Response to Callum, Question 3

R. McQueen - Friday, 4 July 2003

Callum, Question 3: "What need to be priorities in New Society? What can be appealed to in the average person to point him or her towards enlightenment? How might one encourage people to take good paths?"

Dear Callum,
Thankyou for the above query.

Before framing a reply, I need to explain what I hold to be the role of Man-like Beings within our Reality. For, unless I hold them to have a role, my input would be based on arbitrary assumptions and hardly worth the telling.

Let me start by explaining how I view our Reality. Its primary aspect, the Universe, is quite well known. Scientists hold it to have been born into a chaotic state about sixteen billion years ago. The birth event was a cataclysmic one commonly referred to as the Big Bang. During the ten billion years of its childhood and youth, the Universe evolved through the stages necessary to advance it to the adulthood that we see in the heavens, today. The process took a long time because, first, ancient stars and then heavier elements had to be created from primeval chaos and the only tools available were a few Natural Laws governing astronomical numbers of random events in a rapidly expanding Universe.

After about a billion years, the system began to produce ancient stars. They included the 'Giant Stars' in which all the heavier elements are created. Because of their size, Giants burn out quickly - typically in ten million years, compared with ten billion years for the Sun. Like the Sun, they experience gravitational collapse under which their core-temperature rises high enough to excite nuclear fusion at a sufficient rate to arrest the collapse. Because of their size, the level of nuclear fusion required to maintain this stability burns up available nuclear fuel very quickly. When the fuel at one fusion level becomes insufficient to maintain stability, the Giant resumes collapse, heating up again, until its temperature excites the next level of nuclear fusion sufficiently to again arrest collapse. Each successive fusion event creates heavier atoms. When all controllable levels of fusion possible under Universal Law are used up, collapse re-commences, compressing unimaginably large amounts of mass and energy within the star's rapidly reducing volume, until a temperature is reached at which a Supernova blows the star to smithereens. A Supernova is the largest explosion known in the Universe. It is a nuclear event that creates still heavier atoms and distributes all of the star's contents out into space.

Over several billion years, Supernovae distributed enough heavy atoms to make Star-Planet systems like our own possible throughout much of the Universe. These atoms mixed with lighter ones already in space to form huge clouds of atoms, many of which were attracted to pre-existing Galaxies where some collapsed into clusters of main sequence stars like the Sun.

All stars form by accreting atoms under the effects of gravity. They heat up as they grow through increased intensity of atomic collision. Once a star becomes hot enough, it radiates heat. A star's size is determined when a balance is achieved between gravitational forces that attract atoms to it and heat radiation that repels them from it. Once a star has stabilised, its radiation drives lighter atoms further from it than it does heavier ones. This has the effect, important to Life, of increasing the relative concentration of heavier elements approximate to it. As the free atoms thus partially segregated, orbit around the star, they may be drawn by gravitational attraction, into planets like those that orbit the Sun. As is the case in our own Solar System, the planets nearer to the star contain a bigger percentage of heavier elements than do those further from it.

It is this extraordinary evolutionary sequence that has made Life-supporting Planets possible. They owe their existence to the nature of the small number of unalterable Universal Laws that govern the Universe. Cosmologists tell us that, had the parameters, which define those Laws, varied in the slightest degree from those they manifest, random events would not have been able to transform primordial chaos into the order that we see in the heavens and life-supporting planets would not have become possible. Could those Laws be a product of evolution - of random events operating through huge periods of time - as all else in the Universe seems to be? Because the Laws have been in operation since time began and because evolution is governed by them, that is difficult to imagine.

If evolution has not produced them, how then could they have come into existence? There have been several mathematical attempts to derive an explanation but they add nothing of value to our knowledge of the Universe. In my view, the most rational answer is that they are a product of design. Such an answer could only be correct if the Universe has a purpose. Towards the achievement of what purpose could something like our Universe have been designed? Bearing in mind that its Laws have led to the improbable emergence of at least one Design-Oriented Being, the most rational answer is that its purpose is procreation. If a Designer was to envision as a feasible means of achieving procreation, an Evolving Universe controlled by carefully designed laws, then something along the lines of our own Reality would have been the result.

If that is the reason for its existence, then Human History describes a short segment of a long and tortuous evolutionary path, the ultimate purpose of which is the creation of a Being in the image of its Designer. The intuition of our forebears would have proved close to correct. While Man could not, strictly speaking, be said to be 'A Being created in God's image', the theory paints him as an advanced evolutionary step towards the creation of such a Being. If Man survives, the future will show him to have been a rather primitive but rapidly evolving ancestor of a Being that finally arrived at possession of all the spiritual and intellectual qualities of its Designer. Given the nature and creative powers that Man already possesses, it is reasonable to intuit that his continued evolution in the desired direction will depend upon his commitment to the design and implementation of a broad spectrum of appropriately directed works.

In the overall scheme of things, whether or not Man survives to last the distance is probably unimportant. If I am right, on billions of planets in the Universe, Life will be at various stages of evolving along a similar path to that it is following here on Earth. Fortunately, we Humans have evolved a yearning to see our Race survive. I intuit that, if Modern Man is to see that yearning fulfilled, he will have to accept as the primary, long-term task of his civilisation, the creation of a wide variety of Heavens on this Earth and of the education of all of Mankind to their enjoyment. That is a formidable task, which manifests enough challenge to involve everybody.

Main Sequence Stars capable of spawning Life-supporting planets appear to have been possible in the Universe for around five billion years and probably exist in most of its Spiral Galaxies. However, the combination of conditions required to produce them is exacting and they are likely to be relatively rare. Given that it has taken over three billion years of uninterrupted Life Evolution to produce them here on Earth, Life-Forms as highly-evolved as Modern Humans almost certainly will be much rarer. Such considerations notwithstanding, the size and nature of the Universe is such that Life Forms, similar to or more advanced than Modern Man, could exist on several million Planets scattered throughout the Galaxies. Two or three of them probably exist in our own Milky Way. However, given its size (one hundred thousand light-years across), probability suggests that our nearest intellectual peers will live at least ten thousand light-years distant from us.

Science has yet to explain how Living Organisms are able to exist. The Laws that render all else in the Universe comprehensible do not explain how even the most primitive Bacteria are motivated to consume nourishment, to divide and multiply or to learn from collective experience. Even the way in which Life evolves is fundamentally different to the way in which the Universe does. Such observations make it reasonable to conjecture that Life is governed by Laws that are additional to those that govern the Physical Universe.

For the purposes of this discussion, let us assume that the Laws that govern Life exist in an additional Realm of Reality. Let us call the Realm that holds the Universe, 'the Temporal Realm' and that, which orders Life, 'the Eternal Realm'.

In so doing, we create a philosophical problem. How can something coexist in two Realms of Reality when each is defined by different dimensions and governed by a different Set of Laws? More specifically, how can an 'Element of Consciousness' that exists in the Eternal Realm enliven a Body that exists in the Temporal Realm?

Human perception leads us to suspect that they coexist in 'the Present Moment'. We all feel that we live in the Moment. Although it appears to us to move through Time, it cannot be defined in terms of physical dimensions. It appears to have no existence in the Universe other than as an aspect of Life. On that ground, it could be the aspect of our Reality in which elements of both the Temporal and Eternal Realms coexist to create a Living Organism. If that is true, for as long as the link between Consciousness and Body exists, the Living Organism it creates, would exist. If and when that link is broken, the Living Organism would cease to exist. A lifeless Body is all that remains of it in the Temporal Realm. We have yet to devise a scientific means of knowing whether the Being aspect of Humans is sufficiently evolved to continue its existence in the Eternal Realm, once this separation has taken place.

Living Organisms are subject to Evolution. On Earth, Life Evolution took about three billion years to create 'Animals'. An Animal is a Macro-Organism that has awareness of and the ability to respond to what is going on around it in the Physical World. To make such an amazing feat possible, Life Evolution had to accomplish many improbable things. In the Animal Body, it had to create Sense Organs' plus a 'Brain' able to process and remember the signals they pass to it. The Brain also had to evolve the ability to interact with its 'Consciousness' or 'Being' to produce the 'Animal Mind'. The Animal Mind is an interactive combination of Brain and Being that has the ability to create a real-time image of the Animal's world such that its Being is able to intellectually and emotionally experience what is going on there. To complete the Animal's mental evolution, means had to be created whereby an Emotion that was stimulated in the Animal's Conscious Being by an event in its World, would trigger an Instinctive Reaction in its Mind that would signal its Brain to order an appropriate reaction.

Thus, Body, Sense Organs, Brain, Mind, Being, Emotion and Instinct, all had to evolve, in concert, in order to make the Sentient Animal possible. This implies that, in Living Organisms, Life Evolution operates interactively in both the Temporal and Eternal Realms.

Members of the Animal Kingdom first emerged on Earth some six hundred million years ago. Since then, evolution has produced different combinations of sentient and other qualities to create a wide variety of Animal Classes and Species. Some proved so adaptable to changing environments that they survived for huge periods of time.

Jawed fish, a Class of Animal that gained dominance of the Seas some four hundred million years ago, still produce Species that dominate life in that domain. Dinosaurs became the dominant Class of Animal on Land, a hundred and fifty million years later and enjoyed an innings of one hundred and eighty million years. Around seventy million years ago, Mammals survived a series of cataclysmic environmental changes that wiped out the Dinosaurs and so were able to replace them. Mammals still enjoy land dominance, today.

About five million years ago, our Hominid Ancestors quietly emerged. All except our own Human Species have since been reduced to extinction. We Humans appear to have been around only for a couple of hundred thousand years. Although that amount of time is short in a conventional evolutionary sense, in has been long enough for us to evolve unique intellectual qualities. These have enabled us to comprehend Nature and thus to modify the Environments that we inhabit rather than having to adapt to them.

From the outset, the Human Species has possessed a form of Animal Brain that has permitted it to grasp abstract relationships - a quality that is unique to hominids. This ability fostered the evolution of types of social behaviour that, in their turn, stimulated a rapid evolution of the Human Mind. Eventually, this led to the development of language and the creation of unique tools, weapons and rules of behaviour, all of which combined to spur further evolution of the Human Mind and Being.

With increased time to ponder, the Human began to wonder what lay behind the World in which it lived. What did it mean? Why was it there? Why were Humans a part of it? How did it work?

About forty thousand years ago, attempts to provide believable answers to such questions bore fruit as myths and legends. These naturally differed from tribe to tribe. In many communities, they became the most real and important aspect of Tribal Life. Rituals and Taboos evolved to reinforce and sanctify them. Disrespect for them, either by tribal members or outsiders, was not tolerated and commonly resulted in ostracism, torture or death. Soon, differences between the sanctified beliefs of different tribal groups became a major cause of war. The desire to seize the precious objects, with which many tribes had come to venerate their sites of worship, provided an additional incentive to battle.

It is probable that Human Willpower emerged around this time. The instinctive reactions to feelings that are normal in animals, including Humans, often proved at odds with the yearnings inspired in Humans by their religious beliefs. By empowering them to place religious yearnings above animal instincts, the evolution of Will improved the chances of tribal peace and survival as individuals became more powerful and socially interdependent.

Along with the instinct-related emotions associated with mating, pain, fear, greed, jealousy and propensity to violence and coercion, new qualities began to evolve in the Human Mind and Being. These related to their need to control the growing power, which individuals and communities were gaining. They included: religious beliefs, yearnings, willpower, perception, thought processes, humour, judgement, compassion, a hunger for knowledge and a deepening capacity to love.

Not one of these animal or human qualities can be explained in terms of the Natural Laws by which the Universe is governed. . None is accessible, other than in the Present Moment. They relate either to thought processes, which are generated in one's Mind or to emotions, which are generated in one's Being. Accordingly, each can be considered to reside either partially or wholly in the Eternal Realm - although each Life that they illuminate, is lived in the Temporal Realm.

Although we are able to access them only in the Moment, they are greatly influenced by our memories of the past and our visions of the future. The individuals that we meet also impinge upon them, some inspiring images in our Minds, which inspire strong emotions in our Being. An endless stream of information, entertainment and opinion from the outside World also impinges upon us. All of these things influence the way in which we think, feel and live our lives.

The Human Mind, Being and Community have evolved to a level at which their combination enables us to comprehend the way in which our Universe operates. Exploitation of that comprehension has allowed those who lead our Society to dictate the way in which the environment that we occupy is shaped. Increasingly, we find ourselves in a world that is of human design. To varying degrees, as individuals, we accept the way in which it changes our lives. Whether we like it or not, as Individuals and as a Society, that makes all of us responsible for maintaining its Life-sustaining aspects.

This prompts us to re-ask the age-old question, 'Why are we here?' The presently favoured scientific response is that we are here by chance. However, the nature of the qualities that enable us to rob chance of its local evolutionary monopoly and replace it with its opposite - consciously informed, wilfully inspired and intellectually designed acts of creation - begs the question.

To this point, Modern Man has focussed his insatiable search for knowledge on the Temporal Realm. He has felt reluctant to recognise that our Reality must contain something additional in order to make Life rationally explainable. This arbitrary limitation in the focus of Modern Man's exploratory genius has resulted in a dangerous skewing of his mental and spiritual evolution. While it has empowered him to exert an evolutionary impact on his Planet that is orders of magnitude more swift and powerful than were the chance-dependent ones that he has replaced, it has left him guided in the exploitation of those powers, by his animal instincts. Those instincts evolved to serve an entirely different purpose and are proving dangerously unsuited to directing us in the way we choose to use our Earth-changing creative and destructive powers.

What is the alternative? We all recognise that Humans are evolving unique emotional drives called Yearnings. Most of us are aware that, if we place them ahead of our instincts, they lead us to a more deeply satisfying and lasting level of human achievement and fulfilment. They also cause us to see our survival and wellbeing as allied to that of Life as a whole, where our instincts lead us to see them in terms of gaining advantage over our fellows. It is probable that if Man were to learn to place his yearnings above his instincts, he would find himself directing his activities much more wisely than he does at the moment. On that ground, it is rational to speculate that yearnings evolve in Mankind because their guidance provides needed survival advantage to a Being that is evolving the power to destroy its World. If that is the case, yearnings are evolving for the same reason that instincts evolved in the days when survival advantage was defined in terms of what benefited an animal, its immediate family or group.

Presently, our institutions encourage us to down-play our Yearnings and to continue to allow the instinctive emotions associated with fear, greed, envy, jealousy, mating, lust and propensity to violence to drive our individual and societal behaviour. One effect of following this path is that we are damaging the Life-Supporting properties of our World - properties that took three billion years to evolve the ability to support macro-life-forms, such as animals and humans. The evidence suggests that, if we Humans do not change our approach to life in the near future, the damage that we are inflicting on our World could become irreparable and Life as we know it, insupportable.

How might we effectively deal with this dilemma?
As things stand, we have little chance of meaningfully influencing those who threaten our World. Rather, we must think in terms of discovering a better way of using the energy and resources that, presently we expend in meaningless opposition to them.

We have to believe that a more fulfilling and sustainable way of Life to that presently in favour is discoverable. We must have faith that, once it is discovered, Human Nature will draw people to its support and that it will effectively discourage them from living in a way that amplifies the suicidal elements implicit in Man's present life-style. That will not happen unless the institutions that legitimise those elements are modified to reflect the values implicit in the new way of life. The people, whose actions presently threaten Mankind, can be expected to continue to oppose such institutional changes because they reduce their freedom to perform detrimental acts. This means that effecting such changes will take courage, intelligence, diplomacy and patience.

We are taught that our present Western Institutions are the best possible. It is true that most represent an improvement over what has gone before. However, they derive from a time in which Man's powers and dilemmas were very different to those of today. As a consequence, many of our present troubles exist because of the obsolescent nature of our institutions.
History suggests that, when a society's institutions become dangerously obsolete, Nature works to set the matter right through the intellectual genius that is evolving in Humans. The period, during which the required changes are being put into effect, all too often is a violent one. However, it is followed by a period of renaissance, as freed Human Nature realises the inspiring and fulfilling nature of the fresh opportunities and challenges that the change has opened to it.

Today's World is overdue for exposure to such genius. The values and beliefs that dominate its Civilisation place instincts above yearnings and material possessions above inner wellbeing. Its institutions hold Tyrants above the Law, favour the rich over the needy and condone behaviour that places Human survival in jeopardy. Growing unhappiness and instability are the result.

In such circumstances, there is an urgent need for a more humanly fulfilling and sustainable Milieu to be introduced. For it to compete with the attractions of the old, it must provide a fresh and exciting perception of Man's role in Reality. It must be global in focus and scientifically defensible. It must resurrect the human longing for involvement in the creation of multiple Heavens on Earth while insisting that its fruits are available to all of Humanity and sustainable for posterity. It must be dedicated to educating and otherwise supplying every individual with opportunity to win an honoured and secure place within Society through the performance of a meaningful and fulfilling role in its unfolding. It must be reflected in institutions that protect, encourage and support all who commit themselves to its goals and values. Excitingly, for the first time, Man possesses the knowledge and power to make such a Milieu realisable.

To create out of our current institutions, those needed to make such a Milieu possible, will demand that we put ourselves in a position to propose realistic means for their correction. Interestingly, the institutions, which appear to be the ones most in need of reform, are our most revered. They include The Nation-State, Representative Democracy, Defence, the Law, Financially Based Capitalism, the Work Ethic, Education, Health, Religion and Marriage.

Well, Callum, that establishes the framework upon which I propose to build replies to your questions. I look forward with enthusiasm to creating them and hope that, after reading the above, you will look forward with equal enthusiasm to reading them.

Cheers,
Robin

 

 

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One Man's View - Robin A McQueen