Neuroscientists have described the human brain as the most complex biological structure in the known universe, containing hundreds of billions of cells, and trillions of connections controlling every thought, feeling, movement and function of our bodies.

If this proves anything, it would be the fact that – outside of explanations invoking religious mythology – the evolution of matter was able to bring something as intricate and organizationally complex as the human brain about through a teleological process that appears to be internal to it.

And when I say “internal” I mean this in the sense that the drive to evolve is a property of the material universe that will manifest itself in the presence of conditions that would allow for it.

As such evolution utilizes the seemingly randomness of cosmic events to arrive at ever higher levels of organizational complexity through a process of trial and error to find the required material stability  and biological survivability that would allow it to achieve its desired objective, whatever that might be.

In that context I see the arrival of the human species as the introduction of a critical transitional period and the next phase of cosmic evolution that pushes  life beyond the mere acts of  survival and propagation, and  allowing it to venture further into the realm of consciousness  and expanding its content in terms of knowledge and ideas.

Homo Sapiens straddles the Past and the Future. What I am referring to here is our species’ precarious status as a creature that has one leg still firmly in the animal kingdom – our past – while the other is in a future we know little or anything about. And so we are acting accordingly, with no clear idea of what is expected of us, making us inherently unpredictable if not an unstable life form at best, as evidenced by its self-destructive tendencies, including suicide, homicide,  genocide, and undermining  its own life-sustaining environment.

But there is one type of human activity where we have clearly gone beyond our animal traits and can claim some considerable accomplishments since our arrival as a brand new species:  the areas of science and technology.  Our successes on this front may well be proof that our relatively recent arrival on the cosmic scene constitutes the transition of matter’s evolutionary prowess from a strictly internal process to an external one as we apply our sciences and technologies to just about all aspects of our material existence.

We can point to the ingenuity of our species to manipulate and restructure  aspects of our material reality  into ever increasing levels of organizational complexity, such that – through us – the cosmos, nature, life – has achieved a quantum leap in  creative productivity and is now able to push its evolutionary objectives – whatever they may be – over significantly shorter time frames. In this sense, human beings function as nature’s evolutionary agents and enablers, pushing these objectives along an ever increasing pace for no other reason than that it seems to be the natural thing to do …

The challenge here will be to translate these experiences into a language that allows the larger context to emerge so that it can be articulated and inspire us to create a destiny for ourselves that does justice to the effort that has gone into the making of us.

This effort is not easily understood – and if we even understood just the tiniest fraction of it I’m not so sure we would be much further ahead in gaining an insight into the larger picture.   No doubt I will be writing more  about that in a future piece …

For now we describe our arrival here on earth in terms of an evolutionary process over billions of years.  Nothing is explained in terms of why or how or where this process is heading for, and so we are left with a mystery. Being at the receiving end of this process, we can look back to some extent and infer that apparently this has been about the gradual enablement of what we call “consciousness”, and achieved by the development of ever more complex organizational structures within matter, reaching its current summit in the grey matter of our brains. Now what?

The one thing that this did bring about was the transition of life’s apparently intrinsic evolutionary pressures from a strictly internal process over billions of years to an external one, as evidenced by the ingenuity of our species to manipulate and restructure matter into ever increasing organizational complexity as reflected by the various aspects of technology that we are familiar with today. Through us, nature has achieved a quantum leap in the creativity department, now being able to push its evolutionary objectives over significantly shorter time frames. In this sense, human beings function as nature’s evolutionary agents, pushing these objectives along at a breakneck speed for no other reason than that it seems to be the natural thing to do …

Smart enough to move it along, yet not smart enough to know why, and that is probably a wise thing as far as nature is concerned, given our tendency to self-destruct, a function of being an intermediate, transitional and demonstratively unstable life-form, schizoid, capable of being both intellectually brilliant and emotionally brittle, or logical and illogical, and the latter most likely caused by that aspect of ourselves that is still very much the predatory, primitive beast in the field that we descent from.

So yes, where do we go from here?

So what would be the grounds for such assumption when I seem to say that the basis for it is  outside life’s experiential realm?   To get a sense of what I’m hinting at is a little bit like what the character Morpheus says to Thomas A. Anderson, AKA “Neo” and the protagonist in the excellent 1999 Sci-Fi movie Matrix: You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. 

Now I realize that this might be an understatement for some, but here I’m not talking about all the really bad things that are happening in the world today (and have more or less always happened in the world of yesterday) and an astonishing human tragedy by any other name given all the calamities, war, religious strife, murder and mayhem and what have you, but the fact that regardless of the nature of the event – good or bad –  it remains a mystery why any of it actually needs to take place, i.e., what in the world  is playing itself out here?

In short, I am saying that life, living, doesn’t add up … at least not for me, and while that might just be my problem, I think not.  I suggest we are seeing only part of the script here.

This has to do with the fact that you cannot make sense of something existing for its own sake. I know, some will say something equally nonsensical, like “it is what it is”,   but trying to make sense of apparent nonsense is one of my interests, especially when there appears to be so much of it, such as a whole universe of it.

So when I say that it doesn’t add up, I mean to say that I have never come across the reason as to why we are here, on this planet, in this universe, or the reasons why life is the way it is to the extent that we are challenged by it on a daily basis.

Sure, science will give you a hand full of reasons as to why the world is the way it is, but these are descriptive accounts that assume the world as a given without any further justification for it being there in the first place. When it comes to life, similarly – and discounting religious nonsense of any kind – the answer to the question “why are we here” is lacking also.

And so, in whatever way you look at it, the world – life – appears to be more of a solution in search of a problem, i.e., we don’t have the whole story. And  unless there is something more going on than what meets the eye, i.e., what we must confront on a daily basis, the world and everything that can be found in it appears to make no sense at all. At least not for the present …

But make no mistake about this: we are the cosmos – every single atom in it is represented in our being and embody its greatest accomplishment, the capacity for reflection and rational thought. Unfortunately – in the case of the latter – we still have a lot to overcome, such as religion by any other name.

And make no mistake about this either: Religion will destroy us if we don’t keep it in check, and to allow itself to burn out due to the lack of substance at its core, e.g., what is happening to Christianity today. There, for all intents and purposes, God is dead, although many  still cower in his fading shadow as they continue to partake in its empty rituals. But for the other religions – such as manifested by the primitive, tribal and sometimes deadly Muslim hordes – they must be kept at bay by all means possible.

Clearly,  the weapon of choice must be education, to allow for the development of critical thought by the individual. Only then can we all take part in the debate about what this cosmic metaphor is all about, and begin to live life to its full potential, free from suffocating self-denying religious dogma and the vestiges of a superstitious past that has held us back way to long.

Eventually, I believe, we will figure it all out.

I can’t wait … Can you?

The Crucifixion of Christ

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled against the use of crucifixes in classrooms in Italy. It said the practice violated the right of parents to educate their children as they saw fit, and ran counter to the child’s right to freedom of religion.

As expected, the Vatican objected vigorously – no doubt seeing this as an encroachment on their corporate mandate  – if not very lucrative business that continues to milk its customers with the promise they are able to save their sinful souls from being condemned and dragged off to hell. ( Where is that place, anyway?)

A Vatican spokesman told Italian TV: The crucifix has always been a sign of God’s love, unity and hospitality to all humanity.

Well, with respect to that particular statement – and in particular the reference to God’s love –  one might well want to take a good look at a crucifix.  It seems to me it seems to depict the horrible suffering and barbaric death of an individual nailed to a wooden cross.

How could anything so cruel and abhorrent be central to any religion where the subject in question is supposed to be the son of an all powerful deity, and “a loving God”? Obviously his love does no extend to his own son since what father would have allowed his own son to suffer such a savage and excruciatingly painful death while supposedly having the power to stop it at any time?

And so the real question is: how could God have allowed this to happen?  The answer is  – as Nietzsche put it once  ” downright terrifying in it’s absurdity: God gave his Son for the forgiveness of sins, as a sacrifice.  The guilt sacrifice, and that in its most repulsive and barbaric form, the sacrifice of the innocent man for the sins the guilty! What atrocious paganism!”

I guess for some folks the Dark Ages clearly aren’t over yet as they continue put their faith in this bizarre tale of human sacrifice and the baroque and antiquated institution that perpetuates this kind of barbaric pagan mythology.

Much has been made of Nietzsche’s concept of a superior human being – the Übermensch – but apart from being completely misunderstood and maliciously misappropriated by Hitler’s Nazi scum in the previous century – this is the future human being that will be able to rise above the present human condition.  He will have overcome it in the sense of no longer being taken down constantly by all the human frailties that continue to threaten our extinction as a species: essentially endless everything – endless greed, lust for blood, consumption, exploitation, gratification, debauchery, procreation, stupidity, superstition. In short (!) everything that, as per our exceedingly well documented history, defines us as the immature, confused and seemingly self-destructive species we are so familiar with today.

Here I picture the universe as a fantastic fireworks display, initiated by “the big bang”, that lights up the night’s sky with incredible brilliance, but only  to eventually disperse itself into dying embers as it spreads out further and further across the darkening sky, and leaving only darkness behind.

However, there are some places in the universe where this process isn’t necessarily being hurried along so much. If you accept the premise that under conditions such as found here on earth matter appears to have the capacity to evolve into higher levels of organization when conditions allow for it – atoms will gather into molecules, molecules into compounds, compounds in to cells, cells into organism – it is at once a level of defense against entropy as well as an opportunity to reach even higher levels of organization .

This leaves alone the question of how or why this capacity exists, but I would assume the answer to it is gradually being expressed in life’s evolutionary tract and will be clear only after it has reached its destination whatever that may be. I presume we’re just a stop along the way, but it is a race against time by any other name.