Imagining the future humanity by Margarita Iudin

Hi Margarita,

it was interesting to read your explanations of vision, imagination, thought, and the consciousness of nonhuman life. I find it strange the thought that, Quote: "our human consciousness is limited by the unknown needs of the total cellular life and the living Earth". What does that mean? Is it that without taking care of the needs of the living Earth human consciousness will decline or become extinct? Or are you implying some kind of control of human consciousness by the totality of consciousness in all forms?

I found it strange that you left the how to steer to the very end. You wrote "The future of humanity is in an optimal transformation of the human conscience and physical body." That sounds like evolution to me. But do you have some kind of brain extension, body enhancement, trans-human future in mind? You have not made it clear.

Quote" Analogical imaging is essentially the methodology common to an exploration of the physical world and transformation of the life forms.It is possible to "steer the future" of humanity by means of analogical imagining." From what I can gather that is a way of saying observing and imagining.Is that right? Which are I agree necessary steps to take.Is that all? Or are you implying something more such bio-engineering?

Quote "In a meantime, the right thing to do is to enjoy the immediate expression of life in a human form." You have not convinced me on this point.

Unfortunate typo. highlighted in bold. Quote:"For example, lighting impact is materialized in the moments of enlightenment that people accidently experience during the imagining. To better understand lightning impact, one can use an analogy with time-manipulated replication of one-dimensional cellular automata where any living cell [and any sub-system], has cognitive abilities to anticipate its state one step in the future, and the upper-level system is allowed to correct the past over many iterations. At certain conditions, lightning impact brings with itself an enlighten experience [a moment of enlightenment]. Enlighten experiences instigate human awareness of nonlocal consciousness and inspire people to want to learn more about self." End quote.

IMHO Enlightenment is a state of consciousness that can be achieved in a number of ways, one is through chemical means that affect the biochemistry of the brain. Specifically serotonin levels.I do not understand what you mean about time-manipulated replication... It sounds more like growth and repair of a biological system rather than enlightenment.A growing organism can carry out repair of defects but I don't see how consciousness can affect the past.

Some references might have helped. Thank you for making me think. Georgina

Margarita,

That is a very thought provoking essay. I also think life on this planet is evolving toward a singular organism, with humanity as its central nervous system and that much of what we are doing intellectually and technologically, biology has been doing for hundreds of millions of years on this planet alone.

In my own entry I argue that in the current situation, the particular blockage to be addressed is in that economic circulatory system that you mentioned. The problem, as I see it, is that we tend to treat money as the commodity it seems to be at the local level, rather than the contract it is on the contextual level. So now the entire world's economy has become obsessed with expanding this bubble of notational wealth, to the detriment of the health and viability of society and the environment. These instruments originated as specific contracts, from clay tablets representing stored grain in ancient Sumer, to the Rothschild's gold certificates, which then became traded around as commodities in their own right. This system then naturally expanded to include futures, insurance, stocks, etc. All of these are obligations based on a specified value. With the introduction of national fiat currencies, the unspoken value is the health, wealth and future productivity of the nation issuing that currency, yet when the impulse to collect these notes interferes with their function of mediating commerce, the result is akin to coronary disease, with all its potential blockages, elevated pressures, burst transmission vessels, etc. and a resulting less healthy and productive economy. Now if we were to understand and fully educate people to the reality that a national currency is a contract between a community and its participants, in which the particular notes are not personal property, but a public medium and remain public property, for one thing, the natural tendency would be for most people to be far more careful how much value they will attempt to extract from communal relations and environmental resources, in order to acquire these notes. This will make social relations and a healthy environment the stores of value they need to be for a vital and stable life.

It will also mean that since this is a contract, potential allowances would be made in personal emergencies and this would significantly reduce the felt need to store excess notes. Also, if someone is perceived to be unnecessarily hoarding or otherwise abusing the system, the community might well negate or reduce the value of their store of notes, as a form of punishment, further increasing the use of natural stores of value.

The result would be a much smaller, but more stable and sustainable monetary system and a population interesting in putting value into their world, rather than extracting value from it. Regards,

John Merryman

Margarita,

I'm sorry if I left you with a limited impression, as that was only one feature of my entry. I agree civilizations like to put everyone to work and pointed in one direction, which they control. In an entry in a previous FQXI contest, I make the point that our problem with understanding time is that we experience it as a sequence of events and so think of it as the present moving from past to future, when the underlaying reality is its the changing configuration that turns future into past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the world turns. This makes time similar to temperature. Time is frequency, while temperature is amplitude. As collections of people, we function much more like thermodynamics, with the movement of any one part balanced by the movements of all the other parts. This is natural stability. Yet because we are mobile organism and so move in a particular direction, there is a strong tendency for lots of people to get together and all move in the same direction, eventually called history. This creates an unbalanced situation. Currently one of the forces causing lots of people to move in one direction is the financial system and how it is designed by those running it to extract value from the rest of society, which then makes everyone swirl around this system, like water going down a drain.

Regards,

John

Margatita,

1.Thank you for 'translating'. There is a hierarchy of needs. Many of the things you mention would be high up on the hierarchy while basic needs for survival would be at the base. It is only when the lower down needs are fulfilled that higher ones become relevant to the organism. You ask "Why does corporeal life exist"? The answer depends upon whether one is taking a scientific or spiritual point of view, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins,Oxford university press, 1976, does a good job of addressing that why question from a biological point of view. I have also heard it said that we are spiritual beings having a human experience,and have also said and heard words to the effect that life forms are the universe observing itself, which may be closer to your standpoint.

2. thanks again for the 'translation'. So you are saying the future of humanity is alteration of the collective consciousness of mankind and alteration man's morphology. Yes I expect we will think differently in the future. In what way optimized and how is that brought about? Do you mean learning the error of our ways? Education? Learning from research? Or some kind of selection pressure affecting both form and consciousness? That might happen if mankind goes through an evolutionary bottle neck, and the survivors become founders of a new species.

3.I beg to differ on the enlightenment question. I was not necessarily talking about illegal drugs but any means of attaining alteration of normal brain chemistry that makes a person feel (and "know" )that they are one with all of nature. 1/Serotonergic and trytamine overstimulation, 2/Serotonon and spirituality,3/ Can our level of serotonin affect how spiritual we are

That Anonymous was me

Serotonin and spirituality

I'm sorry this link is not working in the previous post (I should have checked before posting it.) So here it is again.

Hello Georgina:

1... Biochemical changes come before morphological changes. Example - rise in consumption of sugars (saccharides)

2." Yes I expect we will think differently in the future" Who are those "we"?

Since humankind would change, we become they. They will think differently.

Education is important because people must know that they can learn things. Teachers are important for showing how to learn things.

3. Please note that my essay is primarily about analogous imagining.

Sorry, I am not a biochemist or a molecular biologist and I am not interested in discussing the "brain chemistry" (I do not know what do you mean under "brain chemistry").

I used examples from the different knowledge fields to rather explain other things.

If you really want to know about enlightenment and for some reason you cannot reflect on enlightenment phenomenon yourself, I recommend you to ask (of course, not in writing) composers and poets. About the drugs - most drug users are elusive liars; the more they use drugs the more they lie (also about how they feel). They fool themselves. I do not know about anybody doing something creative (say, discover a proof of mathematical conjuncture) under the influence of psychedelic drugs. What is true, drugs affect behavior and mood. Under influence, people feel in a strange way and feel to do things differently. The same effects can be obtained without drugging. Take love. Love is often compared to drugging (elixirs of love); on the other hand, while drugs cannot lead to enlightenment, love can.

Please note this is not my topic at all.

A last word about hormones and psychedelic drugs - I really think that Tom Leary was a criminal. After serotonin levels go up, they will go down. Serotonin has many effects, so the precursors of serotonin do and so on, so on.

Regards,

M

Dear Margarita,

I have read your essay with great appreciation. I have read several others, though not all. I feel certain though at this moment that your essay is the best essay. It is free of ideology. It is free of the mechanical restraints imposed by theoretical physics. It is free of political and economic narrow-mindedness. It reaches into the depths of scientific learning and produces needed direction for humanity. Thank you for submitting your essay and sharing your ideas. I am immediately rating your essay an easy, deserving TEN.

James Putnam

Dear Ms. Judin,

I read your essay four times and I have to ask your forgiveness for I did not understand any of it.

For instance, you wrote: "Nonlocal consciousness is phenomena common to all." I am sure that my grasp of reality only exists here and now, once. I do not believe that I have the option of selecting any specific part of local consciousness or nonlocal consciousness. I cannot confirm that there can be a greater or lesser amount of local consciousness than there is of nonlocal consciousness. Here is immeasurable. Now is immeasurable. That is what makes here and now and me and my consciousness real. Being by nature a charitable sort of bloke, I truly feel that everyone else on the planet thinks as I do, although they may keep it to themselves.

Hesitatingly,

Joe Fisher

Margarita,

An intriguing essay. I almost now feel I like a visitor here! But are we not all temporary 'guests' in our present form? I've written a paper which implies we're anyway all 'recycled' with our galaxies at regular intervals, re-ionized to grow new molecules and new cellular life.

I then entirely agree nonlocal consciousness, but in a causal universe, not as the 'quantum nonlocality' which our incomplete understanding has left us believing in (the subject of my own effort).

Thank you for an entirely original and refreshing perspective.

Best wishes

Peter

PS. The rating buttons seem to be broken. I shall return!

I'm like Mr. Putman, Margarita, I thoroughly enjoyed your essay; you high-light a really good point with your analogous imagining. Many have argued that the evolution of technology is a random walk across design space but I think you demonstrate that the walk is highly constrained by analogy. Radical Constructivists argue that mathematics, which, it could be argued, is the foundation of science and engineering, has its foundations in nature, with abstraction a type of analogy. The same argument could be made of logic; it would seem that most, if not all, logical arguments and connectives are abstracted from observation, even infinity if you consider it a generalization of the counting numbers.

I certainly hope you're right about the restoration of balance with other cellular life forms but I sometimes wonder. I think such a restoration will require a major scientific breakthrough in energy production, containment, and transfer, something akin to cold-fusion. And the reason I find this to be so is largely due to your analogous imagining; with the advent of the global internet, wireless communications, and portable (wearable) smart devices, the human collective is transforming into an emergent global nervous system, analogous to the human nervous system, and this global nervous system is taking on a life of its own. Francis Heylighen (pg. 295) started the Global Brain Institute with a research objective aimed at generating a novel mathematical model to study this emergent phenomenon and Kevin Kelley from Wired has written a few blog posts about it. Viewed from the proper perspective, it can almost seem that humans are in servitude to this behemoth and it consumes relatively vast quantities of energy. But even the staunchest environmentalist cringes at the thought of giving up the internet; it would literally be a regress back to the "dark" ages.

Anyway, a very nice essay . . .

With regards,

Wes Hansen

Dear Margarita

I found that your excellent essay in many ways incorporates much of James Lovelock's "Gaia" theory. Perhaps more directly, it reminded me of Fritjof Capra's 1996 book "The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems" who wrote in the final chapter - Knowing That We Know:

"Identifying cognition with the full process of life - including perceptions, emotions, and behaviour - and understanding it as a process that involves neither a transfer of information nor mental representations of an outside world requires a radical expansion of our scientific and philosophical frameworks. One of the reasons why this view of mind and cognition is so difficult to accept is that it runs counter to our everyday intuition and experience. As human beings, we frequently use the concept of information and we constantly make mental representations of the people and objects in our environment.

However, these are specific characteristics of human cognition that result from our ability to abstract, which is a key characteristic of human consciousness. For a thorough understanding of the general process of cognition in living systems it is thus important to understand how human consciousness, with its abstract thought and symbolic concepts, arises out of the cognitive process that is common to all living organisms."

I believe this underscores what you have communicated in your essay.

You write:

"Although human self-awareness, constrained and fallible, lacks knowledge about position of human life in the hierarchy of cellular life, there is an accurate understanding that this position has been changing with time. The Holocene climate conditions made possible the booming growth of human population and techno-scientific advances, especially in chemical, biochemical and information technologies. We suggest that ongoing extension of the limits of specific human consciousness has been predisposed by unknown needs and interests of total cellular life and the living Earth. It seems that human consciousness is impending great changes."

I would like to speculate that humans do have an integrated purpose in life's overall hierarchical schematic that may not be obvious but is indeed driven by life's processes. From an evolutionary perspective, a possible explanation for the apparent dominance of the human species over the rest of nature, for its technological prowess, for its insatiable curiosity, for its creativity as well as for its unrelenting exploitation of its terrestrial habitat, is that all life on planet Earth must need this kind of species to enable its own evolution in order to insure its ultimate survival.

The fact that every living organism is programmed to reproduce is a fundamental aspect of nature and only in this way does the survival of any life form have a chance in the world that nature has designed. Extrapolating this insight into a cosmic perspective, we know that sooner or later life on Earth will cease to exist. Accepting the interdependent and interconnected processes of nature as you describe, then an understanding emerges that life's chances for ultimate survival can only be enhanced by promoting its propagation beyond Earth. And today, life on Earth has actually reached the point in its evolution via the human species where it would indeed be feasible for it to propagate in other parts of the universe.

Thus, if survival via propagation is the fundamental characteristic of life and that the web of life is indeed an integrated "Gaia-like" entity, then the arguments for spreading life beyond Earth are certainly more compelling than the arguments for not doing so. Life's expansion into the cosmos may or may not include humans but humans appear to be essential for that expansion to happen. By embracing this awareness and helping to propagate terrestrial life beyond the home planet, humanity could be fulfilling its ultimate purpose.

Your thoughts?

Thanks and best regards,

Arthur

Dear Margarita,

I read with great interest your depth analytical essay with interesting original conclusions that I really patches of light:

«Radical anthropocentrism made human consciousness too vulnerable and caused severe disconnection from other life forms. The most desirable for humanity is to change its views at cooperation of the life forms and the living Earth and to change human practices so these practices would be in spirit of natural engineering of the Earth by and large. In order to restore a balance with other cellular life forms and to live full-fledged lives and for sustained development humanity just has to have a push in the right direction.»

«Though anthropogenic engineering has been one of the pinnacles of collective human consciousness, the truth is that it rigorously follows the footsteps of natural control engineering. Human engineers effectively experiment, imitate and adapt logic and material design of the pre-existent natural manufacturing schemes (e. g, biosynthesis of antibiotics in nature). Imitation can be technically complicated, but it does not require new ideas and does not go beyond the bounds of consciousness of the totality of cellular life.»

«Maybe nobody yet knows what the imagining is and how it is resolved in cellular life as a whole, but humans and other cellular life observers use the imagining at all times.»

«We assume that analogous thinking in humans (here the term also covers thought experiments, mathematical modeling, music composing and other imagining) is a peculiar kind of interacting processing between a source system and an image system. As so, thinking is phenomena of hierarchical relations and energy-information exchange between an image and its sources.»

«In our view, without exceptions, technoscience achievements of the modern human life are not more than an imitation and reflection on the pre-existed phenomena of nonhuman life forms. We believe that scientific and technological achievements have become possible due to analogous imagining in cellular life observers. Human thinking originates in analogous imagining. In fact, there is no principle difference between mental construction of analogs and actual construction of the functional analogs. To create mental analogs, human and nonhuman observers employ topological mapping, or Gestalt imagining. For example, human observers employ topological mapping over the physical network of brain cells and signals.»

«The future of humanity is in an optimal transformation of the human conscience and physical body. Analogical imaging is essentially the methodology common to an exploration of the physical world and transformation of the life forms.

It is possible to "steer the future" of humanity by means of analogical imagining.»

In support of your ideas and the way to truth I give two quotations:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." (Albert Einstein)

«The truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence.» (Alexander Zenkin «Scientific Counter-Revolution in Mathematics»).

Basic science can overcome the "crisis of representation and interpretation" (T.Romanovskaya "Modern physics and contemporary art-parallels of style") is relying on imagination to make a more profound interpretation of accumulated Knowledge. Need to deepen in the "Dialectics of Nature", to see its original structure, to hear its voice and then draw the desired Eidos of the Universe. Picture of the world of physics should be the same rich meanings of the «LifeWorld» (E.Husserl) as the world picture lyricists.

Profound imagination - first assistant for deep mind. Time has come and we have to start the path together with the new Generation of the Information age, going ahead

I invite you to comment and appreciate my journey into the past and future

where I draw the path of Protogeometer and new eidos of Universe, filled with limiting thoughts of the "LifeWorld".

Best regards,

Vladimir