Today’s Post

Last week we saw how, although there are risks to the continuation of human evolution in our perennial (but so far successful) break-fix-break cycle, faith in our ability to manage this cycle is more important than the expertise we develop to invent fixes to those things we break.

This week we will take a second look at these ‘Noospheric’ risks from the perspective of our place in the upsweep of cosmic evolution.

The Fragility of Evolution

Consider that the enterprise of cosmic evolution is itself a risky business. Science sees evolution occurring when the ‘stuff of the universe’ which emerges from the ‘big bang’ seemingly thumbs its nose at entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics by which each unification of particles of like matter comes at a cost of available energy. Such unification may well, says science, contribute to evolution by an increase in complexity, but at the same time is accompanied by a small loss of energy. By this understanding of Physics, the universe begins with a certain quantum of energy, and as soon as it begins it starts running down.

In seeming opposition, not only do things evolve while this is happening, but they evolve from simple configurations to more complex ones. As Steven Pinker points out in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, since there are obviously many more ways for things to be un-complex (disorderly, even chaotic) than there are for things to be complex (more orderly), the very existence of evolution seems counter to the Second Law. According to Pinker, “Evolution occurs against the grain.”

Worse yet, complex entities are clearly more fragile than simpler ones. In the example of DNA molecules, which contain the ‘data’ which guide a living entity toward its development, it employs such a stunning magnitude of components that it is more susceptible to cosmic radiation and random fluctuations than a simple molecule. Any ‘rise in complexity’ clearly is in opposition to the ‘rise in chaos’ potentially resulting from such effects.

Still worse yet, As Teilhard observes, while nature seems to have a built-in ‘agent of complexity’ by which its elements can unite to increase their complexity, (and without which evolution could not proceed) this factor becomes secondary to continued evolution when it enters the realm of the human and now requires ‘cooperation’. As Richard Dawkins sees it, “Genes are replaced by ‘memes’ as the agent of evolution in humans”.

Once humans acquire the capability of ‘reflective consciousness’, by which they are ‘aware of their awareness’, the rules change once again. In the human person, evolution must now be chosen if it is to continue.

So What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

But if evolution needs to be ‘chosen’ to continue, what’s involved in choosing it? Restating and simplifying the Teilhard quote from last week:

“(we need) to be quite certain… that the (future) into which (our) destiny is leading is not a blind alley where the earth’s life flow will shatter and stifle itself.”

   Such ‘choice’ requires ‘trust’.

We saw in the last three posts how common it is to engage in denial of progress and how such denial reflects a fear of the future. We also touched on the fact that such fear can be (and so often has been) seized upon by populists who offer themselves as bulwarks against the woes of the future if only we would trust them. Their first move is to insist that there is much to be feared, then to begin to use this fear to undermine trust in the Western structures of society (effectively a grouping of ‘memes’) which they claim to have unleashed such woes as the free press, individual freedoms and open immigration.   Other Western liberal practices are also denigrated, such as the development of a global infrastructure by which every advance, such as those reported by Norberg, can be shared globally and hence contribute to worldwide progress. While walling off the rest of the world may shut us in, it is advertised as necessary to make us safe.

Once traditional Western norms can no longer be trusted, Teilhard’s ‘psychisms’ (identified last week as not only one of the fruits of these norms but an essential component of continued evolution) will become less efficacious and over time will begin to fail to mitigate the inevitably unwanted side effects that result from future inventions such as new sources of energy.

So, while Norberg’s quantification of human progress is in optimistic agreement with Teilhard, the risks are nonetheless substantial and cannot be overlooked. Evolution is in our hands, and stewardship of its continuation requires a clear-headed knowledge of the past, a commitment to the energy of evolution as it rises in the human species and confidence in the future. In the words of Teilhard:

“..the view adopted here of a universe in process of general involution upon itself comes in as an extremely simple way of getting past the dead end at which history is still held up, and of pushing further towards a more homogenous and coherent view of the past.”

   Yuval Harari opines in his book, “Sapiens” that consciousness is an “evolutionary mistake” and is certainly sure to lead to an early (by evolutionary standards) extinction of the human species. While his book shows ignorance of evolutionary history (as documented by Teilhard) and recent human history (as documented by Norberg), the fact that human consciousness is a two-edged sword cannot be denied.

 

The Next Post

 

This week we took a second look at the second and more serious category of risks to human evolution. Recognizing the ‘fragility’ of evolution, we acknowledged the ongoing risks of fixing what we have broken (the ‘structural’ risks). But we also noted the greater risk, the ‘Noospheric’ risk, which lies in the possibility of losing faith in our historically proven ability to, as Teilhard says,

“…continually find new ways of arranging (our) elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space” by “a rise in interiority and liberty within a whole made up of reflective particles that are now more harmoniously interrelated.”

   In short, the interruption of this “rise in interiority and liberty” will stifle the flow of evolution in the human species.

Next week we will sum up where we’ve been in tracing Teilhard’s ‘articulation of the noosphere’ through Norberg’s enumeration of the articulations and arriving at the risks evolution introduces as it enters into the realm of the human.