The Core of a Sapient Society

The University of Noesis

It has been a while since my last blog on education. Being back in the classroom after a three month hiatus on sabbatical has refreshed my sense of mourning for the loss of education with a human purpose, as opposed to training for getting a job. In that vein I can only dream of a future, after the bottleneck, when more sapient humans have reorganized a social structure based on true understanding.

Back in June 2009, I mused about the possibility of a sapient society which would be organized according to my notions of hierarchical management (you can find a whole series about sapient governance here). At the core of this sapient society would be an institution resembling today's university, called The University of Noesis (for a review of the noetic - knowledge - hierarchy, take a look at: "What Is Knowledge - The Noetic Hierarchy). I put knowledge at the epitome of what a society should be, and hence, a university — a place of learning and discovery — at the center of such a society.

I'd like to flesh out this idea a bit more. How might a university actually take the place of what we think of now as a government, at least the highest offices, and how would it be structured to serve a sapient society. Remember, this is all premised on the notion that humans will have evolved to be much more sapient than is the current case. I have no illusions that what I envision here could ever take hold in societies comprised of the current species. For the moment then, consider it an exercise in futuristic science fiction.

Knowledge and the power to do good

Even among us Homo pseudosapiens (my binomial nomenclature version for the current extant species) we recognize that knowledge is power. Where we tend to go wrong is in conceptualizing that power as an ability to work our wills on other. We think of using that power for our own individual betterment or aggrandizement rather than how it can be used for the maintenance and possible betterment of our societies. Oh, yes, there have been leaders who have gained power with the intent to do good. But there is also tremendous truth in the saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even a man like Lincoln, who in my opinion may have been the last 'wise' American President (OK, Franklin Roosevelt might have had a smattering) might have gone bad had he not been assassinated. Same for John Kennedy. These presidents were popular (and also hated in some corners - obviously) and after their deaths we have elevated them to fairly high stature. But my own suspicions are that men like these would have eventually succumbed to tendencies toward autocratism. Popularity and power seem to give men in office a license to rule with more of an iron fist. Look at the Bush/Cheney duo (if they had gone to a costume party dressed as a horse, guess which one would have been the head!)

Knowledge has always had this two-edged sword aspect. We learned how to split atoms and proceeded to build a bomb; actually quite a few bombs as it turned out. We learned how to produce fertilizers from natural gas and oil and proceeded to revolutionize agriculture enabling the doubling of population in less than a human lifetime. We invented this really promising communications technology called television and proceeded to dumb down our minds with it. Same comment about this medium I'm currently using — the Internet! Adam was reported to have taken a bite of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I think he must have gotten his bite from the evil side.

Wisdom surely must be in how one uses knowledge for the good of all. And today there are simply few to no wise leaders to guide our governments in the constructive use of knowledge. We don't elect wise people to office because they are not valued in our modern societies the way they were in more ancient times (and I mean before the rise of civilizations). Wisdom isn't an easy thing to spot if you aren't just a little wise yourself. If you are wise enough you will recognize really powerful wisdom in someone else just as now we can recognize intelligence and creativity in others who posses more of those capacities than we do ourselves¹. Alas, most of the electorate do not possess even a smattering of wisdom so that they can recognize it in others and recognize the value of it for society. Instead they recognize charisma and identify with candidates who they imagine to be somewhat like themselves. The rednecks could imagine having a beer with Bush while watching a NASCAR race of TV. Many folks, revolted by the heartlessness that became apparent in Bush turned to Obama as someone who really cared and represented change. Of course, no one knew exactly what kind of change to expect, but as long as it was different from Bush! We could even tolerate the fact that Obama seemed to be smarter than the average bear.

The last example of a wise leader that I can remember was Nelson Mandela. When he took office it must have been tempting to him to want to exact revenge on the apartheid-believing whites in South Africa. They had certainly abused him over the years. But he resisted any such temptation and sought reconciliation instead, helping that nation transition from the former cruel exclusive white rule to one in which peoples of all colors could participate. And then he retired without taking advantage of his power.

Unfortunately this indictment of government applies equally well to universities and education in general. One might think that the university environment would attract wise individuals, or those with the potential to acquire wisdom over their lives. Indeed, I have met many more people in academia who seemed to me to be excellent candidates for being considered wise, certainly more wise than the general populace. However, these are rarely the ones who end up as academic administrators. The latter positions seemed to be peopled by individuals who follow the same pattern as politicians, and more recently, business executives. They are definitely smart or clever. But they make many foolish decisions. Want proof? Just take a look at the conditions of the modern university (both public and private). Universities are being corporatized. University presidents are commanding increasingly substantial salaries, many more times greater than that of full professors or even deans. The current culture of education is that students are kinds of customers and faculty are held accountable for performance standards. The latter is a societal response (or knee jerk) to perceived declines in universities being able to crank out more cogs for the economic wheels. In general the public wants their sons and daughters to go to college so that they can get good, high paying jobs. Well, when wisdom is missing from the social milieu, I guess this makes sense.

So the modern university is not actually a model for a noetic core. But the original conceptualization of what a university could be remains viable. We just need wise sages to be the directors.

Colleges

Colleges and schools are operational units that provide an important perspective on knowledge. Today they seem to act more like silos for specialization, particularly the so-called professional schools. Nearly everyone accepts, today, the dictum that we all have to specialize in something, that no one can know everything needed to be a successful generalist. Hardly anyone questions this dictum. It would seem to be self-evident and therefore beyond questioning, like an axiom in mathematics. Well I question it. It isn't that someone can be a master of any specialization. You still need to focus in on particulars to achieve expertise. What I question is the way in which this is accomplished to the exclusion of a broad generalist education. In my series on the science of systems I have tried to argue that there is a fundamental and universal set of principles that can be applied to all other areas of knowledge. If students were to learn these principles as principles early in their lives they would be in a much better position to pursue essentially anything they found of interest. Learning systems science necessarily involves exposure to many different fields of study for examples to show the universality of the language of systems. This gives students a Rosetta Stone, a common language that allows translations across specific fields of study. At my campus we are perennially agonizing over the desire to have real interdisciplinary research and curriculum. I just participated in another such 'conversation' the other day. I didn't say anything. I just listened to what others were saying. Sadly the same old voices complained about the same old problems (barriers to implementation - lack of financial resources) and never once raised the possibility that the whole issue was improperly framed. I maintain a simple position on this. If you are naturally inclined to think of knowledge as integrated and practice interdisciplinarity as a matter of course, the rest will follow. If you can only imagine interdisciplinarity as being achieved by team teaching a course (very expensive to do) with the hope that each of the professors will bring their disciplinary perspective and the mashup will somehow convey this sense of integrated understanding to students, then you are guaranteed to fail. Every professor should first achieve interdisciplinary thinking in his or her own head before trying to teach multiple subjects. There used to be several terms for people who had mastered several disciplines. We called them Renaissance men (back then there were no references to Renaissance women, but such did exist!) or, more recently, polymaths².

A sapient college would be an academy of polymathic sages, seers, and philosophers (a PhD literally means a doctorate of philosophy; guess how many required philosophy courses are taken by modern doctoral students!) who have agreed to look at the wealth of knowledge from a general perspective. I can think of three in particular:

• College of Science
• College of Esthetics
• College of Practical Arts

The differentiation here is purely practical. Each college needs facilities, e.g. labs and studios, particular to the major perspective. Clearly someone studying a practical art like engineering will have also learned a great deal of science.

As I would envision it every student would learn systems science in their pre-college years (K-12 under our current system). They would do this by exploring their interests under the guidance of coaches and tutors (the word teacher is no longer descriptive of the kind of mentor-like personage I have in mind). Then they would begin their in-earnest and in-depth exploration of life, knowledge, and understanding by attending sessions from all three colleges. By iterating over the years through these three perspectives students should become more polymathic. And with the predominant role model being the wise persons professing, students should be on their way to realizing their potential as sapient beings.

The Rings of Noesis

The University of Noesis would be organized in a set of concentric rings, similar to the societal architecture suggested in A Sapient Society. I imagine there would be at least three rings, probably more. The outermost ring would be essentially what we today would recognize as the baccalaureate level. This is the ring through which most of the populace would go. It is sometimes hard to remember that level of sapience and level of intelligence and creativity, while correlated to some degree, are definitely not the same thing. Some of our wisest examples in history have been simple people with basic intelligence. One does not need to be a genius to be wise. I expect this will continue to be the case in that distant imagined future sapient society. Not everyone will need to attain higher levels of formal education. If I am right about the nature of sapience, people will learn how to become lifelong self-learners through this outer ring level. They will continue to seek intellectual and aesthetic satisfactions in learning new things and new skills throughout their lives. They will be the citizens contributing to the work being done in the outer ring of the societal architecture. With the kind of education envisioned here every person should be able to learn any number of jobs and not be stuck in a mind-numbing one.

The next inner ring, equivalent to the Master's degree in today's universities, would be for people who have higher levels of both sapience and cleverness that will be needed for them to perform duties in the second ring of the societal architecture, the tactical and logistical governance, arts and letters, science and technology, etc.

The inner ring is where those very special people with the highest levels of sapience would essentially go into an extended apprenticeship for the strategic level of governance in society. This would include people who will spend their time in later life being the guides and teachers in the other rings. Unlike a PhD today, this education is to prepare people to be the leaders and societal trustees in the future. The best and brightest, most sapient, would eventually become the wise council of elders. There need be no particular time limit on this education (or on the other rings either). The important thing is to build a lifetime of tacit knowledge that will contribute to their abilities to guide society.

Duties Not Classes

The segregation of people into levels of education based on different competencies need not imply a class-based social milieu. The very nature of sapience precludes pseudusapiens' ambitions, competitions for prestige, and most certainly aggregated wealth from coming into play in the social dynamic. Once a certain level of wisdom obtains, it will become clear to all (except possible throwbacks if they exist!) that self aggrandizement helps no one in the end. Rather a sapient being sees their education and the work they do as duties to mankind. Today's humans cannot live in a truly socialistic system so this image of a functioning society is impossible. Those who rail against socialism recognize this even if they are not able to see beyond our current biological limitations and imagine a world in which life could be lived in this kind of harmony. They intuitively know that we are not prone to socialism because of our limbic drives that are still more powerful than our judgment and moral sentiments (sapience). They are, essentially, just being realists in this regard.

The Objective of Education

In the end there is only one real objective to education. And that is to allow all of the members of society live in harmony while each individual reaches a self-actualized state, essentially enlightenment.

This should be true even for us poor pseudosapiens but unfortunately we aren't wise enough to see it or do it. As a result our impulses to produce something called an education system come up short of the ideal objective. But we are doing the best we can under the circumstances. No one is to blame for the state of affairs. We are evolving culturally and biologically and have started from ignorance. We humans haven't actually done such a bad job considering how evolution works. So I don't want to sound like I am beating up my colleagues or society in general. The problem is that we just haven't yet reached a stage where we can get beyond what now seems like petty human foibles. We've always had a sense that we are sinners, imperfect beings striving for something more perfect. Most of our major religions teach something along these lines. But we didn't have the depth of knowledge of evolution, biology, neruopsychology, etc. to see that our imperfections are inherent for now. My great hope is that there are more than a small number of people out there who can grasp this limitation for what it is and also recognize that transcending it will require more evolution. Our species must give rise to something new and more along the lines of a sapient being.

Additionally it would be nice if we pseudosapiens could use our intellects (which are quite developed) to see this and take action to help the process along. It would be like an investment in the future of humanity. Sometimes investments require sacrifice in the present (bankers are apparently excluded from this generalization). It also requires appreciating that the payoff of the investment will more than compensate our genus as a whole. And the best investment I can imagine is one in a noetic university precursor.

Knowledge and the Guidance of Society

It might not be obvious but the guidance (governance) of society emerges quite naturally from a system in which citizens are educated in the manner I'm describing and from the fact that they are all truer sapients than we currently have in our species.

Unlike our current views of a government as an authoritarian entity able to tax and enforce rules, a sapient society's governance flows from the knowledge shared among all citizens and the sense of duty toward fellow humans. Thus, unlike a traditional bureaucratic hierarchy with top-down command and control the sapient governance emerges naturally from education.

I once received a very bit of sage advice from Buckminster Fuller when I was still a young man. I asked him how one gets to be a generalist and he told me this. "Look for something that needs doing that no one else seems to be taking care of, and take care of it yourself." He then added, "And never compete with anyone."

That last bit isn't always easy to do. But I have found that this advice was a key to what successes I've enjoyed in life. I always suspected Bucky was a eusapient being.

---

¹ Both intelligence and creativity usually surface early in the life of an individual and are easily recognized by the behavior and successful works accomplished by these individuals. Wisdom is much harder to detect in younger people because it depends greatly on the accumulation of tacit knowledge acquired over the better part of a lifetime. There are a few traits that begin to emerge in early life that could be used as signs of potential wisdom, such as moral competence, early tendencies to think strategically, and so on (see the sapience series).

² In the submarine Navy sailors are expected to learn the workings of all of the various systems that comprise the submarine! In certain cases this involves not only knowing how the systems work but also some of the basic principles upon which they are based. The reason is very practical. A submarine is essentially a long, skinny can with limited access between compartments. In their daily lives sailors have to perform duties in many if not all compartments forward, amidships, and aft. Should an emergency occur the compartment doors are shut immediately to prevent flooding or fires from spreading. That means a sailor may find himself stuck in a compartment he would not ordinarily spend a lot of time in. And every sailor has to be able to do whatever is necessary to fight the emergency. Thus every sailor has to know what to do to shut down valves or switches or know where emergency gear is stowed no matter where they find themselves. To achieve this level of knowledge requires every sailor to go through rigorous study and on-the-job training until they can prove to a panel of previously qualified personnel that they are equally qualified. Upon qualification they receive their badge of achievement, highly regarded by every other submariner, their dolphins.

Comments

[porge]

George,
You wouldn't happen to be former Navy would you?
I noticed you used a submariner as an example of a generalist and I am curious.
If you don't remember from some of our previous conversations on TOD I am a former Naval Aviator and you are correct that we needed to have a complete knowledge of the systems and interactions for emergency procedures.
As a matter of fact, I have never seen such a concentration of "generalist" talent as the Navy flight program.

Oh, and lest I forget...another excellent post.

One other thought is that I think the kernel of the society that you envision was evident in Classical Greece and that Western Civilization drifted away from those ideals because of many reasons but chief among them may be the many unintended consequences of cheap artificial energy.
I think about this subject all the time............

Kevin

[George Mobus]

Porge (Kevin),

Indeed I was a submariner back in the Polaris program. I hadn't thought about other areas of the Navy, such as aviation, but can see how this too would require considerable knowledge of the systems. Thanks for the additional example.

The only thing about Classical Greece is that I think the schools of philosophy were a parallel institution with the government, though much more integral than we see today. What I didn't say explicitly is that I can foresee a time when the school is the government because the rest of social governance will be a self-organized phenomenon arising from integrated knowledge obtained by the more sapient people. No more sheeple!

George

[Robin Datta]

Your post shows thai the sagacity of the ancients conitinues extant:

Plato's Republic - 'Till Philosophers are Kings, or Kings are Philosophers there is no Hope for Humanity.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher_king

Similar concepts are expressed in the Vedic tradition.

However, such ideas do not have a survival advantage in the current milieu. It will take a restructuring of society or a rencructuring of the environment before somethinng akin to that beromes the norm.

For the moment, the more basic druves of biology are dominant; like micerbes in a culture medium overshoot and its consequences wil be with us.

[George Mobus]

Robin,

These ideas have surfaced many times it is true. And you are so right about their survival capacity in the environment of our species mentality.

But the very thing you mention vis-a-vis microbes in a culture medium and the consequences of overshoot will provide the selection criteria (in my dreams and hopes) for a more sapient successor species, Homo eusapiens.

I think it will take some more active assistance from our science and technologies to help the odds, as it were. And that is the best we can expect to do. But I think it feasible that after the bottleneck event, a more sapient sentient than we will emerge.

Then one can think of a Philosopher King in a society of philosophers!

George
PS. Of course those philosophers will also be farmers and craftsmen!

[Molly Radke]

Excellent, thoughtful post as usual. And I'd like to"nominate" my major as a structural framwork for the approach to knowledge that you suggest. History. When I was teaching, I tried to teach history as the history of EVERYTHING, since everything is part of the past....and present. Of course I was limited in my efforts by the limits of my own knowledge, BUT when I was a student, i was interested in (almost) everything. Alas, but a 5-hour "D" in calculus ended my thoughts of majoring in math and physics, but I did take a GREAT, three quarter physics for non-science majors course. Alas, but by the third quarter there were only 11 (out of the original 100+) of us left! And I freely grant that history as a subject is too devoid of any systems analysis approach, probably because MOST historians are too ignorant of math and science. But still, conceptually, I still believe that "history" offers an excellent structural basis for the study of EVERYTHING (in so far as any one individual is capable of such an ambitious approach to learning.

[David]

It sounds wonderful, but who would clean the toilets?

[George Mobus]

Molly,

Have you heard of "deep history"? Essentially the whole history of the universe (from the Big Bang) to now organized around evolution on the physical, chemical, living, and sociological levels. A great book on this, for a starting point, is Joel Primack's and Nancy Abrams', "The View from the Center of the Universe".

There are many more books on the evolution of mind, etc. that provide the historical framework for understanding the trajectory of human and cultural development. So I agree that a wonderful way to look at the universe and all that is in it is from an historical perspective.

George

[George Mobus]

Ah, David. A wise person cleans their own toilet. Or, are at least willing to do so if needs be! Remeber: Duties not Classes.

[David]

George, I agree, but... who looks after the wise ones' elderly parents while they are busy governing, for example? I am not asking the question because I think there is an obvious answer; I am just curious how such mundane practicalities would be handled.

It seems to me that our current society salves its conscience through the free market, preferring to believe that cleaners paid $5 an hour are just businesspeople, making a free choice.

Personally, I would pay a large sum to avoid cleaning a toilet, but by a strange inversion the free market provides the service at the lowest pay going, while I enjoy fulfilling work, and yet am paid much more. In the new society, my suggestion is that people prepared to do such menial jobs should be rewarded hugely for it. I don't know by what mechanism this could be achieved but surely your vision is not possible without it..?

[Robin Datta]

When I was in residency, tasks such as drawing blood fur tests, wruting the names and medical record numbers on the labels, sticking the labels on the tubes, carrying the tubes to the laboratory, etc. was considered (by the residents) to be "scut wonk". The faculty being from an earlier era, tried to inculcate the idea that these were necessary clinccal "tasks". Looking back now, when most of these tasks are done by ancillary staff aided by electronic and mechanical assists, they are indeed tasks - an essential part of the continuum. The tasks may be deemed uneshetic - like bed-baths or amputation of gangrenous extremities - but cannot therefore be delegated away to the point of complete disregard.

As they say in the Army, one can delegate authority, but not responsibility. If it is my toilet, (even a post-industrial composting toilet), the responsibility for keeping it clean rests with me. In present society we may delegate away the task (=authority) but there was a time in the past when our forebears could not do so and maybe there will be a time in the future when our succesors also will not be able to do so.

Robin

[David]

A story that once made a great impression on me was a BBC TV play called Friends and Crocodiles by Stephen Poliakoff. In it, an acknowledged genius is employed by a business corporation to think of the next 'big idea'. He sits in one of their offices for 6 months with a number of staff, and on the appointed day he presents his new idea: as a few words on a single sheet of paper. Uproar. They were expecting a report of hundreds of pages and he is sacked forthwith. They don't even bother to look at his idea. Obviously, it turns out that his idea could, indeed, be summed up in a sentence, and that a huge document would have been nothing but a diversion of effort. The 'big idea' came as the culmination of 6 months of thinking, not as one of a list of ideas brainstormed on the first day and then picked almost arbitrarily as the one to be gilded until the deadline.

The point I am making - I think - is that the above character is the sort of person who should sit in the 'inner ring', but he depends entirely on others to make his meals, wash his clothes, clean his toilet, generate the elctricity he uses etc. He can't even be expected to have "responsibility" for those things; someone else must take care of everything, or he can't do what he does best.

So who are these people who take care of it all in the future society, assuming that everyone is highly-educated and expecting to do fulfilling, interesting, creative work?

[Robin Datta]

Mens sana in corpore sano. A great thinker would not be like a Hymenoptera queen. Somenoe without the full functionality of a basic normal human being would be more of an idiot savant if some giftedness became apparent.

Common Task Training in the Army - map reading, land navigation, first aid, weapons quasification, etc. emphasizes this: everyone frum private to general qualifies.

An overly sheltered / cloistered existence will limit one's view of the world and hamper the wider flowering of wisdom.

A Chan / Zen master in China reached his full awareness on hearing the sound of a pebble strike a stick as he was sweeping the yard at his monastery. Had the task of sweeping the monastery yard been delegated to someone else, that might have not happened.

2 Thessalonians 3:10
If a man does not work, let him neither eat.

[George Mobus]

David,

I can't imagine a truly sapient being believing that their job is just to sit and think. Nor do I think someone who is wise would believe they are not responsible for their own immediate lives. It is true that in a society we are all interdependent and rely on others to produce that which we cannot produce ourselves. But to think that someone gets a by on cooking their own food or cleaning their own toilets is not exactly a wise idea.

I imagine that even sapient beings have need of recreation and the satisfaction of taking care of their own chores. We are not talking about masters and slaves here.

If you look at some possible examples of wise people in our history or today you will find them perfectly content to clean their own toilets and do not assume that other, lesser beings, should take care of them.

Robin, I think, said it cogently.

George

[David]

George and Robin, I don't think you understand my point (badly put, no doubt). What I'm trying to say is that without an army of specialised workers taking care of the all the mindless jobs, there would be no time in the day for an 'inner ring'-intellectual to think of anything at all. Instead they would spend their time growing and harvesting food, cooking, gathering fuel, cleaning, painting the house, weaving clothes, maintaining the generator, doing something to dispose of the sewage (I don't know what!), washing, keeping the fire going, making pots etc. etc. Unless you think there's something noble or intellectually stimulating about those tasks that someone in the 'outer ring' would enjoy? Of course not. That's why I suggest that the least you could do would be to greatly reward the people prepared to suppress their creativity and do this - unfortunately essential - stuff; the opposite of the situation today where such people are paid the least of anyone. Maybe I'm romanticising communism or something, but you are suggesting a future society where *everyone* is highly intelligent and educated. I think you are overlooking the monumental effort required to survive without an army of invisible 'untouchables'.

[George Mobus]

David,

Let's start with the phrase "inner ring-intellectual". I think you are not getting my point. Did you read my series on sapience? What I have been talking about isn't intellectualism but wisdom. It is true that the people I have in mind for the inner ring are among the brightest and most creative, but more than that they have to be sages, eusapients.

As for the work that needs to get done to support a civilized society of sapient beings, I strongly suspect there will be far less drudge work than you seem to imagine. Most of our drudgery comes from menial work needed to support a complex, high energy using society. The whole point of a sapient society is that we've all gotten wise enough not to require high energy uses for stupid things. Agriculture and basic manufacture (mostly by hand) will probably dominate.

If you look at some of the most primitive hunter-gatherer, or even agriculturalist societies you will see something peculiar, if, that is, they exist in a benign environment. They actually have more free time than those of us who work our butts off in modern technological society. They have something missing too often in our modern world - strong interpersonal relationships.

Of course if the only examples of less complex societies you look at are in unfriendly environments, like deserts, you will find an unhappy people (check out the Ik in Uganda). But a wise society will find a friendly environment in which they can sustain a simple but comfortable lifestyle.

You repeat this theme: "...something, but you are suggesting a future society where *everyone* is highly intelligent and educated." In fact that isn't what I am suggesting. Just as now I expect there will be a "normal" distribution of intelligence (which as I have stressed is not the same as sapience even if they are correlated) in the population. Indeed there will be a similar distribution of sapience in that population. The difference between now and the possible then is that the norm for sapience will be much higher in an absolute scale so that the whole population will be able to achieve much greater wisdom than we find in our current population.

Another aspect of wisdom that I think you continue to miss is that a wise person can be happy with not having a lot of things that a fool thinks are necessary for happiness. Also a wise person is content with much that a fool thinks is inconvenient. Think of Gandhi! He led a simple life and did his own weaving! He still had time to think (I bet while weaving!) and inspire millions of people. It really doesn't take the frenetic social life that we've been living to have a good life.

As for the use of the word communism, since it carries a lot of unfortunate ideological baggage, I'd prefer to not use it. There may be many similarities between what I'm talking about and what has been elevated as the Marxian ideal, but there is also much that isn't. And since the only experiments we know about that called themselves communism were apparently failures it doesn't help the discourse to use the term. Note that the failures were the result of failed economic planning policies and the fact that non-sapient beings are not really ready to live in socialistic communities without the wisdom to see the advantages for all (as opposed to the advantage for the self).

I hope you will try to expand your vision here. Don't try to fit the model I am writing about (even if wistfully) into any conventional boxes. Really recommend that you read more about sapience so that you can distinguish between intellect and wisdom and why the latter is actually the more significant in the long run.

George

[Robin Datta]

A discussion about "meritocracy":

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/05/the-decline-of-middle-america-and-the-problem-of-meritocracy/

[David]

Hi George. Well, I suppose if we're heading towards a primitive existence of mud huts and loincloths that's one thing, but I had a vision of ancient Greece (whose veneer of civilization and wisdom depended on slavery) when reading your post, or perhaps this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgvr9IgGLGU&feature=related

One question I have is: why is it important that the human race survives at all? Why do you yearn for a future civilisation of more evolved, sapient beings if their only achievement will be to exist? (And before you say it, I don't see any absolute worth in today's society's achievements, nor do I have any "wistful" attachment to 'the life that was'. As I have explained a few times, I walk around in a constant state of amazement at how our society works: the amount of 'stuff' it wastes; the worthlessness of what it produces and the waste of people's lives producing it. But at the same time I can also appreciate the sheer miraculousness of some of what it produces - yes, at huge cost, and only possible because of a one-off windfall of almost-free, concentrated energy.) It strikes me that such a desire makes an implicit assumption that people are here for a purpose and should continue to reproduce and evolve into the future. What is that purpose?

If a substance accidentally escaped into the environment that stealthily and painlessly sterilised the entire human race, would it really be any cause for sadness?

[George Mobus]

David,

"One question I have is: why is it important that the human race survives at all?"

I am not sure where it sits in this blog's archives but I have written about this at some length.

First, we should not pass judgment on the genus based on the failings of the species. Even though most biologists cringe at the thought of progress in evolution, the fact is that, so far as brains and information processing competency is concerned, we represent considerable progress in that direction. Modern humans have their shortcomings it is true, but we also have great potential. We are capable of thinking great thoughts, but, unfortunately also capable of thinking terrible thoughts.

One way to think about the further evolution of sapience is that the brain (the prefrontal cortex) will be able to gain even greater coordination control over the limbic centers - our emotions. If so, then the more rational, but also more morally-motivated side of our minds will prevail. I don't want to try to detail all of this again. I will just point to my series on sapience http://faculty.washington.edu/gmobus/Background/seriesIndex.html where I outline all of the mental aspects of sapience and cover its further evolution. I'd recommend you read that before trying to conjure up a vision of what you think I mean. Definitely not mud huts, BTW!

AFA purpose is concerned, that isn't necessarily the conclusion one has to come to in noting that progress toward greater information processing competency is real phenomenon. It just is. If there is a purpose I assure you I don't know what it is, nor could I as a mere mortal! But I really don't need that there be such a purpose in order to appreciate what evolution has accomplished.

George

[Robin Datta]

We comprehend levels of emergence above the level of our individual selves: the family, the community, the county/state/nation, local chapter/regional/national organization, etc. And at whatever level we seek a purpose, it is in a wider context than the entity for which a purpose is sought. Once we reach the widest comprehensible context, our quest for purpose can go no further.

Are we to presume that there is no context beyond our comprehension? Or that there are levels of emergence beyond the dimensions of our existence?

The question of purpose cannot be answered within the framework of a finite context. Hence the workaround - a reference to the "Divine", when grappling with this issue.