Archives for posts with tag: Digestion

We and the planet

January 24, 2021 //
0
What next?

Crows are deemed to be the smartest birds around.

“Crows are the hominins of the bird kingdom,”
“Like our own ancestors, they evolved proportionally massive brains by increasing both their body size and brain size at the same time, with the brain size increase happening even more rapidly.”
Dr. Jeroen Smaers

Crows have also witnessed our evolution.

All life transforms its habitat.
Living things actually pass ‘segments’ of their habitat through their digestive systems. Digest them. Consume the useful components and discard the rest. And, finally, excrete whatever their metabolism had turned the useful components into. Urea and carbon dioxide, to name but a couple. For us, mammals. Other living creatures contribute something else to their environments.

The blue-green algae of yore are believed to have produced the oxygen we breathe now.
“Wolf Reintroduction Changes Ecosystem in Yellowstone“.
Humans alter their ‘nesting’ places in ways sometimes detrimental to their own well being.

So, basically, we – as a society, actually ‘digest’ our planet. Our home… Our only home!

Are we happy with the results?

Are you happy with what you’ve done to your home?
To OUR home?

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Categories awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, cooperation, Economy, effective communication, evolution, In English, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, Trust

Sitrep

April 8, 2019 //
3

Each of us made of a huge, but finite, number of atoms belonging to a few chemical elements, we, humans, are in relative control of a huge, but finite, planet.

As animals – living animals, that is, we need to constantly ‘ingest’ part of our environment and periodically excrete the ‘consequences’ of our metabolism.

As conscious humans we learn. Constantly.
Practically, we ingest information about what is going on around us.
We ‘digest’ it by ‘thinking’ about what concerns us.

Only the more ‘sophisticated’ animals control their bladders and bowels. Hence choosing – according to various criteria, what to do and where to deposit the ‘consequences’ of their metabolism. By doing so they actually increase their chances of survival.

We, as the most sophisticated animal around, have taken a huge step forward. We not only control our excretion, we also control our intake.
Animals – along with plants and fungi, ingest whatever they can from whatever surrounds them at any given time.
We’ve reached the stage where we actually change our environment in order to make it more amenable to our wishes. To our wishes, no longer to our mere necessities.

While the living have started to change the planet long before we evolved into being – by ingesting part of it, digesting it and excreting the consequences of their metabolism, we’ve considerably ‘revved up’ the process.
Simply because of our ability to learn and apply our knowledge towards what we consider to be our goals.

In a sense, we not only ingest our environment in a direct, material, way but also in a ‘virtual’ one. By learning about it we practically ingest it in an ‘informational’ manner. And by implementing our decisions we ‘excrete’ the consequences of our learning.

As I mentioned before, the animals who control their bladders/bowels have experienced increased chances of survival as a consequence of their new – evolutionary speaking, ability.
It is high time for us to learn how to control our imagination/desire in order to achieve the same thing. Regarding to our ability to informationaly ingest and decisionally transform our environment.

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Categories Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, physics, Psychology

Digesting our world

August 16, 2017 //
0

I’ve reached the conclusion that thinking and digesting have very much in common.

Citarum 2

We can’t do it by our own. Those of us who don’t cooperate/speak with those around them, don’t have what to eat or what to think about.

Both processes imply three stages. Identification, absorption, use.
We use cultural models to identify both our food and the important issues.
Absorption – through our gut/conscience, is both highly specific to each individual and governed by our common DNA/shared cultural traditions.
The ‘products’ of the digesting/thinking process are, again, used both in public as well as in private. Part of the energy we get from our food is consumed ‘cooperatively’ with our ‘coworkers’ while most of our thoughts end up either verbally expressed or put in practice.

Both processes, digesting as well as thinking, increasingly change the environment where we, and others, live.

Citarum 1

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Categories altruism, Bounded rationality, collective identity, Economy, effective communication, evolution, Mutual Respect, The kind of world we are building for our children
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