We live in amazing times, and always have. The basic need for food and shelter exists for as long as humans roam this planet. Even in the 'modern' world with all its technological complexity and vast knowledge mankind hasn't conquered this challenge sustainably, not because it cannot be done but because of insanity.
Human memes spread wider and faster than those of any other species known to us. Our story telling ability provides the basis for progress, an evolutionary phenomenon that creates dynamically balanced complex systems. Contemporary science and craft still hasn't been able to recreate technological marvels of the human past, and the ideas of how people lived in previous eras of history often base on sketchy evidence.
As social beings, survival of humanity depended rather on an evolution of group organisation strategies than advancing the bio-physical machinery of individuals. Different environments favoured different strategies of how people live together, cultural exchange added into the mix. One might question the meaning of his/her individual existence, but the group with its customs, rules, traditions and myths seems to make sense, as it seems to last longer than any of its individual members.
When ever more people live together in smaller spaces, when ever urban culture emerges, art and technology advance, yet not in a linear fashion. Complexity of society adds to its vulnerability, especially the way it generates and uses energy. Deforestation killed many cultures, and the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq secure the US future oil-based energy demands. The lack of sustainability and efficiency of a fossil-fuel economy is known already at least since Buckminster Fuller. Investing the resources in securing a useless mode of operation instead of devising more sustainable solutions appears to me utterly insane.
I can imagine the better-off part of society marvelling about the technological wonders and wondering about the future ahead of them in most times of history. With the need for food and shelter satisfied, story telling becomes the main occupation of humans. Humans devised amazing ways to utilize the resources of their environment, and many ideas spread around the globe.
A progressive society provides change much faster than the seasons that determined the life of many of our ancestors. Travel and communication technology have advanced like never before in known history, yet the structure of the mixed global societies looks similar to those in times of mass self-destruction.
The amount of people that could communicate together found its limits in societal, cultural and foremost spatial barriers. That limits the amount of ideas to choose from, 'best practice' simply meant doing anything in a way that worked somehow. Funny enough, Victoria's desalination plans seems as if the deciders never considered solutions from other parts of the globe, instead they use a strategy that doomed many societies.
The way evolution is taught and commonly portrayed unfortunately rather obscures evolutionary principles than allows us to take a bit more active part in it. It makes a lot of sense to consider developments in technology and society from an evolutionary perspective, and this makes it so much easier to perceive evolution as an ongoing instead of a relatively finished process.
Societies have always organised themselves, yet mostly only a minority within society acted as agents of this process of self-organisation. It doesn't really matter that not all ideas to structure society had something original to them. The diversity of concurrently existing and past societies simply indicated the lack of a 'natural' law about how conscious individuals organise their common affairs. Those indigenous cultures that survived until today lasted for much longer than any specific 'nation' or 'society', and proved thereby that mankind can survive without 'civilisation'. I have a good laugh at the idea that something as virtual and malleable as 'culture' can be deemed 'unchangeable', yet many fundamentalists might get angry about my bout of humour.
The 'us versus them' meme comes with the myth of any nation, and many other gangs of humans. It survived easier and longer than any technological advancement that could provide for the essential human needs. Mankind created technology to extinguish the entire species, and as a trade-off developed amazing life-saving technology.
Evolution seems to favour the 'us and them' idea. No species exists in isolation, only bacteria might happily survive on a purely an-organic diet. Ecology taught us to consider life more from a system perspective, and to study the interaction and interrelation of all species existing in a biotop. Have we cultivated plants and animals, or have these species adapted to us to selfishly spread their own genes around the globe?
Nature doesn't need humans to sustain life, it existed before and will exist after our species' expiry. The special role of humans on this planet, a meme popular with scientists, philosophers, artists and priests alike, has no basis in our current understanding of evolution. Wait, humans can master evolution of non-biological systems, and even their own, but as yet this meme hasn't reached many members of our species.
No society managed to 'stay on the top' throughout history, yet many still try. No strategy to organise society won the 'battle of civilisations'. Many species got extinct, yet the number of evolutionary winners exceeds most peoples imagination. The evolution of ideas about the organisation of society show the same random variety as any experimental setup in the lab of life.
In an era of global travel and communication violent government doesn't make any sense anymore. Simple birth proves the evolutionary right to exist, no matter how hard bureaucracy may try to withdraw the means of survival for unwanted human beings. If everybody would want to live a meaningless and parasitic life like most professional scaremongers do, our planet would run out of resources within a very short amount of time. While violent governments needs individuals who combine greed, gullibility and recklessness, a sane society would rather offer those misguided individuals treatment than permit them to run the show.
Yet the Western World, conditioned to believe in the myth of enlightenment, shows little interest in a sane society. Although having power and acting responsibly are not mutually exclusive, without scrutiny representatives of government have always abused power. Most of the corrupt and irresponsible activity remains hidden under the cloak of 'national security' or 'public private partnership'. Corruption remains a much too successful business meme to undergo moral considerations. Corruption among politicians protects this mechanism from the law and public eye.
The way any society evolved doesn't represent any precipice, at least as far as I know. That doesn't stop politicos maintaining the myth to represent the best of societies by exclusion (claiming other societies offer less), This makes as much sense as saying because kangaroos have conquered Australia, all marsupials should be roos. Understanding that any living system (and I consider memes as living systems as well) evolves together with its environment means embracing diversity instead of enforcing conformity.
Any society defends some of its behaviour rules vigorously, while other behaviours are happily tolerated. It's okay in many western nations to show murderers and killings as part of story telling, yet real dead people are hardly seen. Unlike in Thailand, where graphic images of crime victims embellish the front pages of news papers. All groups of people developed some idiosyncratic ways of dealing with sex and death, deriving many other rules in accordance to this attitude to these essentials of life.
Again, the diversity of rules merely shows evolution in action. Progress seems like a by-product of the evolution of consciousness, and the consequences often favor only a minority of the human species. Yet progress as it manifests today would allow to feed and shelter every human being on this planet, if the splintered global societies wanted to. This doesn't imply some sort of welfare planet at all - yet the global free riders (politicians) like to perpetrate the myth that wealth leads to procrastination and decadence. Indeed, any society with considerable wealth and without control over their leaders ended in catastrophe or revolution. Violent government breeds intolerance, war, terrorism, murder, abuse, addiction and desperation.
Unfortunately, other forms of government hardly make it into the public consciousness as they can easily fall victim to the expansion lust of violent governments. In retrospect, Saddam's Iraq before 1991 looks far more tolerant and secular than the US or Australia today, although dissidents held as political prisoners might survive longer with Western-style torture and imprisonment. Like after WW2, the US simply adapted the inhumane treatment of other people as demonstrated by the evil regime that got replaced. Of course, known wars hardly ever involved non-violent governments. Iraq just serves as example that comparing society standards can yield surprising results, and unveils the hypocrisy of fingerpointing, especially from the US government.
Rebranding war as insanity poses a huge challenge. From a global perspective, war creates losses by its unsustainable nature. Mankind needs protection, but not from our evil neighbours, mankind needs to protect itself from violent governments. Mankind shares one planet, and if mankind is willing to use evolution in its favour towards a more compassionate world it needs to cooperate to create sane forms of government.
Modern history creates the illusion of a relative linear development of mankind. The chaotic co-existence of different approaches of living together seems to scare those who live off collective fears. In the history of evolution diversity proved as advantage, and many forms of life simply vanished. The meme of violent government seems obsolete, yet still irresistible for many. And while it's popular not to expect 'historic' changes within one's lifetime, I have witnessed too many to lose my hope to see a much more just and compassionate planet than we have right now.
evolution exist global government history human ideas life live mankind meme myth people planet seems society species survive systems technology together violent war
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