Most people, when young, are conditioned to accept the answers given by their culture. There is thus cognitive consonance and peace of mind. The cultural ‘story’ is based on myth and helps to unite the in-group (us) and to distinguish it from the out-group (them). In happy times the ruling hegemonic elite wields elegant power. The seemingly unstoppable growth in the human population suggests that there must be something ‘right’ about this. Great.
BUT, with the old system there is a tendency towards selfish parochialism and xenophobia. Billions of people are ground down by poverty at the expense of others. So the present system is not right for everybody; and neither is it right for the environment and the planet. Not so great.
Most of the present computer age people (less than 60 years) are still tuned into ‘traditional’ myths that have their roots in the history of our species – hunters and gatherers with stone axes became farmers and then there were city states, civilizations and now globalization with ipads. Great.
BUT, it becomes obvious that traditional ways of doing things are no longer relevant or sustainable. Socially there are the problems of the gap between rich and poor widening, and of competing belief systems spawning violent zealots. Environmentally there is loss of biodiversity, overexploitation of material and energy resources, and pollution. Not so great.
SO – how are we here?
The Big History Project outlines the modern ‘Bright’, scientific, evidence-based story which begins 13.7 billion years ago with the big bang. Something (matter and energy) came from nothing. Simple chemistry became more complex and the cosmos evolved. Then our solar system and home planet came into being. Then came life which evolved into modern human beings who can be partly conscious of their consciousness and thus quickly create new cultures.
These changes are all driven by the creation of variety and by natural selection awarding the survival of the fittest prizes at gene, organism and group level. Novel genes and memes evolve and complexity increases.
Looking forward, our sun will die in about 7 billion years. We may have destroyed ourselves by that time but, if not, we will be very different from how we are today. Evolution whether cosmic, biological or cultural, cannot stop – change is part of the fabric of the universe.
SO – why are we here?
How is that question to be answered? We could seek evidence of ‘purpose’ and ‘intention’? If so, where is it located? Does it precede the Big Bang? Did it begin with the Big Bang or did it appear during or after the cosmic, biological or cultural evolution phases?
When we look backwards it is tempting to impute a plan – a pre-ordinate strategy with blueprint – a design. Logically and linguistically this calls for a planner; and the inbuilt human tendency is to use the analogy of planner as person (eg father figure God as designer). But there can be other analogies where everything goes ‘according to plan’– but what plan, whose plan? for example (a) plate tectonics and continental drift, (b) the weather and the seasons, and (c) human embryological development.
As human beings we are not privy to the vast majority of what goes on in the cosmos, in other living things, in our own bodies, nor even in our own mindbrain which has both conscious and unconscious parts. But there is an enormous amount of highly detailed and complex stuff going according to unplanned plans.
In the hunting and gathering days there was limited division of labour. But as we progressed through farming to city states and civilizations various forms of expertise evolved whereby competent individuals came to know more and more about less and less. This proved enormously useful in creating new cultural items but there was a tendency to lose sight of the big picture.
In the last 50 years or so there have been moves towards big picture holistic systems thinking. This involves multidisciplinary approaches referred to as consilience and it may be thought of as a new paradigm. Many subjectively aware mindbrains are getting to grips with the mindbrain using a wide range of techniques – especially those of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.
So there is now a new story with which to culturally condition the mindbrains of our children. Big History. No myth, no magic. Reduced parochiality and xenophobia – we are all passengers on spaceship earth. We can root ourselves in evidence based facts which are mind blowing and wonder-full.
Let the consilient poets speak about why we are here:
Sitting quietly doing nothing
Spring comes
and the grass grows by itself
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin:
yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.
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