There is no evidence within the scope of my knowledge to contradict this statement: the human being is mounted on what was an animal. The word mounted was chosen with deliberation, for there is evidence from science to suggest the onset of intelligence was rather rapid, rapid enough to leave open a realistic possibility of intervention. The manner of the human rise to intelligence is an open and an interesting question, but it is not the question at hand. The question at hand is more immediate, more demanding, and ultimately much more critical to survival.
We humans are empowered, and in some ways burdened, by intelligence in our efforts to survive. Unlike the animals we cannot count on instinct as a guide for survival, it would appear humans sacrificed the guidance of instinct to accommodate the abilities of intelligence. As a consequence of this trade humans found themselves possessing a larger field of perception than the other creatures, a range divided between the outer reality of the sense stream augmented by a strange new inner reality created from the memories of the abstractions and imaginings that arrived with intelligence. The same intelligence that enabled humans such a strangely divided scope of perception equally provided the ability to create and use symbolic communication, the inner symbol set to represent the outer reality. The humans gained the ability to share imaginings one to the other, able to focus a group's abilities on a shared imagining. When humans added communicating intelligent imaginings to their repertoire of survival skills they gained the truly unique ability to be willfully proactive rather than reactive in regards to their environment.
From evolution's point of view humans proved to be the Cinderella success story of their times. The tactic of proactive cooperation converted a weak and failing prey creature into the dominant species on the planet in only a few hundred thousand years, a meteoric rise by evolutionary standards. In less time than it takes a leopard to change his spots humans went from being the leopard's prey to being the leopard's protector in an environment utterly dominated by the human.
For all that we are one of evolutions great success stories it is true that evolution's point of view is little considered by most humans. We are the pinnacle of life on Earth, right? The very fate of the planet rests with our actions, our decisions, right? Evolution has finished it's work where we are concerned, right? Wrong. Evolution is never finished, and evolution has only one concern, one only, and that is the formation of life from non-life. We are not the first of evolution's success stories, we are far from being the first time evolution hit such a pinnacle the only improvement found involved a radical change in direction. This is not the first time evolution has turned a corner.
Look at your hand, your body, and shift your focus a bit. Can you see your body from the inside looking out? Can you see the body you wear as a community of individuals? It is you know, the majority of cells in your body could live out their natural lifespan in fine form without the shape and structure you've come to know as you, given of course an environment suited to their level of life. The last time evolution found a corner to compare to ours it was in the apogee of the single celled creatures, to improve life the direction found involved grouping ever more specialized cells into interdependent patterns, structures, each surviving pattern a new form of life climbing away from the primordial soup culminating with the human, who by intent or accident are host and home to the ability to imagine and create patterns not learned from the physical reality represented by the sense stream of our existence.
Hold that image if you can, the awesome depth and trajectory of the eons long climb from our single celled origins till today, and shift your focus to the modern world, that tiny fraction of time no more than three or four thousand years deep whose surface is the world of now. Look down into that shallow film as does evolution, contemplate what there is to be seen.
What is to be noticed are the humans of course, just finding the full power of their new abilities, population pressure from the success of their lives pushing them out from their ancestral homelands into the harsher regions of higher latitudes, across the oceans, building, always building on the dreams they share between themselves. What is to be noticed is how the humans are perpetually grouping themselves into ever larger and more intricate arrangements to attempt ever larger and more complex dreams, troops to tribes to cities to states to nations until near the surface of now there are arrangements of humans beginning to seriously mimic some of the simpler of the multi-celled creatures in number of cells and complexity of functions. And there, right at the surface, that flash of strange light, what is... Freeze. Stop right here and see what you are looking at.
Your life, the days you have known, are at the absolute vertex, the tangent point of evolutions second major corner on planet Earth. That flash of light was no metaphor, it is quite literal real, it came from the technologies developed in the last century. Those technologies are the product of mankind's intelligence coupled with his curiosity, and driven by his dreams. They are brand new, no part of any other line or lineage of evolution, from evolution's point of view the first truly new thing in a very, very long time. The last time evolution witnessed something similar was the first time a group of single celled creatures crowded in a limited volume responded to the chemicals released by their fellows, made of those chemicals messengers rather than pollutants in order to adjust their metabolism and survive where those who did not adjust died.
It is my belief, my assertion, the thesis of this series of essays, that the technologies of communication stand in the same place now as did those first primitive chemical messengers then, from evolution's very functionally oriented point of view again enabling the simpler forms of life to become components in the evolution of more complex forms of life. This series of essays is therefore dedicated to examining the functional groupings of mankind, the component units whose summation is commonly called the societies of mankind from evolution's perspective: extremely primitive multi-celled creatures just beginning their climb into an extremely uncertain future rather than considering the multitude of mankind's collective endeavors from the perspective more usually taken, that they are nothing more than arrangements of convenience within the scope of mankind's imaginings communicated.
It is my assertion to you such a perspective will enable a much, much better understanding of the macroscopic behavior of mankind, perhaps even enough of an enlargement in understanding for mankind to realize that with evolution's corner solidly behind us our fate is bound to the fate of the emerging new life-forms of the collective entities , that to serve the cause of our own survival as individuals me must bring our abilities to focus in the cause of supporting the survival of these embryonic creatures.
I am not talking smoke and mirrors, magic and mystique, I am not talking the supernatural in service of the superstitious, I am talking very real and understandable relationships perceivable to anyone and everyone who cares to look at the world we all share with the intent of understanding why that world behaves as it does.
Chapter Two: "We"
...to be continued...
for convenience all essays in this series are collected on the page titled "The Third Reality of Man"
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