hyper sapiens

I do not live 
the life of the gods
To be worshipped 
from afar
Or torn within
Sadly saying eternities






Whatever you're researching, contemplating, tolerating, or seeking - there's a model for it. How everything evolves and decays has a pattern somewhere in nature with information about everything that's created / developed / destroyed. The bell curve, scaling, and density dependence equations that factor opportunistic variables represent the plasticity of systems that allow for evolution given all the variables. But there are laws and constraints on everything. Events, responses, reactions - human or otherwise.



In some sense, most of the work has already been done. There's enough genetic variation after a few billions of years of evolution so that organisms can adapt to whatever hits them, or their niche will be filled by something else. Even if most of the population is wiped out by one epidemic or another, some will have the variability to survive. Any Europeans that survived the plague had a mutant allele, and many of their descendants colonized the new world - further combining genes with other tribes that gave greater genetic diversity / viability. Nature knows what it wants, cause she's going to throw everything she's got at us to see if we can survive it. And the novelty of nature knows no bounds. We emulate her in our perpetual experimentation and exploitation, cause clearly that's part of the plan.


But in the will and action to dominate, define culture, and generally be the ones to call the shots = successive empires rise and fall. The conditions that contribute to this phenomena are formulaic, and in a global society, the constraints and demands of the formula is yet again adapting to the pressure. Scaling appears to be the example and extent of development of any order, and when something gets too big it collapses (+ why the bugs in Starship Troopers would be impossible). Bugs, empires, everything responds to upper and lower limits. 



Artists and scientists look for patterns in nature, and the pattern of development and decay is clearly deep in the structural blueprint. I combined these revealing graphs/patterns in standard economic and species evolution theory:

            Supply and Demand graph             Species Immigration & Extinction graph   

       

Species Immigration & Extinction graph is from the Theory of Island Biogeography by McArthur & Wilson




That's one striking diagram/pattern that permeates life/culture. We're infinitely inventive as we extrapolate endlessly on all social/spiritual/cultural matters, and endlessly exploit the environment to explore boundaries, but foundational laws are only so plastic. Not to infer direct determinism, but there are incessant examples of pushing the boundary until it all collapses. Any system needs dynamic equilibrium to survive, and will only tolerate so many variables and limits until it's destroyed or transforms through a variety of mechanisms. Too much fat and cholesterol, peasants revolting, every former  empire (including Rupert Murdoch's)... too much pressure and/or corruption and eventually the whole thing blows. Generally it's the one-two punch. Most systems can recover from trauma, but start backing/stacking them up and...the experiment terminates.



For Homo sapiens, social and political systems are a result of population density, invasion adaptation, resources, environment...And of all the philosophical memes to define political structure, a real democracy is a real problem. It demands a literate, educated populace, which is a relatively new concept, and there's plenty of societies where literacy is lacking (and sustained for control). Peasants supporting the ruling elite ignited the culture engine, but not until the merchant middle class became a political force (+ the printing press) did the roots of democracy evolve. Another experiment that demands flexibility, uncertainty, and the will to not revert to the limbic system's myopic response to survival. (Extremists are comfortable in autocratic territory - seems the neocortex is not accessed that often in their dark little minds...)  Democracy will always struggle with the prime directive of the central authority / alpha members that direct the organism that leads the lesser body. That appears to be the default system when push finally comes to shove.



Every revolution eventually produces despots that kill off rivals and become just as corrupt as the last regime. Voting leaders in and out of office, or voting with your feet, can circumvent this pattern, but the will of the people or leaders is constrained by where nature is pushing us. And that has been one relentless push since day one. This seems clear, and I assume that everyone will eventually look at the long term pattern (I don't mean election cycles or a generation or even a century) and understand the direction that's been millions of years in the making. We have developed all manner of psychological devices to cope with the journey (religion being a major player there for better + for worse) but the compulsion to dominate is written on the genes, and it's tough fighting City Hall.


At any rate of cultural evolution and/or decay, I suggest a recent book by Oxford historian Peter Heather The Fall of the Roman Empire to get perspective on why and how the US is dealing with our rapid ascension and what some regard as possible decline on the world stage. There is no better indication of decline than increased polarization and corruption of political factions - no longer working together to build, but to blame and draw battle lines as a reaction to declining fortune. Institutionalized corruption is inevitable. It's all happened before. We think we're unique, it's all a unique period in history, but it's really part of the pattern where plasticity (and  tech) can only do so much. Eventually systems will decay / die / transform. It almost looks like the entire edifice is bifurcating into the ruling elite / peasant class again to accommodate a global structure in its nascent form...  History shows that marginalized groups often coalesce and become the dominant group, because when you have nothing, you have nothing to loose. And if you're armed with extreme envy, hatred, a gun, and a book, that's one motivated machine. Extremists respond to what they believe is offensive to their narrative (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) when free-for-all democratic immorality threatens the tribal code. It's an equal free-for-all asymmetrical attempt to depose the infidels, but take away the narrative and it's just plain dirt-old envy: this other group has the resources, their genes continue, ours don't.



As far as the current state of the Empire, education (crucial to democracy) and other systems are failing to adapt sufficiently to address old/new problems (30+% high school drop out rate, school underfunding, $14+ tril debt, economic adversity, enviro destruction - it all goes hand in hand). Sure looks like scaling - too big to operate efficiently, branches distributed around the world that can no longer be financially sustained, and generally some form of Western decline/transformation as world hegemon. Then there's the EU. Is it all too big NOT to fail? So much for gloating over the collapse of Soviet communism. 



Recently read The Long Divergence on how Islam prevented modern corporations, growth, development, etc on par with the west. Ultra conservative models don't allow experimentation, which is antithetical to life itself. However, our system of capital experimentation hit a major wall and no doubt will do so again, which gives states plenty to contemplate on their economic model. The fear and resistance of innovation may prove viable if other more robust, experimental systems collapse. That's why we'll never get rid of fundamentalists - they're the social Marshall Law. If and when it all collapses, well, we have this book...
And State Capitalism - that will have teeth without the pretense of morality.


So where are we on the graph, collectively? Depending on conditions, sometimes absolute authority is necessary, especially after great upheaval to regain balance. Some circumstances need less authority, are more egalitarian, and are self sustaining. Like Galton's reluctant acknowledgement of crowd wisdom in determining the weight of an ox at the 1906 West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition in Plymouth, democracy had real advantages over absolutism in collective reasoning. This was illustrated in Google's Power of Ten project and with InnoCentive - an online problem solving collective. This says volumes about how knowledge and power evolved - if you had answers you called the shots. Religion had the hegemony in this arena for millennia as a form of behavior modification and maintaining absolute control, occasionally under the threat of The Inquisition or other barbaric mind control activity. It's a Carlyle interpretation of the world and simultaneously loosing and gaining ground as we struggle to overcome the Dark Ages. We're in more of a Dim Ages phase, and it's fascinating that everything seems to be getting better as it gets worse.  In a democracy, individual effort will transform and survive in some capacity - the emphasis on community action, especially the online community, is creating a new branch to the species tree. 


When the going gets tough, the tough adapt and innovate. Thirty percent high school drop out rate? This can be addressed with IT - information can be available to anyone online, and power / knowledge can be dispersed with a cheap laptop. This promotes literacy and education to a borderless demographic. And identifying kids with a difficult home life (that affects their ability to learn) needs to be addressed, cause it all starts in the home.   


Kids know more about tech than their teachers, have had access to more info more often than any other generation on earth, manipulate info better - some can chart their own path and interests without the middle men and negative socialization. Because when you develop in a box you can't think or act outside of it. Now that there essentially is no box, bureaucracies don't know how to respond to boxlessness and are so incapacitated by budget problems, inertia, and accusations they've become barely viable entities.  


There are already online high schools. We don't need as much brick and mortar and all the bureaucratic entropy that results from it. We need a global online high school with an emphasis on cultural collective wisdom. You have to be fluid and flexible to survive, and bureaucracies eventually crumble under their own weight. Scaling - it's the Law! We'll have to take life and education into our inclusive global hands. After all, the US is the world in terms of immigrants, and the world aspires to the ideal of democracy, freedom of thought, worship, and exploration. It's a relatively new country / idea / challenge to default domination. But it appears greed, passion, envy, et al may ever be key actors in the drama that will sabotage all rational efforts. Probably because those primal extincts ensure survival at all costs - we may not like it and aspire to more compassionate behavior, but those qualities persist in people where success (survival) comes by any means necessary. That's life on earth, and that's been the program since Day One, so let the system collapse, cleanse, and evolve into something new and novel again  - possibly smarter, more aware, more communicative, less combative. We've seen enough extreme examples of corruption, stupidity, and generally unevolved embarrassing behavior to know what not to do, so let it all fall to evolve again.


We've got the genetic variation and imagination to do it.

Halfway there...