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Although significant evidence highlights our close genetic ties with various other species, the outward manifestations of human civilizations make us look incredibly different. And arguable as it may be that caveman with his early technologies was already quite different from other species in terms of his daily life, even he would have seen our modern world as frighteningly alien.
With the appearance of language, abstract thought, and technology in general, human development underwent a quantum leap outside normal ideas of evolution. From a process operating rather sluggishly and somewhat independently of the mind, evolutionary change caught fire by assigning the mind – abstract thought in particular – a new developmental role. The resultant transition leading up to today’s world is unparalleled in any other species. As a result, changes to human society and civilization are now dramatic and swift within a situation where the related reworking of the external world appears in constant acceleration. In terms of both cultures and environments, many people now finish life in worlds significantly different from those into which they were born.
As regards exactly what might have triggered this dramatic change, perhaps such questions are best left unanswered; it is too easy to throw the word evolution at such questions without properly acknowledging that many intellectual battles rage over the nature of evolution itself. For example, are we to be understood as just the end-product of some long organic process, or did some alien intelligence intervene at some point? And within attempts to comprehend evolutionary change, should we simply consider our biological and genetic development, or is some greater life force, god, or other metaphysical reality at work behind the scenes? It is far easier to simply contrast our modern lifestyles with how we lived many thousands of years ago than it is to explain why such significant change came about. We can at best hazard some guesses.
The cumulative process of developing new knowledge based on existing knowledge and new technologies on top of existing technologies is in any case foreign to traditional ideas of entirely organic evolution. At least as regards other species on our planet, these processes appear uniquely human developments in which abstract thought and its planned activities empower us in ever-greater ways. And notably, given there is no need to be genetically evolved from previous generations to understand and deploy new technologies, there is effectively no organically based braking mechanism on the acceleration of this process.
Consequently, and unlike other species, we have ongoing and often dramatic forms of essentially societal evolution – as evidenced by information technology’s massive cultural impact over just a few decades. More generally, through our extensive power and control over the environment, we have multiplied across the planet in a manner well beyond anything that would have been possible had abstract thinking and the recording of information not been a key part of our development.
But there are few signs any of this was ever planned – other than perhaps as a multitude of very immediate, circumstantial and highly disconnected steps. There never was any initial consideration of where our development was headed, or if the whole exercise was really beneficial in the round. It would appear evolution does not work with such long-term plans. That which prevails need only be immediately expedient, and such expediency is not diminished at all by being wholly accidental. In this sense, we have arrived at today’s situation by chance, and any idea of some grand design behind our development would therefore be misconceived.
As part of evolution in general, the human trajectory on this planet ought to be regarded through a dispassionate lens in which competition appears ruthless, no species has any right to survive, and whatever conditions favor one lifeform at any given point can dramatically change in unforeseeable manners. In short, evolution does not appear to favor any particular species – even if homo sapiens look like the current favorite.
Hence, whatever strengths we humans might think we possess, our survival is in no way guaranteed. Not only is there nothing to prevent our demise through some failure to control the whole dramatic accident that is our peculiar evolution, but our planetary dominance includes various new threats outside mainstream evolutionary theory. Like it or not, there are no historical examples to illustrate what happens when all this development hands so much power to just one species.
It is not only our propensity to massacre our own kind by the millions that looks like a new evolutionary phenomenon; the massive destruction of the biosphere by our industrial activities is another evolutionary first of increasingly disastrous and unintended consequences. Most notably, it stands as clear evidence that our actions often produce results that we neither foresee nor fully understand. By any logic, this failure to correctly predict the results of human actions proves that whatever kind of knowledge underpins our intentions, it must be at best incomplete – if not actually misguided or illusory.
Whatever the exact mechanisms behind such troubling developments might be, much scientific thinking now warns of potentially catastrophic consequences within just a few generations – not to mention believed tipping points beyond which any remedial attempts to protect the environment might simply be too little too late, amidst a sort of chain-reaction ecological collapse. Such matters may be extremely difficult to nail with any certainty, but that same lack of certainty further illustrates just how unsure we are regarding our current direction, or how we might act to correct it.
It becomes very arguable that despite being supposedly the smartest species on the planet, our very survival rests on us quickly becoming a whole lot smarter – or perhaps humbly accepting that we are simply not as smart as we like to imagine. Either way, do we have the responsibility to accept that we simply cannot carry on throwing our formidable technological weight around with the sort of reckless abandon demonstrated to date?
The gusto with which we continue technological development whilst largely ignoring the resulting problems is partly explicable in terms of the larger social structures that have replaced those associated with more primitive hominids. We are no longer confined to communities primarily based on local survivability, but see ourselves as members of nations, religions and other mass groups – sometimes numbering billions of members spread across the globe. However, depending on personal disposition, we may not feel any real connection with even our next-door-neighbors. Today’s world is increasingly one that mixes immediate anonymity with abstract sociability. In many situations we are largely indifferent to those in close proximity, whilst our friends can be physically remote people encountered by purely electronic means. We crush shoulder-to-shoulder into public transport in a state of learned non-recognition of our fellow beings, and yet we go out of our way to establish contact with others we may never meet face to face – often on the basis of some ideological affinity that is invariably learned, as opposed to a naturally occurring common interest.
The idea that all these peculiarities of our sociability produce a generally dehumanized and mechanized outlook is not hard to fathom. Formally, we are divided into nations of no meaningful configuration beyond historical happenstance. These nations are mostly just a hodgepodge of people sharing nothing in particular other than a general tendency to have the same mother tongue, limited degrees of racial commonality, some common religious orientations, and the occupation of more or less contiguous patches of land. But of course, alongside such seemingly shared orientations, many nations also embody factions that openly express bitter and murderous enmity towards one another. Therefore, it is no surprise that sustaining the overall situation requires some unifying idealization of nationhood, and this of course is the core doctrine championed by those in formal positions of power. Power has always attempted to cobble together whatever cultural elements could be dug up here and there to fabricate a notion of common identity and lend an air of legitimacy to the governing of more or less divided populations.
But in truth, the apparently shared attributes of any varied population are just more historical accidents – as opposed to anything that truly binds people within one nation separate from another. Nationalism easily reduces to nothing more than a belief-plus-propaganda tool by which populations are persuaded into unthinking subservience to those thereby presenting themselves as legitimate rulers. The overarching success of the propaganda is reflected in it being believed by many to be something far less sinister and often as a force of good. Meanwhile, any meaningful idea of a common global humanity is ironically obscured by the man-made divisions of nations.
A similar irony lies in national leaders preaching the importance of inclusivity, multiculturalism and global outlooks, at the same time as they preach the divisive notion of national greatness. If such characters really want to foster such broad-minded and global outlooks – and there are good reasons to believe that their words are but rhetoric in any case – how can any nation be considered any greater than any other? And if all nations are to be considered equally great, why have national divisions so often been vectors of man’s inhumanity to man? National greatness may help those in power appear legitimate, but only to the extent that the concept inhibits the realization that a world thus divided is also a world in which many unthinkingly seek out masters to lead them like sheep.
Quite logically, a world divided into nations can only promote and perpetuate global schisms by imposing differing fates on the world’s divided population, and by sustaining the many tensions that result. For example, the unequal distribution among nations of the world’s resources is blindingly obvious but is mostly met with indifference in high places, or mere words at most. Other major inconsistencies include the different constitutions and formalized structures of nation-states, plus the roles different state institutions play, with the levers of power being held in different configurations from nation to nation.
As regards civil laws, these obviously have no universality and what is obligatory in one nation can be outlawed in another. Belief systems form another area of significant differences, as well as metaphysical ideas – extending to the very understanding of what constitutes life, and the significance of birth and death. Even the news events that supposedly inform people of key events on our planet are in effect different for different nations, thanks to different media machines filtering and recoloring what is supposedly relevant and to be regarded as knowledge.
Who would choose any of this if planning a world where people might happily cohabit in peace? The fact that the real world is riddled with human conflict and grief amidst a gloomy outlook only serves to remind us none of this was ever planned. Who could ever have been so foolish as to choose any of it?
Our rudderless journey
As a species, we are evolutionarily adrift amidst tortuous seas. We plan immediate things and produce certain intended results on a very limited scale, but the bigger picture of human development to date remains very visibly beyond both our choosing and mastery. We may have the knowledge and technology to probe the seemingly inanimate depths of outer space, but we apparently lack any parallel knowledge and technology to make proper sense of our own conduct here on Earth.
In addition to national divides, other ideological divisions only cripple our natural ability to find common ground with our fellow humans. People starve in large numbers whilst their near-neighbors consume voraciously – extensively polluting the planet via wealthy lifestyles and narcissistic indulgence. Key natural resources are plundered by profit-driven multinational corporations – indifferent to the poisons and devastation left in their wake. In a world controlled in many ways through money and related forces, the poor are so often ignored or kept in desperate subservience by the rich-and-powerful who generally seem coldly indifferent and somehow convinced that this is all how it should be.
Supposed justifications and excuses for such a state of affairs are found within various contrived forms of ideological thinking that seek to shape cultural values and popular narratives. For example, the powers-that-be promote the supposed importance of creating wealth – usually through economic ploys that only reward the already-rich even more, and thereby further deepen wealth inequalities. But the obvious fact from a more honest perspective is that money of itself is utterly useless. As organic beings, the real wealth on which we depend is the living biosphere. The matter could not be simpler; without other lifeforms, we all die. However, this simple truth has somehow been obscured – so much so that many do not recognize it even when stated so bluntly. As a result of the deception sustaining all this, today’s supposed providers of what is at best a surrogate form of wealth – money – are nebulous entities such as a healthy economy and business performance: conceptual masks that seek to disguise centralized and authoritarian control of both natural and artificial resources.
When even the basic ability to simply work for the direct benefit of those in one’s local community has long been privatized within the legal constraints of employment, those of controlling power in today’s business world cunningly paint themselves as job creators – even as they unhesitatingly close non-profitable factories and actively create unemployment under the euphemism of rationalization. And perhaps it is only through a learned fear of questioning the prevailing order that people generally remain submissive in the face of such external control over their fates. The result in any case is a form of global indoctrination reducing both labor and its fruits to monetary values, with financial gain and products – as opposed to the natural world – being the supposed provider of human welfare.
However, to reflexively label as hypocritical any such attempted justifications for the massive wealth inequalities haunting this planet is arguably to misunderstand how thoroughly and easily any of us can acquiesce to socially accepted ideas – especially when mainstream culture presents such ideas as respectable. Flattering images of the self, together with positions that defend against potential criticisms, are things that sustain self-esteem for all of us, and are no doubt subliminally internalized at deep emotional levels. So, is for example the national leader who preaches peace but dispatches young soldiers to unthinkingly kill complete strangers who happen to wear different uniforms really to be understood by simply hurling the word hypocrite at him?
Popular narratives challenging the economic control of the world – typically bundled together as left-wing ideas in opposition to capitalism – generally fail to look beyond the conventional boundaries within which this whole debate is framed. The proposed redistribution of wealth or suggested state control of certain resources rarely asks what properly constitutes wealth, or what might constitute truly meaningful values for humans to share. Even within seemingly radical doctrines, core notions of property ownership, monetary exchange, and systems of law and order are generally seen as givens that merit no direct questioning. Similarly, the basic idea of formalized power rarely comes under the spotlight as an inherent source of problems – even when historically it is a well-established vector of corruption that has afflicted all sorts of regimes.
Left-wing challenges have tended to simply advocate alternative structures of power and wealth within approaches now shown to have potentially disastrous results. Consequently, based on extensive human suffering and oppression now associated with certain historical implementations of these ideas – notably totalitarian incarnations of communism – they have been somewhat marginalized by the very voices of power and wealth they once sought to unseat. In its various flavors, left-wing ideology is obviously still widely expressed, but it is often rendered impotent or politically hijacked as mere window-dressing amidst what many see as a general slide towards global capitalism. At least, such is the situation at the time of writing. But the history of political ideologies has often reflected a pendulum action between unsatisfactory extremes and the indecisive confusion that constitutes the middle ground.
No matter how horrific the excesses of right-wing regimes may have been from time to time, it seems the left has never formulated a sound counter-narrative that goes much beyond merely spotlighting those excesses – the pointing of fingers at undesirable social outcomes being far easier than explaining their true background. And whenever leftist ideas have managed to dominate, it has too often resulted in nothing more than alternative excesses and different horrors. So, given both sides of the conventional political spectrum effectively see formalized power, private property, and monetary exchange as givens, they can in fact be seen as forming a rather one-dimensional argument that does little other than periodically rebalance itself. Neither end of the spectrum offers a true alternative to the troublesome confrontation that results from the unhappy coexistence of both. Hence, when no meaningful cultural debates embody more encompassing perspectives, it is no wonder the arguments simply rage on with no end in sight – not least of all because a squabbling citizenry is politically disempowered.
Formalized power as a problem
The bigger problem in all this can be conceived as formalized power itself – if not something deep in human psychology that currently manifests itself as a conviction formalized power is an essential ingredient of any successful human cohabitation. Due to the difficulty minds have if they try to conceive of a significantly different world – for example, one devoid of the sort of power bases we currently have – almost all debates unwittingly presume formalized power simply must be included within whatever world they contemplate.
Given such a presumption, even the most apparently revolutionary proposals are invariably flavored with some form of power-favoring conservatism – usually in the interests of pandering to popular opinion and gaining traction. Virtually all political thinking engenders this philosophical inertia behind some façade that pretends to offer change – thereby suppressing truly critical thinking and real imagination as regards how humans might transcend their self-imposed form of autocracy.
The underlying psychological mechanics are easily comprehended. In proportion to whatever political power anyone wields, that person is naturally inclined to oppose anything that jeopardizes their power – quite regardless of any particular idea’s nature, or whatever support it might enjoy. Similarly, to the degree that power is likely to be increased by certain other ideas, those in power are inclined to support those ideas – again, regardless of whatever popularity or opposition exists. In short, those of political power are heavily inclined to vote for themselves above any principles or soundness of ideas.
These self-serving attitudes of individuals readily scale up to groups of all sorts and to entire nations, global corporations, and all other human power structures – political parties being just one vehicle by which those in formal power work to consolidate their position. And regardless of ongoing superficial societal modifications, this will all remain fundamentally unchanged if cultural awareness fails to acknowledge and address the use of formality and social institutions for the achievement of individualistic goals that are potentially to the general detriment. Whoever holds an institutional position of power knows that power awarded to that institutional position is in part power awarded to themselves. Why would they rock such a boat?
Long-term, the resultant process is inherently unstable: effectively a one-way ratchet in which, other things being equal, power structures expand in carcinogenic manners that eventually attack their own healthy tissue. By such a process, even the most powerful empires to date have tended to eventually eat themselves from the inside out – rampant societal exploitation eventually creating problems within increasingly dysfunctional, duplicitous and hypocritical social orders.
Even putting aside the occasional media exposure of scandals in high places, real-life examples of corrupting incentives are easy to spot. For example, within a marginal political party trying to gain power, it is typical that members struggle to agree whether to stick rigidly to whatever principles their party espouses, or whether to compromise towards mainstream ideas in the interests of gaining political traction and popularity. Effectively, this is a choice between being honest with the world whilst accepting whatever loss of popularity that entails, or being somewhat dishonest in the hope that the skilled manipulation of other minds plus limited subservience to existing power will win some share of that power. Such reworking of original party goals to bring them more in line with the ideas of existing power bases is a recognized way to increase popularity, if nonetheless a pact with the devil inasmuch as the party only achieves its ends through deception and a loss of integrity.
Hence, many in politics who begin with principles only achieve power by more or less abandoning those principles. In contrast, any radical factions staying truer to their ideals likely have to struggle in the political wilderness or, should they manage to attract serious public support in manners likely to shake things up, expect smear campaigns or even nasty accidents.
Meanwhile, frank examination suggests modern governments have largely conceded their traditional political power to the shadowy world of economic interests. When even the most powerful governments of the largest and most militarized nations still face some token level of public scrutiny that in minimal manners curtails their worst excesses, the apparent legitimacy thus created proves the ideal guise behind which other entities can flex their muscles. In truth, whilst many minds still believe their governments generally act on their behalf and that elections allow citizens’ voices to be heard in some small way, such perceptions have largely been hijacked as part of a grand subterfuge in which many governments do little other than rubber-stamp the wishes of big business interests. The truth of many nations is that corporate lobby groups shower politicians with campaign funds and other perks in return for legislative favors and influence, with the politicians themselves often having similar business interests – a situation in which the overall nepotism is too opaque and extensive to ever be properly disentangled. And matters might be considered even worse given the addition of certain highly secretive and autonomous government bodies that are in fact barely answerable to governments at all, but nonetheless ruthlessly engaged in various power-plays that keep themselves well-funded as they go about who-knows-what behind their cloak of state secrets.
To better understand how so much deception operates on such a grand scale and yet remains only marginally visible, there is no need to enter the inventive world of so-called conspiracy theories. Basically, the situation is simply about formalized and hierarchically structured power operating within a trickle-down model of authority that inhibits each level from revealing what would otherwise be seen as the wrongdoings of those higher up. In practice, matters are somewhat complicated by hierarchical structures intersecting with each other, as well as structures that openly oppose others, but the basic principle remains sound and effective given that almost all people are consciously committed to one or more powerful structures – typically their nation, religion or the business that employs them.
As an example of how this plays out, mainstream commercial media can be observed to generally avoid head-on criticisms of the prevailing social order lest they offend their paymasters and owners – usually agenda-driven businesses. Consequently, as otherwise self-serving entities, media outlets protect themselves and thrive by perfecting various means of holding the public’s attention for advertising revenues whilst not actually being honest to the point that audiences realize their minds are being exploited. And as regards the psychological mechanics of this particular example, it is notable that commercially successful publicity usually involves some deliberate softening, dimming or narrowing of consciousness, given that an alert, open and critical mind can more easily see through the ruses involved in promoting consumer services and products.
No sooner did modern culture realize just how comprehensively people’s viewpoints and behavior can be influenced by subverting their more rational thought processes than this truth was seized upon by businesses and politicians alike to mold the public’s conduct in manners designed to sugar-coat what is in truth brainwashing. The fact that whole populations can be manipulated through their emotions has no doubt been understood by a few since antiquity, but the rise of modern psychology allowed this to become an industry in its own right, with the mass manipulation of minds having since spawned various lucrative and superficially respectable business fields.
As regards avoiding accusations of conspiracy theories over just how extensive this phenomenon really is, one only needs to consider the sheer scale of modern publicity, or the hysteria and propaganda of the modern political campaign. In both cases, ruthless appeals to rather animal instincts are at best covered by the thinnest veneers of rationality. The truth is effectively hidden in full view for anyone who cares to take a stark look at just how unthinkingly others around them are drawn into such mind-colonizing ploys. Social media’s deliberately addictive aspects perhaps represent the most effective form to date.
The necessary distortion and suppression of truth within hierarchical power structures can operate with little awareness at any level of what is actually afoot in terms of psychological trickery. Hence, any conspiracy theories suggesting everything is planned and orchestrated from on-high only throw minds off the scent by detracting from the nebulous complexity with which these things operate. Perhaps that is in part why conspiracy t