Today’s Post

Over the past few weeks we have been addressing the ‘Cosmic Spark’, the principle of ontological development of the universe by which it comes to be and continues its increase in complexity from the big bang all the way to the human-unique ‘awareness of consciousness.’  We have looked at this ‘principle’ as one which requires both recognition and cooperation if human evolution can be expected to continue.  Evolution is now in our hands.

We have traced awareness of this Cosmic Spark first through the attempts of religions and philosophies to ‘articulate the noosphere’, then through the rise of science as this articulation took on greater empiricism, then through how the pace of human evolution, as quantified by objectively measured and rapid increases in human welfare, has risen over the past hundred fifty years first in the West, then spreading rapidly through the ‘developing world’.

This is an astoundingly optimistic outlook, one which Johan Norberg, who chronicles such a viewpoint admits is difficult to share in the face of a steady drumbeat of a perceived ‘march towards the dogs’.  We have discussed this strange phenomena as can be found in the negative fibers in our Western religion, as well as the nihilism of Nietzsche and the failed police states, but there are others, more neurological in nature, which are more insidious and hence more dangerous, at work.

The Fruits of Negativity

One would think after reading Norberg’s nine specific measures of the phenomenal improvement in the human condition over the past hundred fifty years, a ‘microblink’ in the history of universal evolution, that there would be every reason to see ourselves, especially in the West but as emerging worldwide, as living in a true ‘Golden Age’.  The reduction in warfare, increase in life span, reductions in disease and hunger, and rapid reductions in poverty, all delineated by Norberg, present a powerful picture of ‘Progress’.  Rapid advances in technology make our lives more comfortable, and the explosion of communications links us together in a way that would have seemed to pure magic just a generation ago.

But an undercurrent of dissatisfaction beneath all this cannot be ignored.  Even the most casual subscriber to social media, or follower of disturbing political trends such as extreme Nationalism, hints of resurgence of racism, feelings of ‘unfairness’ and inequality, quickly realizes that there trends in society which generally work against the idea of a ‘Cosmic Spark’.

And of course, our propensity for more and better connectivity itself can be a ‘two-edged sword’.  Resentments that have been built up over the past seventy years have created the perception of inequality out of control, even among those who are well off.  How can I be ‘well off’ if there’s somebody out there better off than I, and look at the benumbing volume of data that pushes this in my face every day?

To some extent, the ‘egality’ of social media (amplified by our rapidly polarizing politics) has stripped the cover of ‘political correctness’ (once referred to as ‘politeness’) from social intercourse and introduced the ‘right to indignation’.  The image this conjures is unhappy persons sitting behind dimly lit, spittle-covered computer screens and hurling invective into a coarse, hostile but ever-welcoming neuro netscape.

But is there anything new here?  Can’t we find such invective in our holy books?  Haven’t prophets for centuries predicted our long, slow but inevitable descent toward ‘the dogs’, (even if the poet Jeanette Walworth could remind us, “The dogs have had an awful wait.”)?

It’s certainly true that the internet provides us with a megaphone of unprecedented size, scope and volume, as well as an anonymity which eludes consequences.    The imprimatur which validates our messages is simply the volume of ‘likes’ from the logosphere.  Memes survive in a sort of crude Darwinism in which ‘the fittest’ becomes the ‘most popular’, and the most popular is increasingly that pitched at the lowest denominator of human emotion.

So, what is actually new about this phenomenon, other than perhaps its technology-driven unprecedented size, scope and volume?  Further, why should it be considered more threatening to our continued evolution?

The Next Post

This week we continued our look at the ‘flip side’ of Norberg’s (and Teilhard’s) profound and well documented affirmations of ‘human progress’, which optimism, (if one is to believe in the rising tide of pessimism as found in today’s politics and social media) is not necessarily shared at large.

Next week we will look more closely at the truly unprecedented roots of this phenomenon.