Stardust gone mental

I have been letting the unconscious churn dictate my knowledge, feelings, moods and actions. Arguably there is no option. Motivation and intention come from the unconscious churn which, amongst other things, creates the illusion of an I, ego, self or me that operates in a socio-cultural environment the details of which are determined by nature, nurture and chance.

So the ‘I’ is part of an ongoing process and this implies before and after.

The before includes all my cultural yesterdays, my nine months in the womb, and the many ancestral generations whose genotypes and phenotypes are in my inherited line. And the line keeps going back eg hominid, primate, mammal, reptile, amphibian, fish, a long range of many celled invertebrates, and a plethora of single celled microorganisms. But that is the story of only living things on planet earth. There is much more before. Think solar system, galaxy, cosmos and the big bang.

It might be said that there have been many afters since the big bang but this is known only in retrospect and by only a few modern scientists. Arguably our foremost intellectuals are at last able to be conscious of consciousness. 2,500 years ago Eastern mystics had sussed that the reality that can be described is mind made and is not the real reality. European intellectuals caused the renaissance, the reformation and the enlightenment which got rid of the earlier myths and magic and paved the way for evidence based thinking.

Most evolution happens because of natural selection which makes no forward plans. The reproductive process creates varieties and some generate more offspring than others - ie there is survival of the fittest.

Some evolution happens because of selection by farmers. Think of dogs and pigeons, potatoes and wheat. There is survival of the closest to some ideal – eg small or enormous dogs with gentle or violent temperaments. The farmer selects which individuals will mate with each other.

Farmers experimented successfully with selection under domestication but their understanding of what was going on was limited. The process is much better understood these day thanks to work in genetics, epigenetics, and neuroscience, and in the implications of the evolutionary perspective when it is focussed on the selection of genes, individuals, groups, cultures, and on the impact of people on the planet.

Before the big bang – nobody knows. Immediately after the big bang there was hydrogen and helium which gradually transformed into the other elements in the Periodic Table and these formed stars and planets.

When planet earth first appeared it was lifeless. But the chemistry evolved into biochemistry and then into single celled organisms. These got together to form many celled organisms with tissues and organs that included nervous systems and brains.

The modern human brain can rise above myth and magic and be conscious of being conscious. There are many possible futures. We can therefore get comfortable with our unconscious churn. We are stardust gone mental.