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The
purpose of this essay is to suggest that a phenomenon called
"consciousness evolution" exists and that it can be described
by Complexity Theory. While
this may sound like an exercise in logic, reason and scientific
speculation, it is in fact based upon what for me was a profound
synchronistic event in March of 1995.
I see this as an ongoing investigation, with this essay only
being a high level overview of a connection that I believe exits.
Back
in 1995 I was reading Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop, a book which
will serve as the primary resource for this essay.
Before getting into the experiential aspect that sparked this
essay, its necessary to talk first about the relatively new and
unfolding science of Complexity.
While
Waldrop's book does not specifically talk about consciousness evolution,
it addresses every other aspect of evolution and adaptation, and I
believe the linkage I'm making to be a reasonable one, grounded in the
theories presented in the book. Another
valuable resource, encountered for the first time by me in the research
for this essay, is Pierre Teilhard De Chardin's book "The
Phenomenon of Man".
Complexity,
the book, was published in 1992 and it looks at the people, events and
ideas surrounding the creation of the Santa Fe Institute, located in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. The
inspiration that lead to the creation of this scientific think tank is
credited to George Cowan who at the time was director of Los Alamos
National Laboratory. The
following quote by Cowan from Waldrop's book gives us some insight into
his thinking:
"The
royal road to the Nobel Prize has generally been through the
reductionist approach," he says - dissecting the world into the
smallest and simplest pieces you can. "You look for the solution of
some more or less idealized set of problems, somewhat divorced from the
real world, and constrained sufficiently so that you can find a
solution, and that leads to more and more fragmentation of science.
Whereas the real world demands - though I hate the word - a more
holistic approach."
Other
scientists from other disciplines were feeling the same way it seemed.
As Cowan started circulating his ideas in 1983 about forming a
group of eminent and open minded scientists from various fields to get
together and see what they had in common, the response was very
positive. Because of Santa
Fe's locality to Los Alamos they would draw heavily upon the Physics
community located there, but the group also included scientists from
other fields such as Economics, Biology and Computer Science.
Quoting
Waldrop from his book:
"In
part because of the their computer simulations, and in part because of
new mathematical insights, physicists had begun to realize by the early
1980s that a lot of messy, complicated systems could be described by a
powerful new theory known as "nonlinear dynamics."
And in the process, they had been forced to face up to a
disconcerting fact: the whole really can be greater that the sum of its
parts. Now for most people
that fact sounds pretty obvious. It
was disconcerting for the physicists only because they had spent the
past 300 years having a love affair with linear systems -
in which the whole is precisely equal to the sum of it parts.
In fairness, they
had plenty of reason to feel this way.
If a system is precisely equal
to the sum of its parts, then each component is free to do its
own thing regardless of what's happening elsewhere.
And that tends to make the mathematics relatively easy to
analyze."
This
realization about the nonlinear processes found in Nature wasn't a
breakthrough revelation by any means, but the feeling was that all
scientific disciplines had something in common that wasn't being
explored. The problem in
doing interdisciplinary research was that this really went against the
entrenched system. Science
is highly departmentalized at most levels, grants are given out based on
research that has promise and a reasonable possibility of success.
Concepts that can show applicability and a well defined focus are
easier to fund than highly theoretical work that has less chance of
practical pay back. With
shrinking government budgets, anyone trying to head in this direction
was swimming upstream and could find their career going nowhere.
So this helps explain why the impetus was there for some time for
a new approach, but getting such a venture off the ground proved
difficult. However, many of
the people instrumental in taking this new philosophical direction were
older and could afford to follow their heart.
Waldrop calls this "the revolt of the old Turks".
Cowan
enlisted Murray Gell-Mann from Cal Tech, a Nobel prize winner in 1969
for his earlier work leading to the discovery of the Quark, currently
the most fundamental component of the Atom.
Gell-Mann's eloquent and energetic vision of a grand synthesis
that translated across all of science sparked even more interest in the
scientific community.
Also
enlisted at this time was Phil Anderson from Bell Labs who won his Nobel
Prize in 1977 in condensed matter physics.
His interdisciplinary experience and backing would prove
invaluable. The first
workshops were organized in 1984, but not until 1986 did the Santa Fe
Institute have a permanent address and staff.
Now,
to explain Complexity Theory. This
condensation of ideas is drawn heavily from John Holland's lengthy work
in the areas of evolution and adaptation, which he summed up in his
first address to one of the early Santa Fe workshops.
Complexity
Theory is all about "complex adaptive systems" which all share
some fundamental processes. These
systems comprise pretty much everything.
Some biological examples would be the brain, immune systems,
ecologies, cells, or even insect colonies.
Cultural and social systems also fit perfectly, such as
economies, political parties, cities or countries.
Each
of these systems is comprised of many "agents" all acting in
parallel. In a brain the
agents are nerve cells, in an ecological community the agents are
species, in an economy they are people, businesses, sectors of industry
and ultimately countries. Each
agent is constantly acting and reacting to what the others are doing.
The control for such a system tends to be highly dispersed, with
no single agent acting as a director.
Any order to come out of such a system must arise from the
competition and/or cooperation of the agents themselves.
These complex adaptive systems typically have levels of
organization, with the agents at one level serving as building blocks
for the agents at another higher or more complex level.
These systems are constantly revising and rearranging the
building blocks as they gain experience.
The term applied to this phenomenon is "self organizing
behavior". However
before a major transition can be made to another level of complexity,
the system must achieve critical mass first.
Critical mass is the threshold where the perturbation to the
system affects enough of the agents so that a reaction takes place
throughout the entire system.
Out
of this apparent chaos, patterns and rules can be seen.
The most critical aspect of complexity to this essay is emergence.
Complexity is basically a science of emergence.
As a system increases in complexity, new properties and behaviors
emerge that were not apparent before.
A simple example of this can be seen by looking at a water
molecule. It can be
described by well understood equations of atomic physics.
But when you put lots of water molecules together, we get a new
emergent property - liquidity, something those equations barely hint at.
Emergent properties often produce emergent behaviors, cool water
down it undergoes a phase transition whereby it forms a crystalline
structure we call ice. Heat
it up, introduce enough energy to the system and it becomes water vapor.
These are properties that are meaningless to a single molecule.
Weather is an emergent property.
When water vapor over the ocean interacts with sunlight and wind,
it can organize itself into an emergent structure known as a hurricane.
So
when a "phase transition" takes place as the result of some
sort of energetic input or perturbation of a complex adaptive system, it
causes new emergent properties and behaviors.
And that concept is central to the theme of this essay.
Teilhard
also describes this phenomenon:
"In
every domain, when anything exceeds a certain measurement, it suddenly
changes its aspect, condition or nature.
The curve doubles back, the surface contracts to a point, the
solid disintegrates, the liquid boils, the germ cell divides, intuition
suddenly bursts on the piled up facts ... critical points have been
reached, rungs on the ladder, involving a change of state - jumps of all
sorts in the course of development.
Henceforth this is the only way in which science can speak of a
'first instant'."
Anderson
in a 1972 paper entitled "More is Different" said:
"At
each level of complexity, entirely new properties appear.
[And] at each stage, entirely new laws, concepts, and
generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to
just as great a degree as in the previous one.
Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied
chemistry."
That
quote may need some time to sink in.
Its critical to understand the last sentence because of how it
impacts modern scientific inquiry and endeavor.
It states that discovering the fundamental rules that define one
level of a system does not mean that those rules and those rules alone
will adequately help us understand things at subsequent levels of
increased complexity. So
the reductionist approach, that by discovering the most fundamental
particles of matter and its properties, will therefore provide a set of
standards and rules that can then be applied to all other systems is
fundamentally flawed. Hence
the declaration of Carl Anderson back in 1932 when he discovered the
Positron that "the rest is chemistry", indicated the
reductionist mind set of that era.
One that still persists to this day in many scientific fields.
Its a mind set that was and is devoid of a greater understanding
of the emergent properties of complex adaptive systems.
So
having quickly discussed Complexity Theory, we need to be able to define
what is consciousness evolution and then, can it be described by
Complexity Theory?
Author
Michael Crichton in his book "The Lost World", which is the
sequel to "Jurassic Park", begins by discussing how Complexity
Theory has changed the way scientists are viewing evolution.
Even though his book is fictional, his references to Complexity
are not. Complexity Theory
has indeed dramatically altered how scientists now view evolution.
Ironically, Darwin's original ideas have been reworked to such an
extent that we can say even the theory of evolution has evolved.
The
idea that evolution exists for all biological systems is now more
entrenched than ever, even Pope John Paul II just announced that the
Roman Catholic Church accepts evolution as the process that led
biologically to Man. A
dramatically different stance from a century ago.
But Complexity tells us that not only does evolution exist in the
natural world that we can see, but in the unseen world as well.
The world of behavior seems to be controlled by the same set of
rules as that of matter. In
fact behavioral adaptation is the key to long term survival for any
species. It contributes
just as much if not more to evolutionary processes than the easily seen
physical adaptations that species undergo.
So
all complex adaptive systems evolve if they are to survive, changing
physically and behaviorally. They
change in response to various stimuli both internal and external.
However, if there is too much change we get chaos, too little and
we see stagnation that results ultimately in extinction.
Based
on these criteria it follows that we can state that all of Humanity
forms a complex adaptive system. To
the extent that all our singular consciousness’ are linked together
somehow to form a collective, super or race consciousness, we can also
say that this constitutes a complex adaptive system as well.
And we are then able to apply all the patterns and behaviors seen
in Complexity Theory to consciousness.
Teilhard
actually goes much further when he says in these four separate quotes:
"First
let it be noted that, by the very fact of the individualization of our
planet, a certain mass of elementary consciousness was originally
imprisoned in the matter of Earth."
"The
whole question is to define how, from this primitive and essentially
elastic quantum, all the rest has emerged."
"For
a long time we have known how impossible it is to draw a clear line
between animal and plant on the unicellular level.
Nor can we draw one (as we shall see later) between 'living'
protoplasm and 'dead' proteins on the level of the very big molecular
accumulations. We still use
the word 'dead' for these latter unclassified substances, but have we
not already come to the conclusion that they would be incomprehensible
if they did not possess already, deep down in themselves, some sort of
rudimentary psyche?"
"So
in a sense, we can no more fix an absolute zero in time (as was once
supposed) for the advent of life than for that of any other experimental
reality."
One
theme that Teilhard's repeats over and over is that there is a
"without" and a "within" to all things.
That is, everything that has material form somehow is possessed
by a "within", or an elemental consciousness, and that as
living organisms evolved from inanimate matter, they also developed
psychically as well as physically.
So for Teilhard, consciousness evolution isn't just a human
phenomenon, but a universal one as well. He also postulates that the
entire evolutionary creative process was and is pointed towards
Consciousness.
I
am unable to determine if his theories have any validity when applied to
non-human forms of life, but he presents a very compelling case.
However, I believe there is clear evidence of consciousness
evolution in Humans and that it isn't the result of random chance or
mutation. Teilhard's grand
vision of where evolutionary processes might be taking us is summed up
pretty well by his most famous quote:
"The
idea is that of the earth not only becoming covered by myriad’s of
grains of thought, but becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope
so as to form, functionally, no more than a single vast grain of thought
on the sidereal scale, the plurality of individual reflections grouping
themselves together and reinforcing one another in the act of a single
unanimous reflection."
He calls this the Noosphere,
its the collective "layer" of combined mental and psychic
activity on this planet. Teilhard
was in fact a proponent of Complexity Theory, one who appears to be way
ahead of his time, as the "Phenomenon of Man" was written in
the 1920's and 30's, but wasn't published until 1955.
He was a Jesuit priest and an accomplished paleontologist.
His writings met with disapproval by his religious superiors
which resulted in the lengthy suppression of his writings publicly.
So
at this point its logical to conclude that we can apply Complexity
theory to all adaptive systems and in this way we can also apply
the idea of emergent properties to human interaction and deduce that new
emergent behavior may manifest at some point in the future.
But based on our current knowledge of natural law, we can only
speculate as to what those properties may be.
To
further analyze this process of emergence, it seems necessary to take a
historical perspective in deciding what direction humanity and
consciousness evolution is heading.
Based upon both written and oral histories we see that in many
cultures there have been people of both profound intellect, character,
insight and spirit. People
who have helped shape philosophy, religion, culture and science.
These people have always shown us just what the human potential
is and through their teachings how to get there.
The degree to which they were successful in passing along their
vision varies a great deal, based in no small measure on the ability of
those around them to comprehend them, but they do represent a phenomenon
of peak or advanced potential. It
seems reasonable to use these people as an evolutionary reference point.
In
this day and age we have access to most of those teachings and because
of innovations in both technology and social structure we are generally
encouraged to seek knowledge not just for survival, but for the sake of
knowledge itself. Education
is seen as a necessary aspect of modern society where once it was only
available to the elite of any culture, now its the foundation that
everything else is built upon in all industrialized nations.
State
sponsored education is available to practically all who earnestly seek
it. Frequently as more
knowledge is acquired by an individual it will become an addiction that
leads to ever greater inquiry. A
trend that stretches minds in new and ever more complex directions
seeking answers to questions both mundane and cosmic.
So
we are creating culturally an environment of knowledge and mental
stimulus that has never existed in such a wide spread manner before.
Through both books and computer networks we have access to the
thoughts of the greatest minds in history, and through the diligent
efforts of our educational system, we have the capacity to understand
those teachings and principles as never before.
Complex and profound philosophical insights that were once
understood by a precious few, can now be grasped by an ever widening
audience.
As
anyone who's been alive for the past 30 or 40 years knows, the rate of
change is incredible and unprecedented in human history.
Especially technological change which is responsible for driving
most other changes. The
rate is stifling at times. Many
books have even been written about this phenomena, such as Future Shock.
What effect will this have upon the psyche, both individual and
collective?
When
viewed from afar, this ever increasing accumulation of knowledge can be
seen as an agent of stimulation to the collective human consciousness of
a very high order. While
this trend may not apply to third world countries, or all areas of the
globe, its important to realize that we simply need to approach and then
achieve critical mass in order to drive the adaptive system through a
phase transition. When
applying Complexity Theory here, the key is that a new or increased
stimulus to the system can and will affect all areas of that system
given the right conditions and a view that encompasses a wide enough
perspective. Could these
perturbations to society or the collective mind be creating a situation
of impending critical mass? Is
there a point in the future, or are we perched on it now, where a phase
transition or state change will take place?
Such a change would undoubtedly bring about new emergent
behaviors and a more accessable and encompassing level of consciousness.
Again
the answers or at least theoretical extrapolations might be found in
charting past transitional events.
If we accept that modern man is the product of evolution, then we
can use several significant historical events as evidence of emergent
behavior in human populations. By
establishing that there have been phase transitions in the past that
have lead to ever greater levels of complex behavior, it seems
reasonable that we can use this data to drive predictions for where new
transitions might be made to even higher levels.
The
break through event in consciousness evolution must have been the first
proto-human to develop what we call "self awareness", but this
is an event that we can only speculate about.
So as a data point for input into a predictive process it can't
be used, but there are many other well recorded events that can be
charted.
Teilhard
however places a great deal of emphasis on this event.
In fact it raises some profound and complex evolutionary and
philosophical questions. In
the evolutionary realm, what was the scope of this change?
Did it happen to just one or several
individuals? Without
a doubt this event burst upon someone in a single moment, forever
changing Him or Her. It
also seems reasonable to assume that this would have given that
individual or individuals a unique competitive advantage or perspective,
so that others not possessing this new wisdom or capability would later
become extinct.
In
fact a recent study indicates that via the typing of mitochondrial RNA,
all humans currently alive can be traced to a single Woman who lived
some 160,000 years ago in Africa. According
to that study, rather than being descended from geographically scattered
populations of proto-humans, we all appear to have a single common
ancestor who lived much more recently than previously predicted.
One possible implication is that consciousness may have been
"the" breakthrough adaptation.
Admittedly this study is highly controversial and must stand the
test of time and peer review before we draw any substantial conclusions
from it.
The
next two developments are distinct and separate, with a lot of research
needing to be done to determine where they exist on a consciousness
"timeline". That’s
currently beyond the scope of this essay, but in the future I intend to
investigate it. Quite
possibly the first of these two was the development of Art.
A
seemingly trivial event given the current integration of Art in our
everyday lives, its something we take for granted, but one that implies
some major cognitive advances; one that signifies a change in both
perception and consciousness. After
this might have come the development of primitive religions and
spirituality. Commonly
referred to as Animism, then Dynamism, this ancient time period clearly
marks the first major leap forward in human consciousness that could be
used as data to help us chart the major transitional phases in
consciousness evolution, as we have some "working" dates for
these events.
There
are many more transitions to be analyzed in detail, but clearly we can
see that consciousness has evolved over time in humans, just as physical
differences have evolved in many species.
Evolution and adaptation can be seen to exist on every level of
Creation, materially, behaviorally and even spiritually.
Today
it seems that we are currently in the midst of a religious and spiritual
revival. Some of the
symptoms of this can be seen in an expanding Fundamentalist movement
worldwide, the growth of a nebulous and loosely connected esoteric
movement called New Age, and the continued expansion and definition of
Transpersonal Psychology.
However
some would argue that ancient cultures typically had a much better
connection to, and appreciation for, the spiritual side of life than our
current materialistic society.
So that the spiritual renewal that we are seeing today does not
constitute consciousness evolution at all, but a simple return to the
more spiritual values of past cultures.
But I would argue that ancient spirituality and religion were so
infused with superstition and misunderstandings about the physical world
and our relation to it, that to reach a better understanding of the
Cosmos, it eventually became necessary for a cultural war between
science and religion to be fought.
This allowed many of the misapplications of religious thinking
and superstition to be extracted from our world view.
Since at one time religious adherents arrogantly made
proclamations about the physical world that they were ill equipped to
make. All through historic
times we see that religion has often been misused as a means of
repression and of attaining secular power.
That prompted this famous quote from Galileo:
"I
do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
This
battle, mostly cultural but sometimes physical, between science and
religion, eventually lead to our focus on materialism and a rejection of
the spiritual side of life that dominated daily life for millennia.
Now the table is set for a grand synthesis to take place that
repairs the schism between the material world and the spiritual one on a
philosophical level. The
field of Transpersonal Psychology seems uniquely positioned to help
facilitate this. With the
prevailing scientific paradigm today being that we are most likely
"not alone" in the Cosmos, we can separate ourselves from the
ethnocentric rhetoric that there is a chosen people or religion.
I
believe this constitutes an evolutionary step forward in consciousness.
The arrogance that has pervaded many culturally centered
religions that they are the "One True Way" is starting to
diminish in favor of a more inclusive philosophy that we are all
connected through and via a Universal Mind or Divine Consciousness that
we are all a part of.
Clearly
without the tearing down of religious barriers by science, ones erected
by the powerful elite of those religions, this new paradigm could never
have been accepted, as many ancient religions carry strong ethnic and
sexist prejudices. So the
return of spiritual urgency in humans is not simply a return of
something long suppressed or forgotten, but is in fact a new and
different manifestation that indicates a movement towards something new,
something more inclusive, and something not based on fear, ignorance and
power. I feel this
constitutes "spiritual autonomy", a relatively new and unique
concept in human experience.
This
current spiritual revival can be seen as another indicator of a
perturbation to the complex system that all our consciousness’ form.
As I pointed out earlier, our technological advances and focus on
education is creating a significant mental and psychic stimulus as
well. But on the
spiritual side we also see many types of stimuli, both new and
traditional. The widespread use and practice of such energy healing
modalities as Reiki, Therapeutic Touch and many others can be seen as
another form of increasing perturbation.
The Chinese refer to this energy as Chi and the number of people
who understand this term, know how to interact and benefit from it by
consciously using it, has grown tremendously in the West.
This is a rapidly exploding area of alternative healing on both
the spiritual and physical level.
My
premise is that all these combined forces, both empirical and
non-empirical, are driving our collective consciousness towards a phase
transition which will result in new emergent behavior.
Now
back to the event that provided the impetus for this essay.
I started reading Waldrop's book Complexity just before leaving
on a business trip to Atlanta and I took it with me to read on the
plane. I was immediately
enthralled by it. My
feeling right from the start was that Science was finally on the right
track here. That
"they" were finally looking at the big picture.
I got together with a friend in Atlanta who I had met online
through the Internet. We
became friends via our mutual interest in metaphysics and philosophy.
We both had read many of the same books, many of which talk about
our possible future in a spiritual or metaphysical way.
While talking face to face for the first time we covered all the
usual topics, but later on she asked me if I ever noticed the same
number showing up over and over again.
I hadn't really thought about that, but I realized that I had
seen the number 169 quite a few times lately while using my PC.
That seemed strangely curious to me but certainly wasn’t
anything to get excited about since humans seem to have a great capacity
for noticing patterns.
What
seemed like a trivial question and conversation at the time would turn
out later to be very significant. By
this time I was about halfway through the book as I started flying back
to San Francisco. I was
reading along when my attention began to wander.
The theories being presented in the book were starting to gel in
my mind and I started to wonder where the book was going.
What was the author leading up to, if anything at all?
What could Complexity Theory be used for or applied to that
wasn’t already mentioned in the book?
Then
it hit me like the proverbial bolt of lightening.
In an intuitive flash it was all startlingly clear to me.
It made so much sense. Complexity
Theory could be used to explain much of the metaphysical conjecture I
had been reading about recently. All
the various theories and prophesies about our future, whether they were
Christian, Muslim, Mayan, Hopi or New Age spiritualism, they all had one
thing in common, radical change for all of Humanity and a shift in
consciousness.
Never
mind that some are fear based and some take a more compassionate
approach. The bottom line
is that they all predict some sort of dramatic change for the planet,
both on a personal and collective level.
They
all predict some form of a phase transition to a new level of complexity
with new types of emergent behavior for the Human Race.
At that point I realized that our collective consciousness fit
beautifully as a "complex adaptive system".
Almost since the beginning of time, it seems like every culture
has had some type of prediction or myth that a grand shift would take
place in the future and it seemed as if Complexity Theory was describing
this phenomenon perfectly as a phase transition.
This
realization was mind boggling to me, as intuitive flashes tend to be.
I felt as if I had stumbled upon something very big, much bigger
than me. The emotion of the
moment was powerful, then
as I glanced down at the book, which I had totally lost track of at this
point, and noticed the page number - it was page 169.
I went numb. If I
was elated before, now I was practically in an altered state.
I wanted to run up and down the aisle of the plane screaming and
yelling. I desperately
wanted to tell someone, anyone, what had just happened.
Having to remain seated and relatively calm was like torture at
that point.
I
really have no explanation for the appearance of the number 169 in such
a synchronous way. A
Jungian perspective might explain it as some sort of mystical marker
designed to get my attention, and it did!
Maybe some unconscious part of me, the part that’s connected to
the Collective was sending a signal in the only way it could that I was
indeed on to something here that I should take seriously.
There isn't anything special about page 169 in the book.
No startling revelations. It
was just the point at which I quit reading and started thinking about
how Complexity Theory could be used to explain where Humanity might be
going. I hadn't even been
looking at the page numbers previously.
Much later in the book there is a passing mention of Teilhard,
and how complexity does have some philosophical or theological
implications, but there is no mention about it being used to describe
consciousness evolution.
Since
that day I have thought at length about how well it all fits and I still
have a sense of awe and wonder. But
I also have an inquisitive mind that wants to better understand what
happened and expand upon it if possible.
So this is only the first attempt to organize my thoughts and
experiences. I hope to be
doing a lot more research in this area.
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