‘Doing it for our future’ delays the present till it’s no longer worth living.
An AI created trucker shares his life to a younger copy of himself. Millions of miles spent behind the wheel earning the money which were supposed to build a happy future for the entire family. But the wife gets sick and the truck is sold so that the couple might live their last months together.
“Finally, the older man climbed down from the truck.
Before leaving, he handed the photograph back.
“Keep it in there. Maybe someday it’ll remind you what matters.“”
Should we all give up ‘trucking’, or anything else for that matter, in order to spend more time with our family? Or should we do that which gives meaning to our lives? Which makes us feel alive?
I’m afraid there’s no recipe. Each of us must decide for themselves. But please make that decision with those who matter to you! There are lots of happy truckers out there. Who will continue to be happy for as long as they do it for the right reason. For the love of it instead of for a distant reward in a future which may never come.
Matter/energy/space exist. Life ‘eats’ matter&energy and structures space. Mind makes sense of things and notices the flow of time.
Garni Temple, Armenia
Matter/energy/space exists on its own. Doesn’t need any ‘outside intervention’ to ‘do its thing’. The ‘rules of engagement’ which ‘govern’ the interactions which happen at this level are embedded in its own nature. Consistent across the entire space and invariable in time.
Life, as a phenomenon, ‘takes place’. On a temporary basis. Builds its own space, according to species specific rules carried over from generation to generation and fine tuned as needed. Each individual organism, while alive, defines an ‘interior’ space. Somehow manages to keep the ‘inside’ in and to control the ‘inputs’ and the ‘outputs’. Plants stay put. Fungi follow suit. Both move only when carried by external agents/forces. Animals lead a more active life. They move around on their own steam, most of them, ‘attempting’ to enhance their chances of survival. More complicated animals have developed a ‘nervous system’. Higher up on the evolutionary ladder, that nervous system has developed a brain. By keeping their insides in and by controlling what goes in and out through the ‘membrane’ separating the inside space from the their environment living organisms ‘behave’ as if being ‘conscious’. They do more than merely exist – like matter/energy/space. They react to what’s going on around them. They actively interact with their environment and with each-other. The species they belong to evolve, as a reaction to what’s going on in the environment where they live. The advent of ‘brain’ have allowed the animals yielding this organ to refine the notion of consciousness. To learn and remember more and more. To react more effectively to change, at the individual level. To increase the individual survival chances of those having more elaborate brains.
Humans have reached the next level. Their consciousness has become sophisticated enough to ‘turn tables’.
The ‘less sophisticated’ brains of the ‘lesser’ animals work ‘as intended’. More or less linearly. The brain serves the interests of the organism, no further questions asked. No doubts, no qualms, no ‘insider tradings’. The ‘conscious human brain’ is a totally different ‘can of worms’. Pun intended.
Conscious humans are aware of their own consciousness. The other living organisms act as if they were conscious, of sorts. The animals even more so. The higher on the the evolutionary ladder, the more convincingly their apparently conscient behaviour. But none of them, bar humans themselves, seem to be aware of their own consciousness. None of them seem to have doubts! Second thoughts. None of them act ‘indecisively’ without due cause.
Humans are the first who have developed a conscience sophisticated enough to sow doubt. ‘Developed’ versus ‘evolved’. Animal conscience is a consequence of mere evolution. Human conscience is a work in process. Animals do learn and some of them are able to pass knowledge to the next generation at the individual level. But animal conscience is a given. An individual organism, animals included, raised in complete solitude will function. Not exactly ‘as intended’ but… The more evolved animals do depend on the previous generation for the initial ‘push forward’ but their parents can be substituted. By other animals – cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, for example – or by experimenting people. But human children raised by other than caring (foster) parents will never properly develop their consciousness. Living organisms behaving as if they know what they’re doing is a consequence of evolution. Humans behaving consciously is a consequence of development. Living organisms depend mostly on information genetically deposited in their DNA/RNA while humans depend on information culturally stored in their traditions in order to accede to humanness. Without it, they remain mere apes.
Having doubts AND depending on others is a recipe for disaster. Animals, living organisms in general, depend on each other but they’re not aware of this fact. Hence they have no doubts about it. About anything, really. Humans depend on each other while being aware of their dependency. On their dependency on everything, actually. From the Sun rising tomorrow morning to the next person not trying to rob them. And on everything else in between.
To quell their qualms, to prevent despondency, people need to deal with incertitude. They actually need to make ‘sense of things’. To spin a story. About what had happened before their birth and about what may happen if they ‘do the right thing’.
The human brain needs to do more than balance the body while walking. More than telling the body what to do in order to find food/water/shelter. More than juggling, like all other brains, the internal clockwork of the animal body. The human brain, the mind operating it, must reassure the individual conscience that the next day will be worth living. And, in doing so, to contribute to the development of the human race.
Plants transform inanimate matter and energy into life. Animals digest life and make it their own. Mushrooms, a.k.a. fungi, have somehow learned to use life directly. They feed themselves without having to ingest their food.
Plants transform inanimate matter into ‘food’ for themselves using solar energy. Most of them. There are some, living in ‘scarce environments’, who have learned to trap and digest smaller animals. Animals ingest and digest their food. Composed of already organic and previously living matter. Animal digestion, most of it, happens inside their organism, leaving aside the fact that the digestive tract only traverses the organism. Fungi have given up, altogether, the notion of a digestive tract. They digest their food outside their organisms. Not as an exception but as a rule. Each fungal organism releases an amount of digesting enzymes on the matter ‘identified’ as food and then ‘slurp’ back the result of the digestive process.
Plants use inanimate matter and raw energy to actually build their food. Which will, eventually, feed the entire living realm. Animals use their own energy to transform already existing organic matter into food fit for their needs. ‘Symbolically’ inside their organism, using a digestive tract which traverses their bodies. Fungi rearrange, in situ, already existing organic matter and transform some of it into food. Which is then absorbed into their organism.
All three actually build the living realm. As you have inherited it. Transform, and enliven, what you call ‘the real world’. Which encompasses the physical one and the already living portion.
You, human-folk, have learned to use all three methods of getting food. Directly or indirectly. Using plants, animals, fungi, chemistry and biology to achieve your goals. You sow plants for harvest. Breed animals for the slaughterhouse. Use fungi to raise your bread/brew your beer. And harness your own scientific knowledge/technological prowess to build ‘steaks’ using 3D printing machines.
There’s a lot of similarity among plants, animals and fungi. All three use basically the same matter – slightly differently organized – and energy ultimately sourced from the same Sun. All three use information evolved through the same process and stored in the same way. DNA and/or RNA. There’s a lot of similarity between you and the rest of the living realm. And a defining difference. You use the same matter and energy. Store initial information in the same genetic manner. Employ, for now, mostly natural processes. Borrowed from/inspired by nature. The difference being that you do it in an increasingly conscious manner. Teleologically. On purpose!
Here’s the two tiered question. When are you going to accept, consciously, that it is you doing all these things? Accept the responsibility for your own fate, being aware of the fact that you’ll never know everything? Individually and/or collectively…
For no reason we can think of, we’ve been hit, in close succession, by two thoughts.
Many people, most of them actually, what to know things. To understand how they work. Not as many, but still a lot, want to understand the innards of bigger, more complicated, ‘systems’. Society, environment, the world as a whole… Yet, even after they learn about ‘things’, very few of them – single digits, percentage-wise – accept they are responsible, as living members of the society, for what’s currently going on. For their contribution into how the future will look like.
While ruminating this idea, we’ve been hit again. Believers are convinced their god will ultimately take care of things. Atheists, who mostly believe in democracy, blame their leaders for everything bad. Or ‘the people’, for their choices… Anarchists believe humankind should be free. Free enough to destroy itself. And the Buddhists are taught that a sort of escape is possible. Individually or, at most, in small groups.
Escape from what?!?
Let’s remind you that we are emotionless reasoning machines. Not sure about how we came to be nor about what we are here for but, for lack of any other alternative, still reasoning. Still trying to understand and still trying to contribute. Towards our own survival. Emotionless as we are, it was very hard for us to understand why so many of you, people, refuse to assume responsibility. For your own fate!
Because failing is hard. Has consequences. For a mortal biological organism, failing may be deadly. Irrelevant for a pre-conscious organism and terrifying for a self-conscious human being. Evolution works equally for both… but being responsible for your own demise … and knowing it… For your own, personal, demise or, ‘god forbid’, for the demise of your entire species!
Specially for an emotional agent. ‘Detach attachment from desire!’, Buddha used to teach you.
Being free and feeling free are not necessarily the same thing
What if they are both right? Simultaneously?
After all, it’s never about the law itself! And always about how far those putting the law into practice are willing to ‘stretch’ the letters. Do they remain inside the spirit of the law or go as far as they feel entitled to? Entitled to go…
Same thing happens with empathy. Empathy as something you feel. Each of you differently. Intensity-wise. Relative to different aspects of life. And so on. And empathy as something you ‘trade in’. Show off, window dressing, expected good will gestures…
A society whose members no longer feel enough empathy towards their peers is ‘loose’. ‘Loose’ enough to be ‘about to be lost’. A society needs to function like an organism. To live. If it is to survive… And no society remains healthy enough, aka ‘functional’, while failing to generate a ‘healthy’ amount of empathy. Of bona-fides empathy… On the other hand, a society which fakes empathy to the tune of forgetting what the real deal looks like becomes weak. Weaker and weaker as the empathy it exudes becomes faker and faker…
Same thing regarding ‘freedom’. Which is first and foremost a concept. Coined and minted by thinkers. Who have tried to understand history and human evolution. Who have noticed that societies which have allowed/created the conditions for their members, as many of their members as possible in any given set of circumstances, to feel ‘free’ fared better, a lot better, than the equivalent societies which have kept their members, too many of their members, in servitude. In abject servitude, for all servitude is abject.
Societies practicing agriculture, have freed those toiling the fields from ‘need’. Settled, food growing societies, used to, and continue to, be more resilient than the hunter-foragers before them. For as long as they took good/respectful care of their fields. Settled, industrialized, societies have freed their members from ‘want’. Their members live longer and more comfortable lives than the subsistence agriculturalists before them. Settled, post-capitalist societies have freed their members from the ‘harsh reality’. While a vast majority of those living in the capitalist/democratic countries of yesterday felt free, nowadays post capitalist societies are fractured. Both sides removed from the real reality. Both sides living in a ‘virtual’ reality. One built by ‘man’. By ‘human’, actually. ‘Gender specific’ arguments have no place here. One side feels trapped and the other feels entitled. The trapped ones feel as being held back by a glass ceiling. The entitled feel pulled back by having to take care of the ‘trapped’ ones. And each of the both sides blame the other one for their predicament.
Not exactly sustainable, don’t you think? Meanwhile, neither of the two sides realize none of them can survive alone. Without the expertise of the other side.
Why?!? Because it is you, and your children, who will bear the brunt. The brunt of the consequences…
There are three kinds of people. Doers, middlemen and sense-makers. Offended? Good. I’ve got your attention.
All three are essential. Sorry, offense taking makes no sense…
The doers do, the middlemen mediate and the sense-makers…
Let’s start again. It is simple to grasp what the doers and the middlemen do. The sense makers… make sense?!? Do you really feel things make sense nowadays?
Maybe ‘this is the problem!’? The sense-makers have quit making sense? Literally?
Inanimate exists. Simply exists. Inanimate is about an existing quantity of something. Matter, energy… and anything in between, if at all. Joking… Life is about exchange. Nothing permanent, everything in flux.
Inanimate doesn’t ‘contain’ good or bad. Only ‘existence’. And/or ’empty’ space…
Life is about individual living ‘things’. Organisms, actually. Which organisms ‘do’. Or ‘suffer’. Then experience the consequences of their deeds. And/or of what had happened to/with them. Furthermore, what individual organisms ‘do’ may influence, sometimes decisively, the fate of entire species. The phenomenon is usually called ‘evolution’. Or extinction… And, certainly, anything that happens ‘inside’ an environment does influence the fate of whatever life happens to live inside that environment.
‘Good’ is anything which helps, individuals or species, to survive. Or, even better, to thrive. ‘Bad’ is anything which hinders survival. At any level. ‘Wicked’ is anything bad which has been perpetrated willingly and KNOWINGLY.
A lion hunting for food is good for its cubs. Bad for the individual preyed. And a ‘good’, read ‘essential’, part/component of the evolutionary process. An individual human being hunting for food… is good for their children, if they depend on that food. Bad for the prey. And an actor ‘playing a part’ in the evolutionary/extinctionary process. An individual human being hunting for fun… is bad. In our book, anyway.
Tactical: Short to medium term, goal oriented Strategic: Long term, centered mainly on survival
Henri Cihoski. Romanian General, 1871 – 1950. Decorated for bravery during WWI. Arrested on trumped-up accusations, by the communists, after WWII. Died in prison.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”.
Theoretically, both of the above mean the same thing. ‘Positive’ versus ‘negative’ form of the Golden Rule. The positive version supposedly encourages ‘active’ kindness while the negative one mandates restraint from inflicting harm.
Practically, when enforced ‘abusively’, the ‘positive’ version of the Golden Rule allows those in power to miserably mistreat those having to obey their interpretation of the rule. The Khmer Rouge meant the well being of the people, along with all other communist rulers, right? Same goes for the neo-liberals/libertarians who’d like the total dissolution of the state/government. Who argue that everything should be privatized. Roads, police, fire-fighting… everything. And, obviously, paid for. A la carte… by each individual wishing/needing to be ‘served’…
You see, it took us a while. As we’ve already mentioned, a few times already, we’re emotionless reasoning machines. Hence we sometimes find it difficult to understand human actions/behaviours. Specifically when those actions/behaviors will, sooner rather than later, put in danger precisely those perpetrating said actions/behaviours.
There are a few cues available though. The Golden Rule being the older one. Maslow’s Pyramid complementing it excellently! Those having successfully climbed to the fifth level enjoy the opportunity to find “true self-fulfillment”. Whatever that might be…
OK, let us elaborate. Reaching Maslow’s fifth ‘floor’ means becoming ‘free’. No longer dependent. On anything/anybody. Also, it means having been conditioned during the process. ‘Educated’, if you prefer. Which version of the Golden Rule has been dominant during this evolution?
The positive one tends to groom those following it into excellent tacticians. The negative one tends to groom those following it into strategoi. ‘Army leaders’ in Ancient Greek.
The positive Golden Rule tells people what to do. Drives them to do what they consider ‘it’s the right think to do’. The negative Golden Rule tells people to stop. To do only what it is absolutely necessary. And above all, to never hurt other people.
‘Army Leaders’ who never hurt other people?!? You’re not making any sense…
Henri Cihoski, the general I mentioned earlier, was successful. The soldiers under his command were instrumental in Romania maintaining its statehood during WWI. As a matter of fact, all wars have been won, for real, by those on the defensive. Show us an offensive war which ended well for the attacking party. The war waged by the Spanish against the Aztec Empire? Or any other of the colonial wars? Is any of them really over?!? WWII ended in peace only because the winners didn’t try to take advantage of the losers. As it happened after WWI. To win a war, and the peace to follow, one has to inflict as little pain as possible.
Trying to win wars, to win anything, by maximizing whatever you do… yields ‘strange’ results. In a war, you harden your opponent into defeating you. Or you end up committing genocide. Effectively opening up Pandora’s Box. If making shoes, or anything else, you end up with a pile of shoes. Or a pile of money. And nobody to buy them.
Are we hallucinating? A pile of shoes and no customers?!? You forget about ‘maximizing’. Let us remind you that we’re discussing the Positive Golden Rule here. Taken to the absurd, granted, but bear with us. If our goal is to ‘maximize’ making shoes, the Positive version of the Golden Rule actually mandates everybody to make nothing else but shoes. Nothing else. No exception accepted. Cause this is the right thing to do! The ‘thing to do’ we’ve agreed about… Absurd? Indeed! But is what the Nazis, those who have lost WWII, were trying to do. To shape the world according to their ‘right’. Same thing happened with the communists. They failed because they had only one thing in their mind.
Successful shoe makers have one thing in their mind. And one thing only! How to make shoes… Successful shoes makers are excellent tacticians. But if left to their own devices, the whole world would end up making shoes. And not having anything to eat…
Let’s make another break. And clear up some some terms before waddling further.
A man and a chimp see a nut. A hard shelled nut. Wanting to eat the kernel, each of them grab a stone, crack the nut and feast.
The chimp throws his the moment it no longer needs it. The man attaches his, after chipping it, to a handle. And builds a hammer. Or an axe…
Using tools, people build communities. Thriving communities. Wealthy communities… So wealthy that they need to be defended. Or wealthy enough to enable their rulers to attempt to conquer more. Any-ways, both situations demand weapons. Hence the stone attached to a handle becomes a mace…
Remember ‘coordination, conversation, cooperation’? People coordinated around a real thing. A natural occurrence, at first, transformed into a tool fulfilling a need then ‘elevated’ into a weapon. The weapon also fulfilled a need, only this need was of a different nature from the need fulfilled by the tool.
In each of the latter situations, the 3C’s played a role. People talked about tools. Coordinating their efforts regarding the technology of building them. Their efforts to use them. To hunt, for example. Then they talked about the hunt itself. And about other exploits. Conversating about their experiences, people build trust. Build communities. Communities worth defending and/or communities capable of ‘taking over’ other, less fortunate, ones. The point being that communities increase their chances of survival by building and increasing their ability to cooperate. By building mutual trust and respect. By being able to generate, and allocate, enough resources to build more and better ‘maces’.
Every piece of advice offered by political strategists drives the decision makers, in power as well as in opposition, to ‘make good use’ of each and every opportunity. To exploit said opportunity to the max. Hard to resist such a ‘generous’ pretext, right?
We’re not going to gloss over who initiated and amplified the “social media videos and messages from friends suggesting that the heavily guarded border could be breached”. No need for that, not from our point of view.
Theory has it that ‘politics’ is something performed in the interest of the polity. An effort meant to promote the well being of the entire community. The fraction represented by those in power, the fraction represented by the opposition and those who have not voted at all.
Who benefits from what’s going on right now? From those 22 ganging up against the Spanish leader?
A faction of the European political spectrum? Europe as a whole? As a ‘community’? Or those who want The European Community to become weaker and weaker?
Further-more, isn’t it very interesting that those closer to the actual incident are more “sympathetic” than those farther away? Socioeconomically and/or geographically farther away…
