Sorry for the late reply. I wanted to reply during the weekend but it seems my weekends are getting busier than ever. It is as if I recuperate through the whole week just to face another weekend onslaught.
Anyway, I said the following earlier.
betazed said:
i.e. that person is easily replaced and easily available. What is not replaceable is the circumstance that has to come up all by itself. Some random chance/event.
Actually, that makes me optimistic. But more on that later.
I need to clarify why I am optimistic that major changes do not need/depend upon individual people (or even groups of people). But first some more clarifications. What change are we talking of?
cheetah said:
please tell me betazed, what positive changes are we longing for? I mean, democracy isn't working, communism isn't working and dictatorships are just as bad, right?
The changes that I most long for to happen are social changes. This is not because social changes are the most important. Technological changes are also important. But technological changes happen very easily. OTOH, social changes happen very slowly if at all. We have had only minor social changes in the last 2000 years. In fact we can find societies in many parts of the world where social changes have been absent for the last 2000 years. Parts of the muslim world, sub-saharan africa, villages in china and india all come to mind. Even in the western world there has been little social change for the last 1000 years. Most would say that the treaty reached in the peace of Westphalia gave birth to the nation states and started a major social change. I doubt it. It just elevated the anarchy among small individuals groups to the anarchy of nations (which are just larger individual groups). If I want to see a fundamental social change i have to go back to the rise of agriculture. In the same token industrialization did bring a little social change (but not much and nothing compared to agriculture).
So now that we understand that we are focusing on social changes for the time being, what kind of social changes are we looking for? I would like to see the following social changes (stated here as examples. They are not mutually exclusive or a complete set of what I would like to see changed)
(a) a liberation from the us vs. them mentality
(b) a long term pov giving human development some sort of teleology
(c) a innate desire to "better" ourselves
(d) related to (c) ceasing of the personal aggrandizement as the main driver for most of our actions by are large
let me expand on each of them a bit before continuing further.
IMHO, (a) is the root cause of allmost all conflicts worldwide today. Most conflicts are extremely silly based on national pride or ego and sometimes because of ideologies which are barely separable from each other. I do think that sometimes there is a creative element in conflict (like the extensive impetus to technology that was provided by the world wars) but the cost is too high and the benefits too sparse. I fail to see any benefit that can be achieved from acts like flag waving, line drawing on a map, and stating my God is better than your God. And all this comes precisely from the fact that we arbitrarily draw a distinction between us and them. But qualitatively and quantitatively there is no distinction between us and them. However, evolutionary speaking this distinction did serve a purpose. Hence it has been perpetuated. Now it holds us back. We need the change that will emancipate us from this particular shackle. But for this the change has to go extremely deep and change something fundamental in our psyche. No one man can do this for certain. In fact I am not even sure how this can be done (short of actual genetic modification - which is another can of worms) apart from a small incentive that i mention next.
continuing to (b). For all of evolution on earth all changes have been random. There has been no plan and no goal. But today humans are unique in the sense that we can plan and if we wish we can have goals and actively pursue them. We do it regularly in our personal lives. But on the whole we rarely do it in any larger scale. The larger the scale the more rare it gets. Nation states plan occasionally, with attention spans of a few years at most - with plans and goals changing with every government. ( In this sense Chinese communism is actually better than US democracy. They can plan for decades and execute projects that take decades. for example the Three Gorges Dam - the wisdom of which is of course debatable... but we digress. The best US has done is a decade at most. ) Beyond nation states it is non-existent. However, it is obvious that many large scale projects which will be crucial to humanity in the future will require the resources of more than one nation state and will also require planning and action for much longer than a few years. Right now we do not have the structure to pursue a project that would take say 50 years even without international cooperation. This is because we do not have a goal to push towards or even agree on. We cannot even decide on the fact that we actually need a goal. But humanity desperately needs one to help get rid of (a) above. It could provide a unifying impetus. The goal could be the 'them' we need so that 'us' can be together. We need a modicum of teleology.
(c) and (d). I will refrain in defining what actually is 'better' compared to what we are now that we should strive for. It will take much more wisdom than mine to come to that conclusion. But there must be a better. We cannot surely be the paragon of excellence that can be attained using the laws of the universe. But right now we mostly define better (and the related concept of success) by the amount of resources a person can garner for himself. Seems to me that is a very poor definition of success and better - not the least because the number of humans are increasing at a rate much more that the total amount of resources available to us. Hence, by that definition of success and better most humans are headed towards being a failure and being worse of. Not an optimistic proposition. To live a comfortable life some amount of resources are necessary but surely that cannot be the end all and be all of living.
Now, coming back to the original question of my optimism.
It must be plenty obvious by now that no single human (or group of humans) can make so fundamental changes to us. faced with such changes every one of us including all the historical figures are just non-entities incapable of making any change. Yet social changes happen however slowly. why? because change can be induced on us by both external and internal factors which do not depend on individuals.
External factors like drastic climate change or an asteroid impact for example would necessarily force on us social change in order to survive. That social change would be very much an evolution in overdrive. Only the part of humanity that makes the necessary social change will survive. The more drastic the external event the more drastic the change. But the problem with this scenario is that it is completely unpredictable. Although a silly part of me actually longs for such a change I understand that it is as probable for us to become hunter gatherers as a result of such a drastic external event as for us to become 'enlightened angels' (whatever that may be). yes, the K/T event brought us here but I am not sure another K/T is what we are looking for.
Internal factors are much more interesting. The major internal factor is technology. The progress of technology is relentless and it will happen because it depends not on any particular individual but because we humans are bestowed with another extremely lucky gift in our genes. Curiosity. {Here I see the obvious objection. technological change is brought about by individuals largely. So how can I say that this does not depend on individuals? I say it because while the proximate cause of all technological change is some individual or other the ultimate cause is always our innate curiosity. Take out any of the individuals who made the changes and the change would still happen some time or other proximately caused by another individual. Yes, Einstein gave us General Relativity. However, if Einstein did not give it to us I am sure someone else would have maybe not then but maybe 50 or 100 years later. } We all know how agriculture gave us a huge social change impetus. Now imagine two more technological changes. Cheap, clean energy (controlled fusion?) and biologically better humans. If either of these two things are possible, someone somewhere will get to it. And once the genie is out of the bag, we will be forced to face it. Some fundamental changes are bound to occur.
So it is nice that social changes do not require individuals. Because if it did then IMHO we would be in a fix for at least I cannot see how a single individual would go about doing that change. However, external and internal factors are excellent drivers for change. But whether future factors will actually bring about the changes (a), (b), etc. is another matter altogether. I give us 50-50 chance.
Sorry for the long post. I tried to be concise - and i actually skipped much of what I wanted to say. For example, a key concept that I would have loved to elaborate on is a concept from sociobiology called Phylogenetic Inertia which is particularly relevant for this discussion when applied to human behavioral traits. another idea i would love to discuss about (not just go on in a monologue) would be the concept of individualism that is so innate in us and how it relates to the social structures that are possible for humans. How important is it? Is it that worthy as it is hyped about in our literature? What is the problem in being for example a Borg? More on these some other time perhaps.
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