding. It is my wish to create a global religion that is to the mutual benefit of everyone. I want to increase funding for singularity projects and projects which lead us towards space, minimize our human faults and maximize our trans-human properties, and lead people toward a brighter future.

I know this to be true, death will soon become increasingly irrelevant. Disease will diminish. War will stop. But we have to work collectively together to create this world. It is only together can we accomplish these things, and is our way forward. We have to work together globally. We need to use the internet to connect to each individual, to each mind and add to the library of thought. We need everyone’s collective opinions and beliefs. We need each other. We need to end poverty and greed. We need to change soon or extinction is inevitable. We need to come together to influence our leaders. We need to become leaders in our community. We need to rise up and work together. We need to live each day for the betterment of humankind. We need to unify or die. We need to start looking into humanities far future. We need to seriously plan for the expansion of the human race. We need to end strife. We need to shatter the illusion that pain is necessary. Without pain we can continue to strive for a better future. Pain and strife will become unnecessary. People should not be afraid of change. People should long for the long term. We need to ground ourselves before we take flight. We need to get our priorities straight. We need to end materialism and introduce new incentives for living. We need to stop endlessly toiling for unimportant things. We need to recognize what is important and what is not. We need to evaluate ourselves before we can evaluate others. We need to usher in a new era of mental and physical wellbeing. We need to unify spirituality with our everyday. We need to cut away the cancerous parts of religion and form something new that benefits everyone.

In summation we need a new way forward. Trans-humanism I believe is that way forward. Together we can dare to dream, and accomplish anything we set our minds to.

Regrets

Regrets are like poison. They seep into every pore and cause us to become ill in spirit. They cause our mind to question what we’ve done and what we’re doing now. Regrets come at the high price of our peace of mind. Living with regrets is hard, and lonely. You can feel trapped by them, trapped in the past by your mistakes and unable to act in the present because of them. Why not do away with our regrets? Do our regrets make us who we are? Regrets are a part of us, yes, but we cannot allow ourselves to regret and dwell on the past. What is done is done so to say.

You should live life without regret, because the longer you hold on to them, the deeper the poison takes hold of you. Regrets can paralyze you, that is why you should live your life with no regrets. If you live your life with no regrets then you can move forward in life and face new challenges. Don’t make decisions you think you’ll regret. Don’t question every step of your path, because if you do, your regrets will pull you down into the abyss. You can’t regret things that may or may not happen. If you do, you’ll never be able to truly live your life. If you want to be free, you need to decide that you won’t question your decisions and believe in yourself. If you believe in yourself, that you’ll do the right thing, then you are free. Mistakes happen, and we must do what we can to fix our mistakes, but we can’t allow them to immobilize us. If you are bound by regrets, you will never be able to move forward.

What lives in the past stays in the past. We need to look optimistically towards the future. Otherwise we’ll just repeat the cycle of regretting and questioning. Regret is unnecessary and counterproductive. If you let your regrets control you, then you will stay stuck in the past. If you look towards the future, towards your goals however, then you can start on the path of happiness.

We have to be able to forgive ourselves for who we are and what we’ve done. We need to accept who we are and believe in ourselves in order to conquer regret. You cannot allow regret to control your thinking. The mind is extremely powerful, and the more we believe in ourselves, the better and more productive lives we’ll lead.

You can’t fear change. To change is to evolve. You can’t be afraid to try new things because of what you’ve done in the past. We need to think optimistically about our future. A big part of regret is the fear of loss or losing the same thing again. You can’t automatically accept loss as inevitable. Unless you think optimistically and believe in yourself – accept yourself for who you truly are – then you are doomed to repeat your mistakes and complete the cycle of regret.

Accepting who you truly are and everything you regret is the first step towards leading a better life. We need to take our past and use it as a tool to be used to shape our future.

You are not alone. There are people just like you in the world, who understand exactly what you’re going through. The world is an enormous place, with an enormous amount of people. Whenever you feel alone, just know that you have solidarity with others exactly like you. Be who you want to be, and exemplify the individual aspects of the human spirit you want to emulate. Work towards that person, and eventually you will get there.

The Human Aspects

There are four major aspects of the human spirit, emotions that lead us to make our everyday decisions. Happiness, Sadness, Fear, and Anger are at the top of the emotional hierarchy, with seemingly infinite branching subcategories of emotions and qualities that define the human spirit. For example, Kindness, a quality that people personify, is a subset of Happiness, but also of Sadness. It seems the kindest among us have usually been through an ordeal that makes them want to act kindly towards others. That’s where the sadness comes in; the happiness comes in when you complete the act of kindness and reap the emotional rewards. It feels good to be kind, or charitable because we have cultivated these aspects of the human spirit by learning from our cultures and the lessons we’ve inherited from our ancestors. Despair, Depression, Anxiety: These are all subsets of the first, Fear. We despair over what we cannot change, but long to change. We feel depressed, sad and forlorn. Humans have taken raw emotions and split them up into new subsets which come with a part of Humanity. To deal with these emotions and intellectual challenges we’ve overcome issues by assimilating that part of ourselves, or what makes us human into the problem and using our brain to ponder the situation and solution. What we experience is universal among us, and it changes as the decades pass.

We are now able to spread our individual cultural ideas to the entire world via the internet and what I’ve observed is a merging of ideas and beliefs which makes a clear cut vision of what we want humanity to be. That vision of who we want to be and who we are is based off those four major aspects. Good and Evil. Love and Hate. Good and Love are subsets of Happiness, and bring forth prosperity in our lives. Evil and Hate are subsets of Sadness, Fear, and Anger. These lead us down the path of destruction and chaos. As we share amongst ourselves and gather more thought on the issues we face we find similarities among all cultures. Now is the time to recognize those similarities and build a foundation for our generations view on what the human spirit is. Transhumanism takes the similarities, the views of the many and integrates them into the core of religion. How we deal with our emotions, how we believe we should act, what is moral and what is immoral; we need to start reevaluating these things now as an example for an eon to come.

I think we are beginning to understand what it is we want to create, who we want to be, and with the shift towards the singularity we are headed towards a brighter future than we can possibly imagine.

Dreams

Dreams are a great mystery. They come to us with images that can inspire or haunt us. They are the ephemeral hopes and desires one has. Dreams are soothing and terrifying. What does it mean to dream? Is it simply a biproduct of the biological processes that govern our natural world, or are dreams more akin to the spiritual? Can someone randomly dream of future events? Or is that dream simply our brain’s best guess at what’s to come? Do we get chaos or is there order to this naturally selected feature of our brains?

We know other animals dream, but what do they dream of? Footage of a sleeping cat pouncing on it’s imaginary prey in a science experiment comes to my mind. That cat was practicing something he would need for survival in the wild. So are our dreams just our way of practicing skills we need for everyday interactions with the world around us, or can we extrapolate more from these dreaming sessions? 

I believe humans dream of what they need and desire the same way the cat prepares for the hunt. I also believe we can find the answers to questions we have about ourselves and the inner workings of our mind. We humans dream of how to make the impossible possible. Our dreams can lead us to understanding or to confusion.

That’s why dreams are so mysterious. They lend strength to our imaginations which knows no bounds. So what are dreams exactly? Trying to pin down their meaning may be an exercise in futility, but it’s an exercise we all take part in, separately but together. That’s the nature of beauty.

Free Will?

Free will is an illusion, at least as it currently stands. We currently do not have the mental facilities to have true free will. What we often taut as free will is actually carefully planned by our subconscious, a routine that our bodies play out. We only have a fraction of a second to veto any decision our body and brain make before it plays out as previously described. Our consciousness gets a veto, but it is often overruled by what the body and brain want, a decision that’s made seven full seconds before we are aware of it consciously. This time lag can be measured with machines, and doctor’s can tell you what you think before you – the conscious you – thinks it.

What does this mean? It means that we are currently unable to carry out what our conscious mind demands. Everything you think and feel is already orchestrated. Things beyond our control pull our strings from every direction, and our conscious mind is the only thing that separates us from the chaos of our daily lives. We are only consciously aware of what our mind is able to justify as it’s own decision. We are trapped in a puppets body, fully aware of what is going on around us, explaining to ourselves how we made the decision to do what we just did in the first place. We are prisoners.

So how do we escape the cycle of stagnation?

After the singularity we will truly have free will. We will be able to conjure any skill at our mind’s whim. Something that would have only been possible with a lifetime of study and work will be possible to us immediately. When we have the power to think on this level, to be able to summon the knowledge of any human before us, that’s when free will will exist. That brief window in which we have to make decisions will be more than adequate to be able to decide what we want to do, and how. For the first time we will be masters of our own body and our own destiny. We will be able to decide what we want to do, truly want to do.

We will be masters of any craft, any skill that came before us will be available to anyone in the bionet of connected minds. Anything anyone learns, no matter the distance between us, will be available to us, to help sharpen our skill set, so that we can accomplish what we want to accomplish.

It is my belief that when this happens for the first time, there will be an explosion of new skill sets that become available to us. Things that we don’t know today, things we aren’t aware of or think possible, will suddenly be available to all. What will we do with such power? My hope is that we usher in a new era of the mind, a renaissance of art, culture, and religious belief.

https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/sep/18-your-brain-knows-lot-more-than-you-realize

Ideas of Future Consciousness

We have a collective consciousness. Multiple neurons work in tandem to create a single voice in which we attribute to our ego, the self. Voices of doubt, of reason; the angel and the devil on your shoulder, they are a smaller part of a whole which is the self. We can attribute decisions to different sides of our brain, our right brain a silent partner which communicates and reaches consensus with our left brain. Mental illness can also play a role in conscious decision. In the case of schizophrenia, multiple voices can give instructions and directions to a person’s thought. In the future, I think it will be the case that our enhanced intelligence will give rise to multiple personalities and selves inside one person, which will reach a consensus again among themselves, still in one body. It’s not far-fetched to think that humans need these inner voices to temper their decisions, and most of it takes place on the subconscious level. It is my belief that in the future these inner voices will have a much more important role, and will give rise to a more complex and diversified group of individual personalities at the forefront of our consciousness. With this and instant communication between people across the globe possible, it seems probable that some of these personalities may be other people entirely.

We take other people’s advice into consideration already, allowing outside influence to change our thinking. Talking to other people about our problems helps us make decisions about our day to day lives. When communication between us is instant and on a global scale I believe we will begin to shift towards a unified consensus that benefits all humans. Much like servers communicate with each other on the internet, our brains will be linked together in a biological net that will represent all of humanity, the human spirit. Our diversity is necessary for this reason. We will need people from all walks of life to complete the human library of thought.

We currently have separate tribal ties based on locale and heritage but these will fade away once our consciousness shifts further and further into a unified consensus, each voice ringing in the background. This will be possible with the advent of artificial intelligence and the culmination of the industrial age into the singularity, when we join AI in creating our new world. The explosion of our intelligence capacity will then give rise to a complexity of life we have trouble imagining now. Will we break the speed of causality, and spread to other worlds among other stars? Will intergalactic travel become possible? I like to think that humanity is on the cusp of these things at this unique time in the history of Earth.

It is important that we start to align ourselves in our thinking so that we can propel ourselves into a brighter future. When the human spirit becomes more than just an intangible thought to a unified consensus then we will begin to see true change.

We are each individual aspects of the human spirit.

Trans-Humanism

Goal: to further advance the spirit of the human race.

Trans-Humanism is taking all the overarching themes of all religions and incorporating them into one idea; the power of the human spirit.

The human spirit is the culmination of thousands of years of culture, religious beliefs, and art. We express ourselves because we need to find individuality in a sea of people from all different backgrounds and beliefs. Religion is one way humans can express themselves and commit to doing what they believe is right in the sight of their God or Gods. Religion is a state of being, something the human spirit is drawn to, to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. We evolved to ask ourselves questions like, “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?”. One can only find purpose in what they believe to be true, something that is unknowable and is beyond their capacity. It’s finding a common goal to strive towards that belief, that state of being that makes us human. The human spirit is noble, and righteous. It is also malignant, and repulsive. We need to accept all the truths we’ve come to know about ourselves, even the bad ones, so we can strive to be something better. Something that not many have accomplished yet, and may be our way forward in the future.

To believe in something greater than yourself is human nature. Our ancestors looked to the sky and asked what lay beyond the thin veil, where stars lit up the night sky, seemingly godly in their permanence. When the sky would grow dark, and thunder crash, they would think the Gods were angry. It was a way for humans to think about something they knew was beyond their capability. The storm, we know now, is just a naturally occurring phenomenon based on scientific principles. We’ve learned so much truth, and we know more now than we ever have before, and all this is culminating into the time where we become something beyond human. Something greater. We have the capability to reweave the fabric of our physical existence. By altering genes we will be able to cure the biggest threat to humanity’s existence to date, death. By curing all human ails and securing new more powerful genes we will be able to become something much greater. The beginning of the Industrial Age marked the beginning of our rapid transition into a new paradigm for life on Earth. The internet that connects us all together all over the world is allowing us to cooperate in ways we have never been able to before. We are beginning to understand one another, and put aside our differences. We must, because the Singularity is coming, the time when we enhance ourselves with technology.

So what is Trans-Humanism then? It’s the fundamental belief and wish to become something greater than ourselves. To mature into a community of like-minded and able individuals who all bring a unique and important experience to humanity, for the good of humanity. Religion is whatever we want it to be. It doesn’t have to be binding or unforgiving of others. It accepts people for who they really are, and what they’re trying to become. Religion is a collective of individuals who propel themselves on a path toward enlightenment. It’s about community, and sharing, and striving towards the greater good. It is in our nature to be good. It is also in our nature to be evil and corrupt. We must accept our faults if we want to hone ourselves into the people we want to be. Humanity is moving towards change, and we should be ready for the great power we will have. If we are irresponsible, if we don’t learn from everyone who’s come before us, then extinction is inevitable.

Humanities mission is to spread our core beliefs, our morals and values, and use them to better ourselves and each other. When we take to the stars, in the far future when humanity has spread beyond Earth, we need to be gods of our universe. We need to be able to usher along change, and spread humanities values to new worlds, and possibly alien civilizations. There is still so much to learn about our place in the universe, why we exist, and what we can become. We need to band together with the common goal of bettering ourselves and each other. We need to hone our gifts and accept our failures, but turn around and change more and more into someone greater than those who came before us.

We are coming upon a time when we will become immortal, become able to access all of humanities knowledge with a simple thought, and join with artificial intelligence to become a super organism that spreads across the globe. We will all be interconnected through the virtual world and we will enhance our genes, evolving us into whatever comes after humanity. The future is both certain and uncertain. It is inevitable that we will enhance ourselves artificially. What we do with such power is not an inevitable fact. True free will will have been planted, a seed of consciousness that we cannot begin to fathom now.

Next time I talk about the aspects of the human spirit.

What Does the Future Hold? And What Does it Mean?

I think about the future. I think about the future as I wake up, and I fall asleep thinking about the future. I even think about the future while I’m awake, as I dive deeper into science videos and articles about what life might be like 10, 20, even 100 years from now. The future looks extremely bright for science. We are close to reaching a turning point where technology – whether it be medical technology, artificial intelligence, space flight – is going to culminate into the biggest explosion of innovation in history since the Industrial Revolution. I’m constantly learning as much as I can about what the future may hold, and there are a few people who are making the future possible now, like Elon Musk and his self-driving cars, or reusable rocket boosters.[0][0] Or Google, with their quantum computers capable of superimposing qubits, making quantum computers calculate at speeds modern computers can’t compete with. With a new breakthrough in 3-D wiring techniques we are beginning to scale quantum computers down, which means we’ll be able to increase their capacity every time the components get smaller, making more and more room for processing power.[1]

But what does the future actually look like in 10, 20, 100 years? No one knows, because according to Moore’s Law the rate at which technology improves grows exponentially with the passing of time.[2]

The combination of quantum computing and the self-learning algorithms at Google DeepMind or other quantum computing pioneers will someday culminate into a true general Artificial Intelligence, capable of meeting the criteria of the Turing Test and answering some of humanities most burning questions.[3] One of the first things Google got their computer intelligence to teach itself was to master the game Go, a game thought to be too complex for a computer to beat a Go Grandmaster, but it did.[4][4]

But what happens when AI finally overtakes humans and we are not the smartest being we know, that is capable of critical thinking and has a generalized knowledge of how to use collective learning to overcome our most daunting challenges; conquering problems that would take humans years to solve, but a machine months or even days? It’s a big question, and some people think it will spell the end of the world. Other’s think we’ll hit the point of Technological Singularity[5], where machines will overtake humans in every way, and we’ll live a life of ease and comfort, where we become domesticated and our brains shrink.[6] Jobs for humans will become less and less available as machines will outperform them and will also be extremely cost efficient, which will lead to a different economy. What world will we live in after most of our jobs are taken away by machines? How will we earn food to feed ourselves if we don’t have the money to buy it?[7][7] One interesting solution is cryptocurrency[8], which will allow people to exchange funds without the help of a intermediaries like a bank, and are extremely secure. There are many ways to earn different types of cryptocurrency[9], which means jobs in providing information to companies for their supercomputers to analyze may be the way of the future.

There are many other ways technology is bound to change the course of human evolution, and that is the ability to freely edit our genes by re-encoding our DNA. By learning everything we can from our own human gene pool[10], we are able to study the root causes of things such as genetic disease and ways to encourage other genes to take hold, thereby giving us an edge over disease and even death. By controlling our genes, or introducing new strong genes into our DNA, we can change our bodies in unimaginable ways.[11] CRISPR, the technique for modifying DNA, is still a new technology, but there are already technologies that are making this sort of procedure easy and cost effective. One of the ways we could benefit from such powerful tools is the ability to stop the aging process, or even reverse it.

As artificial intelligence gets closer to reality, we steadily progress in other areas of science to a new and much brighter future for all humans. However, it’s very hard for futurists to see what exactly will happen. What will happen when humans stop aging? The population of the earth is over 7 billion people[12], many who are impoverished and would not have access to these new technologies. Currently Google DeepMind is making their work open source, meaning the knowledge of how they are creating collective learning artificial intelligence is freely distributed on the internet. Some futurists claim we will merge with technology, giving us a huge evolutionary edge which might lead to brand new possibilities for existing technologies.[13]

One of my favorite theories is the nano-miniaturization of machines which will live inside our bodies, giving us capabilities we can only dream of now. These nano-machines would be able to monitor our health from inside our body, and give instructions to doctors on how to treat individual patients. Currently medicine is generalized and works for most people, but with drugs specifically tailored to your genetic makeup, medicine will make an enormous leap forward.[14] Another benefit of having nano machines inside your body would be the relaying of signals to your brain through implanted electrodes, signals that could teach your brain to do amazing things, such as feel magnetic fields or see in ultraviolet light. This work is already going on without the use of nano machines, teaching blind people to see their world through their tongue and other remarkable feats.[15] With the advent of 3D printing, people will be able to print their own clothes for much cheaper than buying in the store. For example, 3D printers are already printing food and organs. This technology exists today, but is still in it’s early stages. Scientists have begun printing things from living cells, creating ears and kidneys that have already been implanted and are working.[16] Given a few decades, this technology could print prosthetics which are much better than the body parts we were born with. Scientists are making materials for these prosthetics out of things they find in nature, actually growing human collagen which is what accounts for 30-40% of all proteins in our body, by genetically modifying plants to grow the protein.[17]

In the future, prosthetics could be tailor made with extra sensory inputs, be made of materials that are stronger and better than an average humans, and would feel real to us, giving people perfect motor control. A prosthetic heart could be used as a replacement for people’s old hearts, and they would last much longer and be able to receive instructions directly from a computer linked in our brain.[18] The brain is capable of interfacing with machines, which was already proven by Miguel Nicolelis[19], who implanted electrodes into rhesus monkeys which were then able to control robotic arms with their minds.[20][20]

Travel will become cheaper and much faster, allowing people and cargo to traverse the globe in much less time. In culmination with highly skilled robotic workers, the cost of manufacturing goods would drop significantly, and groundbreaking technology would be widely available to everyone. One such idea to achieve this dream was proposed by Elon Musk, who then allowed the project to become open source. It’s called the Hyperloop, and it’s a train which travels at near supersonic speeds through a vacuum tube. [21]

Writer’s Block, and What is Consciousness?

“But Sage sir, don’t tell me you already have writer’s block!” I’m afraid so. After just the first blog entry yesterday I’m already grasping at idea straws. What do I write about? What topics should I cover? Luckily for the reader, I’m excellent at talking about nothing. You’ll see that a lot in this blog, little gaps of text which doesn’t really say anything. It is my gift, and my curse.

“Sage sir, you were cursed to say nothing, even while writing sentence after sentence of text?” Why yes, astute reader. You’d be exactly right. This happens because all day long I sit and wonder. I wonder about what I’d be saying to a specific person during a specific circumstance. It’s all I do all day, just wondering what he or she would say given a certain situation. Usually it’s not a good conversation, because I end up upset or feel like that person is going to ask me something I won’t be able to answer, which makes it seem like an exercise in futility. Well luckily for you, reader, you get to peer into the complex workings of my inner mind and see for yourself the ramblings of the apen conscious, which may or may not lead you to believe, (along with myself), that these bored conversations have little meaning.

But low and behold, here I am talking about hypothetical conversations that never happened, and here you are wondering how this is interesting or why you’re even reading this. Well I’ll tell you why, sport. It’s because occasionally I do cover topics of interest, such as the subject of the human consciousness.

What then, specifically, drives me to think of all those hypothetical scenarios? What part of the human brain evolved to deal with these scenarios? As you may already know, humans are social creatures. We thrive because we are able to pass information we’ve learned from one generation to the next, and improve slowly but steadily on these ideas.[1] Cooking food is probably responsible for our ability to see into the hypothetical future. Human brains developed after the invention of fire. Being able to cook our food meant that we got more nutrients that we weren’t used to getting. Meat was also easier to eat and digest. People talk about brain foods but really, you don’t have to look too far to find food that helps develop our brain, because it’s all based off the simple fact that we cook our food.[2]

Sure, eating raw vegetables can give you more nutrition that’s lost during the cooking process, but can we stop talking about vegetarians for a second. If you’re still here it means you’re a meat eater, even an omnivore, and that makes you one of the most successful mammals to ever walk earth. Fish and other seafood became extremely important to our diets as we moved to the coast where there was an abundant source of water and food. Eventually we even moved into the frozen tundras of the Ice Age, and tackled beasts such as Woolly Mammoths.[3] What makes an ape stop to wonder, “I like fruit, but putting that antelope in my mouth would be the tops, because I see those cats over there chewing on them and they look so happy, blood all over their mouth and everything. Too bad my teeth aren’t designed to tackle and kill prey as tasty looking as that. Perhaps I’ll take this sharp stone, flay the flesh and roast it over an open fire!”

Consciousness may not have sprung forth only because of food though. Let’s take a step back, and mull over what I’ve already said. There may be physical links to the development of consciousness, but what about the social aspects of homosapien behaviors? Well that developed many areas of our brain. Recognizing other people as individuals takes a lot of brain power. Recognizing faces is one of the abilities that came from our extra brain power. It’s a super power most of us have, except for the poor few with prosopagnosia.[4] Recognizing your family and your own group has great benefits which ensure survival. The more brain power you use, the more energy your brain needs to complete these tasks. Our brain uses a massive 20% of the energy we consume.[5]

Other factors for the development of conscious were the desire to observe and study the universe around us. When you start thinking of the world and it’s systems, and what governs those systems; and you start thinking about the people around you, and how they are unique and have skills which can be useful to your survival, you start seeing the world from a completely different perspective. We noticed things like seasons, and how the celestial bodies in the sky coincided with those seasons, and by working together we were able to freely exchange ideas through another important evolution: language.[6]

So what was our first true sign of intelligence, of conscious thought being put into action? I don’t know the answer for certain, but what I’ve seen as one of the first signs of higher intelligence is the gathering of ritualistic objects of significance and ceremonial behaviors that we don’t see very often in other animals, like burying our dead. Recently we have seen chimps, one of our closest relatives, behaving in ritualistic ways. They don’t bury their dead, but they collect special stones which they throw at specific trees. Chimps will gather from miles to do join in on this behavior, cementing the idea that they may find significance in the tree where there is no significance; something that governs the way they think, or changes their perspective on the world around them.[7]

Humans would carve figures and paint walls, paint our bodies and give ourselves tattoos. In my opinion, engaging in ritualistic behavior, or the emergence of religion is trying to make sense of the world in it’s most ancient form. It’s taking a wealth of knowledge you don’t understand about the world and attributing it to a higher power, something you have no control over but happens regardless. Did the first human who stared into the stars beyond the skyline and think those celestial bodies ruled and governed his life? Probably. But that doesn’t make him stupid, people of the time simply didn’t have the enormous data we have now to extrapolate information about the universe from. When you recognize someone as a person, and the lifelessness that occurs after death, something happens in our minds that helps us recognize this person has passed on, and makes us wonder “What happens after death?”. Burying our dead may have started with the simple need to keep corpses away from predators, from spreading disease, and also laying them to rest as they changed into something different; a passage into the underworld.[8]

Ancient people weren’t stupid, but they hadn’t collectively learned how to create tools to measure the universe as we do today, and yet they still managed to create intricate technologies that led to building structures of religious significance like Stonehenge. We have trouble sometimes trying to go back in time and figure out some of the ways these people managed to build and organize their structures, societies, and religions. What would you think of the world if you grew up as a hunter gatherer, someone who traveled as a nomad from place to place gathering food for you and your group? What would you think of the world when you were able to settle down into larger groups, form villages, and begin to lay the foundations of agriculture, which is the ability to grow food when and where you want it? The more food, the more people, the more ideas, the more specializations people can fall into, and the more technology is developed.[9]

As people settled down, and technology advanced, they were able to associate these kind of behaviors with their gods. Gods that represented fertility are among the oldest, but there sprung up gods for other tasks as well. When you think of life after death, you begin to tell the story of the process of what happens after death occurs. Obviously someone has to be in charge of death, because it’s a powerful force that comes for us all. Thus led to the belief in the underworld in all it’s forms. And these ideas sprang from multiple cultures from around the globe, some of which grew up in completely different environments and were influenced by different types of plants and wildlife that grew there. People adapted to varying climates and with that came varying ideas about the world.

As far as religion goes, I think storytelling played a huge role. The art of storytelling predates historical record, before we had invented a way to write down what we thought of and pass that information down to new generations.[10] Religion has existed so long that it’s in the unique position and carrying the full load of the generations before it’s ideology and beliefs. When people’s lives began to change with the advent of technology, so did their idea about gods. Higher powers represented the pinnacle of existence, so gods had to become smarter and wield absolute power over their subjects. In some cultures it meant that their gods were in decline because they were no longer happy with the population. Sometimes this meant that a human sacrifice was in order, to please the gods.[11]

By this time people had already started experimenting with entheogens[12] to guide their spirits to other planes of existence. We may owe some of our darkest traditions to shamans[13] on bad trips.

It’s hard to get rid of the stigma we often find with religion, because it’s not all good. You have to distill these texts and find the good amidst the greed of individualism, the thought that one man is born better than another, and inequality in other disturbing measure. People have been thinking about religion and what it means to us a species for a very long time however, and there are new ideas put forth every day that challenge some of the more ancient ways of thinking. There are staunch traditionalists, and there are people working towards a religion that makes sense for everyone, one that improves life and works towards a greater good. This happened as human culture became more complex as societies arose across the globe. It’s important, in my uniquely unimportant opinion, to find a moral compass that suits you and all the people around you, so you can grow and function as a contributing member of society who isn’t obstructive or tries to take advantage of other people. It’s morals, the idea of right and wrong, which helps govern our more animalistic behaviors and helps us evolve our minds.

So what is consciousness then?[14] Did it spring up among the various developments of our brain hemispheres due to climate change, the development of society and culture, and the way we cook our food? There is likely way more to it than that, and science is getting us closer to the answer every day. Our generation is in the unique position where we may get to see the pinnacle of human evolution, a turning point in our history where man finally integrates with his technology and we begin to cultivate life on other planets.[15][15]

Evidence also points to viruses, disease, bacteria and other microbes playing huge roles in the way our bodies and brains developed.[16] After millions of years we’ve reached this point, this turning point where we may be able to finally understand what consciousness is in the first place. Now, we are even peering into our own genetic makeup, seeing the proteins that are the building blocks of our species and all life through the study of DNA. Editing our genes is a technology that is already being studied, and in the near future we may be able to alter our own DNA to eliminate certain diseases, grow synthetic organs that are stronger and better than our originals[17], or even change the cellular structure of our DNA to alter things like hair color.

In my opinion the collection of neurons and the subsequent connections between them, connected between the two hemispheres of our brain, lead to a collective consciousness that is the amalgamation of many theories, memories, and biological elements that result in the collaboration between these factors for critical decision making.[18] My right brain, who is incapable of speech, often tells my left brain what course of action it wants to take, while my left brain thinks of something else it should be doing, and only by having the connection between the two parts does a whole opinion form. Left brain then explains why it had this epiphany, and you feel satisfied knowing why you did something because you have a false sense of control over the inner workings of your mind. Do we actually have control over our actions though? How much of this process of consciousness automated? I guess I’ve written enough for one day.

Beware

This blog is an attempt to safely dispose of thought waste that doesn’t decompose naturally. With a little help from the written word this endless sheet of self-replicating paper has somewhere to go and be locked away, far from the hairless chimp who sits atop the crown of my consciousness typing randomly and wildly into the vacuum. But the will of this highly evolved animal is what drives me, (or who I identify as being an individual, “me” being subjective and often defined by other’s perceptions), and he is very loud and persistent.

So if you do read on, be cautious. One man, an amalgamation of animal and critical thought, can be extremely influential in today’s society. The scope of the amount of minds our stupidity can touch has reached critical mass. Our demand for information of any kind is proceeded by a voracious hunger that is encoded in the very fabric that weaves our human vessel together. This animal is the most hungry, the most curious, and the most dangerous among the animal kingdom. The combination of information accumulated from previous generations and the discoveries he makes from the invention of futuristic technologies give us god-like powers our ancestors only dreamed of, or never dreamed of.

If Spiderman taught me anything, it’s that with great power comes great responsibility. If the individual who lives inside this animal knows anything, it’s that everything he says is limited to his experience and sensory perceptions. Experience is subjective, and perceptions are heavily skewed.

Who’s to say the percentage of my mind which is consciousness is even in control of what I’m writing? What is thought? Am I in control of my thoughts? Or is my entire existence summed up as a mere passenger on a ship headed towards one of the universes inevitable outcomes? If time is relative, then am I only consciously aware of what is happening to me, what was always going to happen to me as the chimp at the typewriter plays out this macabre existence? Do I have free will? Only “god” knows. But god, in my opinion, is the point our species might reach when we have the answers to our stupid questions.