Below is the working draft-intro of a nonfiction book I'd like to complete (while another part of me says it is a waste of time, except maybe for therapeutic purposes). This intro accumulates and accounts insights I've had in essays on this blog. A theme merged, coalescing into the project you can see below.
This is such a dismal time to write about ethics. A headline in The Guardian today said that 14,000 children could starve in the next few days, unless Israel lifts its total blockade on Gaza. What evil from Netanyahu. And from the USA, my country, which is supplying weapons for the genocide taking place before the world's collective eyes.
What horror. It's hardly imaginable that on 11/4/24 I was hopefully that Kamala Harris would win the US Presidency and advance human rights globally. Instead fascists won the presidency and also both houses of Congress, teaming up with the already radical right Supreme Court. 11/5 was one of the worst days in human history.
And yet I write about ethics. About hope. What could be. Even, though, as I say below, I don't believe we will get there. But, in saying that, I do not give up. I persevere. For one thing, there are worse fates than death, at least for me, and others whose conscience cries out about how dark and evil the world is becoming. Everything gained on human rights could be lost and more.
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Draft Intro for the nonfiction book "Better Angels" [temp title][a work in progress]
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Introduction for Better Angels
Good and Light
In the future, there could be trillions of humans, far
happier, healthier and more aware than we are today, spread throughout the
galaxy. The prospect is not all that
inconceivable, and it rests on two simple premises. First, that technology will be able to
support it. Second, that governments
will be able to successfully implement more sophisticated ethical systems.
In terms of the first premise, concerning technology, the
advances continue to astound. Given the
accelerating reach of tech, the
bottleneck seems to be the second premise.
The question, then, is this: does
‘human nature’ keep us from ethical progress?
Is it possible, at all, for a government to implement an advanced
ethical system, the sort that could optimize human flourishing?
Try to imagine: What if instead of greed or power
lust, the primary focus of society became something truly good, an optimized harmony
of human and planetary health?
Is it feasible?
In this book, I answer with an empathic, logic-based
affirmative. Even so, what I say will sound
ironic and even absurd. Why? Ever since the beginning of civilization, we
have been trained to think otherwise. In
one sense, the answer is simple. And
yet the solution is impossible, given the ongoing cultural trap that does its
best to keep us broken. The path forward
is easy and yet irremediable. We have
the ability to optimize our flourishing, to maximize our human and ecosystemic
health, but most likely we won’t.
The greatest irony is that, as I write this ode to our grand,
beautiful potential (and, as well, to our considerable moral victories so far)
we tilt on the precipice of final failure.
Very soon, the experiment of civilization, thousands of years old, quite
likely will self-destruct from the deployment of weapons too powerful to be
wielded responsibly by ethical infants:
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We
know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know
about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon
on the Mount. (Omar Bradley)
The Importance
Given such doom-saying, one might ask, why bother with
a project of Good and Light?
First, there is some chance that we will avoid a large-scale
war. If not, perhaps some decent and sturdy
remnant of society will survive. Second,
the project I propose is generic. It
applies not only to our universe, but to any life-giving universe with the same
physical laws, materials and origin. The
broad concept of the Good I develop can be employed by AI, or by sentient
xenolife, as well as by wise humans, to approach a world that is more like
heaven. I write to a grand cosmogonic
template, one that validates and mobilizes the effect that a collective character
can have on an entire galaxy or even a universe.
One way to envision an advantageous
path would be to run algorithmic strategies, both governmental and cultural, on
simulated worlds. As computers become
more powerful, in conjunction with machine learning, our research into how to make
practical progress toward a Good world becomes more realistic and
efficacious.
A third reason to study the Good, even while our society deteriorates, is that it can be personally fulfilling and beneficial. There is quintessential meaning in an intentful
act, one which sends a virtuous message to the universe. Such an act soars, heartful and heavenly, above
the barbaric machiavellianism that oversees humanity today. When embraced from a defiant place, amid a
dominance of despair and loneliness, surrounded by a sea of conformity, such an
embrace of the Good is even more lovely.
At certain junctures in our lives, we are each of us called
to introspect. If we heed that call, we may
ask with a searing honesty, “Have I lived a meaningful life? Have I investigated, even, what a good life
could be?”
After asking such a question, it is quite easy to
retreat, to slam the door shut on the introspective part of the soul, a part
that tends to be vulnerable. Daring is
no guarantee against falling back into condoned, conformist fabrications of expression. Liberation, like quitting cigarettes or leaving an abusive spouse, can be a process.
And yet, it is possible to persist. To be courageous and candid. Dare we consider the very crux of our soul, the
ladder of our choices, right and wrong, which lead us up or carry us downward?
A serious investigation of the the Good probes the moral worth of a life: ‘Have I climbed, at least a little,
toward the Good and its forms of beauty and wonder, of health and majesty?’
A fourth reason to focus on the Good, despite the
overweening presence of Evil in our world today, is that the alternative is a nightmarish
future. Just as we can wield AI to
advance human flourishing, we can mobilize it for enslavement and surveillance. The higher the tech level of a society, the
more that society can not only project its beliefs onto the citizenry, but shape
the very nature of the physical environment.
A society where every citizen is fitted with a brain implants, monitored
by ubiquitous AI, and policed by mindless robots is increasing possible. Under the rulership of narcissistic,
psychopathic leaders who compulsively seek more control to feed their bottomless, broken egos, such a future, once it becomes technologically viable, is inevitable.
What is the Good?
At the core of the Good, as I discuss below, are three
elements: honesty, mutuality and
equality. Social democracy, situated
in dignity, compassion, and human rights, provides a template for mutually
beneficial relationships. This contrasts
with the ‘limited pie,’ zero-sum worldview of conquerors and dividers who see
only ‘winners and losers.’
Another aspect of my answer concerning Good or Light, is that
ethics is a technology, one that can have higher and lower forms. The level is determined, not by dogmatic
tradition, but instead by empirically verifiable standards. As ethics advances in tech level, philosophical
wisdom evolves to mesh with the discoveries of science.
In an advanced society, ethics harmonizes with psychology
and medicine. It assimilates knowledge
gained through the rigors of experimentation, and mobilizes it via the praxis of
engineering.
When ethics and technology merge and ascend, they
approach the possibility of a wondrous state, a trek toward heaven: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.” (Kurtzweil)
A Project of Light
A Project of Light is a quest to lay a plausible path
toward a Good world. Even more, it is an
attempt to bring about such a world. A
Project of Light can be contrasted with the Manhattan Project, which lay a tangible
route for Evil’s ultimate triumph. The
invention of nuclear weapons threatens the end of civilizaion itself.
Sadly, the success of the Manhattan Project was celebrated
darkly in the recent movie Oppenheimer, including a claim that it was
humanity’s greatest achievement. Even
such slanted praise is egregiously wrongheaded.
The only way to defeat Evil is Good.
A Project of Light--the nurturance of an embedded, resistant culture of
wise, mature, healthy citizens--would be, if accomplished, by far humanity’s
greatest invention. It would, by its
nature, eliminate the scourge of war, and make so-called ‘weapons of
deterrence,’ which are signposts on the road to doom, obsolete.
“Ah, if only people were wise and meant well, the world
would be a paradise, while now it is usually hell.” --inscription on a plaque, Domus Spinozana,
The Hague
As noted above, a Project of Light marshals science in
all its manifestations, such as physics and chemistry, the physical branches, as
well as the mental branches, including psychology and sociology. It incorporates living science, the realms of
biology and medicine, and environmental sciences, like zoology and ecology. It does so not to create some ultimate weapon
or means of totalitarian mind control, but rather to bring about a Good society
and maintain it.
A Pivotal Point
As general technology becomes more powerful, more able to alter the
physical world and the mind mind, a fork emerges before us. We can
choose a path of compassion, which is democractic. Or we can choose a path of oppression, which
is totalitarian. As it stands, right
now, in 2025, the world is tilting toward the latter, epitomized by the
deterioration of the American republic into a dictatorship under a man who has
been diagnosed by many professionals as a narcissist psychopath. The voices of dozens of experts combine to warn the world (The
Dangerous Case of Donald Trump).
The Role of Religion
What is happiness?
What is health? What is the best
way to determine the right thing to do? Such
questions must be front an center in an approach to the Good. In answering such questions, philosophy and ethics accord with reason,
especially the need to avoid fallacious and specious rhetoric.
Moreover, the discipline of ethics is secular and unprejudiced. That said, any religious or traditional
practice can align itself with the Good, as long as it sheds dogma that
conflicts with the core standards discussed below, the three elements of what I
call home: honesty, mutuality and
equality.
All today’s major religions could be a lens to see and
approach the Good, but not the versions hardened by traditional dogma; for
instance, those calling LGBTQ people sinful or claiming women must obey men.
As the Dali Lama proposes in Beyond Relgion, the
Good transcends any one practice. And
yet it is spiritual in its respect for the Creation. To revel in divine awe is to
enrich the human experience. What
philosophers call an entelechy, that is, the highest state of flourishing, is open to an artistry which savors the beauteous and miraculous world. Enlightenment finds reverence that is not
simply aesthetic, but morally keen.
Our Relationship with emotion (and psychology)
Morality and ethics, as I use the terms, are fairly interchangeable (the former could be said to lean toward a spiritual aspect). They require philosophical critical thinking and acknowledgement of the standard of reason. However, reason is not what many people think it is. The true nature of the reasoning process is often wrongly misunderstood to require the elimination of passion and emotion. Nothing could be more wrong.
A respect for the divine is not to disparage our daily,
grounded experience. The sensuous and the
earthly are aspects of the awe-inspiring wonder that is the universe:
To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a
wildflower. (Blake)
Above, I emphasize the importance of science in an
approach toward the Good. But just as
important are the Humanties:
The human race is filled with passion. And medicine,
law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain
life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love,
these are what we stay alive for.-- Dead Poets Society
A historical bias against emotion and women
Western culture, throughout its tenure, has had a broken
relationship with emotion and, as well, women, who have been associated with emotion. In contrast, men have been called the rational half of the species, going back thousands of years. Emotion and women have often been associated with lower, ‘earthly’ sinful states, in opposition to higher realms of intellectual thought.
However, as we are learning from both
neuroscience and philosophy, there is no simple bifurcation between logic and emotion. Martha Nussbaum writes that emotion can be an
“upheaval” of thought, and that in this capacity it is not necessarily an enemy of
reason.
Emotion can be blind, yes, but so can the detached
mode of observation we refer to as objectivity. Sometimes we should ‘listen to the heart,’ and certainly not suppress
it. A classic example is the Cartesian scientists who, theorizing that dogs were just machines, mere clockwork, as Descarte argued, vivisected the dogs for research, which is to say, they cut the dogs up while they were still alive. Showing more compassion than the humans who repressed theirs, the dogs sometimes licked the hands of their objective-mode tormentors.
Concurrence with common sense leads to a simple yet often
ignored truth: to advance our understanding
and to live well is to listen to and work with emotions and passions. This fully applies to the Good, for to seek
the Good is a moral enterprise; and the best moral arguments and apprehensions
draw from the interconnectivity of the 100 trillion connections of the tens of billions
of neurons in the brain, that vast inner galaxy nestled in our skulls where reason and emotion
interplay and merge.
Ethical infants psychologically immature
Sadly, because we are ethical infants, we have little
knowledge of how to deal with, immerse in, or generally listen to our emotions,
despite their centrality to moral reasoning and a meaningful life. A great deal of our trouble is due to millenniums
of patriarchy, how a closed war-centered culture throttles our ability to perceive and
express emotion. This is particularly
true of males, who often can’t even identify what they are feeling. However, the ancient gender roles hamper females
as well, who are expected to be polite, yielding, kind and to suppress anger and outrage.
Importantly, such a stunted emotional status, especially
for males, is not fated. There is even a
name for the general male condition now:
normative male alexithymia. It is
significant that psychology, an accepted field that didn’t exist till recent
history, has taken this step. Admittance
and identification are critical for resolution.
Because it is at the crux of everything I argue, I want
to emphsize: It is not fated that
males will be emotionally broken.
If this is hard for you to accept, ask why. A partial answer is that society has never reached
emotional competence in the general population, especially the leadership, Never.
Macho has always been an issue. Macho
leads to war, and every time there is a war--and there have been countless wars
since the start of civilization-- it leaves a generational scar of ugliness and
darkness, a terrible wound, which adds to our shared cultural trauma.
Can civilization overcome the psychic wounds
that blight the very psyche of humanity, drilled into us for millennia?
The answer is yes.
We have both the brain and cultural plasticity to forge ahead. Humans are resilient and malleable. Culture adapts. It my lifetime alone, the dominant culture has
taken radically different forms, resulting in a range of expressions. Neuroplasticity allows freedom Although not everyone can or will find a path, cultural plasticity
remains, lurking in more open minds, which often means younger people, less indoctrinated and less neurally shut down.
Peace Horizon
We have the ability.
And yet we are up against a powerful yet primitive programming
loop: 10,000 years of a self-replicating
war-focus that won’t let go.
Generation after generation, starting at infancy, minds are conditioned
to fall into a mental rut, wasting near infinite potential. We could spread happily and healthily throught the galaxy, spreading Good. Instead we will like self-destruct in Evil.
Many individuals and subcultures break out of the Matrix-worthy social programming. If humanity could find a way
to advance in its majority, we would eventually reach a lovely rubicon, what I
call a peace horizon. The peace horizon
represents a potential future when we start to steadily approach the
Good, through wise adminstration and normalization of mental health and ethical education. Beyond the peace horizon, the threat of war drops radically and approaches zero.
Where are we now on our journey? At best, we are stuck in a perilous back and
forth between Good and Evil, between democracy and dictatorship. A more accurate assement might be that we are
sliding toward the Darkness of a totalitarian norm, on swift approach to World
Word Three and the launch of tens of thousands of nuclear missiles.
Some humans may survive a nuclear war, but rebuilding civilization will
take another ten thousand years, stuck in the same pattern of warlords,
ignorance and oppression. Caught in all
this is the planet itself, Earth, every single ecosystem, plant and creature, land-based
and marine, victimized by our inability to find the Good and instead to bow down to psychopathic godkings who use control strategies of force and fear.
This is how absurd Evil is. And yet we bow.
Evil
We humans have a choice.
Light or Dark. We can hold up the
torch of truth and rectitude. Or we can
bury our heads in the clingy muck of conformity and turpitude. If this sounds like a true choice to you,
which is something that many leaders, theorists and academicians outrightly deny--for
their worldview is steeped in cynicism and realpolitik--then you, too, like me,
see the possibility that humanity can end war and work toward the Good--or we can stay silent and succumb to Evil.
What is the essence of Evil? As mentioned, it is represented by hitlerism or stalinism, the totalitarian reach for ultimate control. It is the Big Brother version of the
obsessive, calculative, violent male in a domestic abuse situation who seeks to micro-manage every aspect of the rest of the family, keeping them all in continuous fear.
Both Hitler and Stalin committed genocide, the
torture and murder of many millions of
people. In the USA today, we see a stubborn
ignorance that refuses to raise its head above conformity to the cultish lies
of its new incipient dictator, Donald Trump.
Right now, the USA, along with Israel, is participating in a genocide in
Gaza. Pictures of starving children fill
the newspapers of the world--except in the United States and Israel.
These are the times in which we live, the normalization
and gaslighting of genocide. Under such conditions, I write in anguish about what we could be if we woke up.
Dictators are often called ‘strongmen,’ but they are not
strong in any virtuous sense. A better symbol
for them would be a parasite. Totalitarian
dictators leech the health of a previously vibrant nation to batten their
bottomless insecurity and incessant need for material aggrandizement.
The Choice Is Coming
Only Good can defeat Evil. These are the two options, and technology is fast approaching a point of no return. Oppression will be
the permanent norm, if we create robot police and military, backed by total
surveillance systems--systems which can include not just our own phones, cars
and homes but, as well, in the near future, chips implanted in our body, even in our
brain. A total lack of privacy, an Orwellian future, could become the norm.
In contemporary China, citizens are already assigned a
loyalty score, based on a massive surveillance system, managed by AI. Facial recognition software is replete.
The other option, opposite oppression, is compassion. Compassion can be our lovely future, if we advance a
Project of Light to free citizens of ignorance, travail and wound. Breakthroughs in robotics and AI can bring
us, not soulless enforcers, but instead angelic assistants and guides.
Our Fixation with Darkness
The entertainment industry profits
greedily from our obsession with monsters and evil. We fixate on demons, vampires and werewolves, chasing a thrill ride of fear. When will be ready to consider what an angel
would be like? How would such an ethical being act, if it lived among us? What would it look like?
There is no middle ground between the two
competing government forms, democracy and totalitarianism. As robotics advances, we will have the power
to give breath to angels. Or to render incarnate our nightmares. If we choose our better angels, we will have
the power to give breath to aspects of heaven, and to maintain a society of
healthy, flourishing persons. A Good society would be far more resistant to ignorance than ignorance of the last 10,000 years as been to truth.
The mind can people planets of its own and give breath
to forms which can outlive all flesh. (Byron, The Dream)
Getting Home
At the core of the Good are three standards: honesty, equality and mutuality. Equality has been established by science
(say, the Human Genome Project), by jurisprudence (equal justice under law) and
by common sense, such as the noble edict of the Golden Rule: ‘do to others as you would have them do to
you.’ It inextricably links with notions
of fairness and justice.
Mutuality is mutually beneficial relationships. Shocking as it may seem, given our turbulent,
backbiting, brutal, weaponful world, there are no logical or psychological
barriers which prevent humans from getting along. Our flexibility affords the option of social
symbiosis. Harmony can undergird our
surroundings--harmony with ecosystems, with animals, and even our own intransigent inner selves.
The third standard of the Good is a soul-searching honesty. It may seem absurd to have to point out that
honesty exists. Or that it is possible for humans to be honest. And yet, it is necessay. As I said above, the answer is simple, but the
solution is impossible. Given the current status of our collective
consciousness, we remain stuck in a
norm where bellicose men fight and bully their way to the top. Once a macho male takes the throne, he inflicts loyalty-tests that create an emperor-without-clothes cult of core
followers.
If I were in a totalitarian society where the options were worship of the godking or jail, I would probably do all I could to put on the appearances of worship--and such conformity would have terrible effects on my soul. The point is, the societies we build around us, or to which we acquiesce, have vast consequences for the quality of life, thought, emotion and spirit.
The Ignorance Vortex
War and bullyism rely on an trap. I call this
trap--this persistent, resistant dysfunctional culture--an ignorance
vortex. Given our ongoing ignorance vortex, which has dogged us from the
beginning, we are still at a place where it is far easier to make a pact
with the metaphorical devil than to make a pact with honesty.
Imagine if a sage stepped out into the street and proclaimed that many versions of the great
religions--Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism--are useful social
constructions for narcissistic leaders, easily expropriated by them to build a fanatic following. Such a sage, once outside the ivory tower would be pilloried for their honesty.
In many places and for most all of known history, it is necessary to lie to get by or even survive. Ignorance is capital for powerful men. They need Big Lies to maintain their authoritarianism:
The great masses of the people… will more easily fall
victim to a big lie than to a small one. (Hitler, Mein Kampf)
I speak truth not as much as I would, but as much as I
dare. (Montaigne)
Ethics as Imperative
I discuss the ignorance vortex in the following chapter. In the process, I debunk the bromide that human nature irrevocably damns us. We have some exploitable propensities,
similar to what Skinner referred to as “behavioral drift." And yet a mature
culture, one that ennobles us instead of crippling us, overrides our vulnerability to hate and fear.
If humanity is to flourish, we must confront what we have
long known, paid lip-service to, and yet mostly swept under the rug: a
legitimate framework of right-and-wrong is the centerpiece of a dynamic,
adaptive social reality. We emblazon
virtuous character in the parables of our children’s books. We praise morality in our religions. And yet, in practice, we have a dark side, one
we won’t or can’t find the courage to face. We
suffer collective repressions and confirmation biases, as have all the previous generations
before us. We suffer deformed cognitive filters. Social norms have been beaten into our brains by cruel, callous, calculative circumstance.
Ten Thousand Years of Rank Hypocrisy
Not long ago, the United States empire called itself a
“City on the Hill,” a reference to words in the Gospel. And yet, at the same time, the empire worked
to overthrow democratically elected leaders in ‘developing’ countries and
replace them with brutal dictators.
William Blum writes in Killing Hope:
What then has been the thread common to the diverse
targets of American intervention which has brought down upon them the wrath,
and often the firepower, of the world's most powerful nation? In virtually
every case involving the Third World … it has been, in one form or another, a
policy of "self determination": the desire, born of perceived need
and principle, to pursue a path of development independent of US foreign policy
objectives.
It is basically automatic, an ingrained mental reflex, that macho leaders ignore ethics, while claiming to be ethical. This is as true of ancient Rome as it is of the US Empire today. The greatest, wisest and yet simple statements, from multiple sacred texts, are simply ignored or co-opted by the wicked. Statements such as:
Woe to them who call evil good and good evil.
Or
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
A Return to Hope
The social tropes that train our minds, starting at
the docile age of infancy and proceeding from there, are well-entrenched. Even so, they are vulnerable. Conformity is eager to come apart. Recently there have been major victories for
ethics.
In the last few hundred years. humanity
has validated and even actualized the concept of human rights--a stunning
triumph. In an heroic surge, late
20th and early 21st century America rode
a mighty wave to strengthen women’s rights, gay marriage and Earth-awareness.
This should be happy news. We have successfully
challenged the ignorance vortex. Compassion
over oppression. It is not merely speculative that we can walk toward the Good. We have taken mighty steps already. As I discuss in the next chapter, the achievement
of Universal Suffrage in 1920 remains a paragon of progress. It could be called the most critical marker
in the history of civilization to this date.
If this claim seems surprising or dubious, perhaps it is because we are well-programmed creatures. Before theturn of the 20th century, building better and
fairer conditions for women, including the right to vote, was dismissed as
impossible, if the topic was even allowed to be broached.
In
the oldest written myth, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero Gilgamesh defeats
Tiamat, a female dragon who archeologists believe represents a prehistoric
Goddess. The work is symbolic of how
violent masculinity has dominated society and religion, exemplified
in the extreme monotheistic view that took root in the Judeo-Christrian tradition. This is the view that there is one God, who is 'the Father,' and there is no female god at all.
The Pope, head of
the Catholic Church, is considered one of the most powerful persons in the
world today. And yet he--amd it is always a "he"--heads
an organization that to this day forbids women to lead.
Getting Home
Social conditions are changing so fast that I
thought about addressing my words, not to human beings, but instead to the
AI which might fairly soon steer the course of civilization. If such AI is empowered, intentionally or
recklessly, it will have to take a path:
whether to oppress and contain humanity, keeping us scared and
subservient, or whether to help us mature toward what I like to call our home: honesty, mutuality, and equality.
Today, it is accepted, as Machiavelli said, that the best
and easiest way to control people is fear. However, this is true only in certain kinds of cultures--like the ones we’ve always had--where
people are raised in fear to obey in fear.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. (FDR)
An AI point of view
If AI gained control of our fate, it might take the easy path, and control us with force and threat.
But if AI truly wanted to serve a better humanity, it might attempt to conceive a way to get beyond fear as the primary means of social cohesion.
How would an AI proceed? AI might 'see' humans as a kind of quantum computer. Computers are programmable. In light of the vast neuroplasticity of the brain, our current tendencies in certain conditions--our 'human nature'--does not limit us. It simply represents a hardware or 'mindware' that has been activated in every generation, since the genesis of war, starting with the Agricultural Revolution
Immune to our own human bias, the AI might conclue that we are victims of what is, in effect, a computer virus. The virus shackles the vast neuroplasticity of the human brain, preventing it from attaining even a sliver of its true potential.
Furthermore, AI might think (compute, analogize, portray) that is is illogical to activate billions of powerful quantum computers--human brains--and infect them all with a virus which keeps them from running well in terms of their own efficiency and potential.
Following the above line, an empowered AI might work to remove the virus--the ingrained millenial social conditioning of war, hate and fear--so that human beings can get to logical state, one that allows flourishing, love and happiness, that is, our optimal place, our home.
Ten Thousand Years versus Millions of Years
A Project of Light is a grand journey. We have already taken a few fumbling yet
lovely steps. Women’s right to vote. Civil Rights.
Gay marriage. These are some awesome examples. We don’t seem to realize it,
but we already more ethical than our ancestors, due to major advances in ethics tech.
Despite the power of the ignorance vortex, including vicious blowback, positive change has eked an arc through history. Cultural plasticity rides neuroplasticity. The unthinkable becomes
thinkable. The impossible becomes possible. What could never be occurs.
The last ten thousand years represent a minute
fraction of human existence, including what could be millions of years of happy human future ... if only ...
And yet we remain hostage to the acculturative trap of this ten thousand year period. Hostage to the effects of the Agricultural Revolution, its stores of food surrounded by large masses people and, as a result, the creation of war and slaves, and the rise of despotic god-kings, who built theocratic hierarchies and bureaucracies steeped in violence and ignorance.
Back then, we did not have the level of ethics required to handle the new food technology, that is, farming. Will we today advance our ethics tech to handle our world-threatening level of weapons technology?
Our ethics tech has increased. Slowly, yes. Haltingly. The global collective consciousness has advanced. But this is a crucial moment in the history of humanity, and we must ask: What if our ethics tech was far higher?
It is hard for us--steeped in the gyres of ignorance--to imagine a society where emotional and ethical competence were the norm? It is hard for us to imagine a home beyond the peace horizon. A place where advances in science, philosophy
and humanistic thought coalesce into a beautiful praxis, and actualization of flourishing, a compassion-affirming symbiosis.
You and I have no idea what such a wonderful world would be like. We were born under far different conditions. Many of us think it is absurd to even try to imagine a better world. Even our chosen pasttimes, our entertainments and recreations, are Game-of-Throne based.
And yet, there is a whole different way of being available to us. And--importantly--we don’t have to have a firm grasp of it, not to take some bold, nasacent steps toward the Good.
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5/23/ 25 more heavy edits
5/21/25 ... heavy edits (gods, I wish I was smarter and more capable, it would be so much easier and better)
5/20/25 ... heavy eds after posting, same day
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[I don't know if I will ever write the full book. For one thing, I have limited mental power. Second, I am full of anguish that can deflect creative my drive into addiction and depression. Third, the USA may become totalitarian and shut down blogs like mine (it would be shut down in China, for sure, or North Korea). Fourth, World War III may happen, a nuclear annihilation of human history.
I ought to save my poems and this draft, but so far, I haven't. I wake up just wanting to create, not archive. As it stands, I myself am not interested in getting a lot of attention. It would be ... just draining and distracting. Also, I am not sure my work has much worth, in general.
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