The human mind is an interesting development. It is basically identical to the wetware that motivates all animal life on our planet. In practice it operates almost identically to the way a computer works. Inputs operating switches operating switches operating switches repeated enough times to be incomprehensible, until those switches operate an output. The one major difference between computers and brains, and the one that keeps our iBooks from overtaking human civilization, is the mind's capacity to learn, and change it's functioning because of past experiences. Creatures of all kinds have evidenced the capacity to learn, and this has been accepted as reality since long before modern science has proven it with laboratory testing of rats and dolphins and chimps and dogs. This recognition of animal intelligence is inherent in the veneration of predators as gods of death, of birds as spirits of ancient kin. It is evidenced in the medieval vilification of the wolf as a cunning servitor of Satan. It is only until recently, as advances in technology have allowed us to push back the line of uncertainty and danger that has always existed at the edge of the jungle, that humans have been allowed to shelter in the fallacy that there is some unique character inherent in the human mind that gives us dominance of this sphere. Once, before science replaced God, it was divine providence that separated man from beast. God had chosen us, sheltered us in the Garden until we were tricked out by that sly snake. How else could we comfortably explain how we have managed to gain control of so much of the planet's resources? Would humanity have come so far if we had admitted long ago that it was only chance, pure and simple, that has allowed us to have brains so scarred from lessons learned?
Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Agriculture, the foundation of civilization, was not God's gift to us, but a curse:
And to the man he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; / thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. / By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return from the ground, for out of it were you taken; you are dust, and to dust shall you return."
- Genesis 3:17-20
Through the cultivation of plants for food, man gained a toehold on the slippery slope of evolution. This behavioral adaptation in our species made fulfilling one of the basic needs of life a whole hell of a lot simpler. It freed up some processing time for other functions, like shelter and security. But it all depended upon one lucky- unlucky?- hunter/gatherer stumbling across the lesson that if you plant something, you know where it grows and can come back later to eat the fruit it provides. The actual mechanism of agriculture is simple enough for a wide variety of organisms to duplicate. It happens accidentally when a squirrel buries nuts for the winter and forgets that one he planted in the good soil where it gets plenty of sun and water. Unfortunately for the squirrel, it will take many more years for an oak tree to grow and produce more acorns than the squirrel could ever hope to see. But birds, such as crows and ravens, can frequently live quite a long time. And check this out:
Perhaps it is too far-fetched to imagine a crow thinking ahead enough to cultivate plants. But here's a comment from that video: goonsgoons (1 year ago) "Wow, I could have used that crow when I lost my ring down the drain. The plumber just did what the crow did and charged me a hundred bucks." Human and crow in a very similar situation, and the crow figured out a solution (no offense intended, goonsgoons). And I think anyone who has cleaned out their fridge is incredibly aware of how easily we as humans cannot notice something growing right in front of our face. I think it more likely that it was a unique individual human that we can thank for the establishment of mankind's superiority, rather than we as humans being extraordinary as a species. I think it likely that any organism, allowed to make as many non-fatal mistakes as we human beings are, would stumble across any number of innovations that would advance and benefit their kith and kin. But just like agriculture was seized to satisfy the primal need to feed, those advances had to be driven by unpleasant experiences like hunger that we would rather do without.
Mistakes are what drive us to learn. Edison went through a great deal of prototypes before he hit upon a lightbulb that actually worked better than a gaslight. He had to try and fail each idea before the next. That ability to try again is what we have gained from our culture. Each advance that science has brought has allowed us to push back the specter of death and give us a little more breathing room to try things out and catapult ourselves further ahead of the other evolutionary players. The human animal has in practice more in common with a stem cell than a chimpanzee. Each individual has the capacity to grow into any number of specialized roles that will perform a specific function for the greater entity it is a part of in exchange for the fulfillment of its basic needs. Take that individual out of its community and it will die, blood drying as it drips from an open vein of humanity. But feed it and shelter it, give it a baseline to judge from other than oblivion, and it will use those inevitably unfortunate dips to step higher and higher and better its own existence. Freud postulated in Beyond the Pleasure Principle that the human mind starts as a simple pleasure/displeasure switch, differentiating between what is beneficial to the body and what is harmful. Each experience leaves a trace- a memory- that we use to judge further experience and give warnings as to what will hurt us and point the way to what will help us. The accumulation of traces eventually comes to resemble what we call consciousness. He also explained the development of the mind from childhood from the perspective of pleasure coming from familiarization to the basic bodily functions of eating, defecating, and fornicating. As we master those lesser functions, we move on, trying to satisfy our need not only for food but reproduction, and then for the continued presence of those needs. That's why we feel the need to find love with someone we can trust to remain around and help us and our offspring out. That's why we bind together for protection.
It is that realization that is gripping us now. Each of us are coming to terms with the fact that we rise and fall together, that what we do affects someone across the planet which affects what they do which then comes back to affect us. The wheel of karma is becoming illuminated with floodlights, and we are learning from not only our mistakes, but the mistakes of others. But we have to realize that humans are not an endpoint, not something static that came from the heavens as a perfect being and only got slightly cracked on the way down. We as individuals grow, and thus we as a whole grow. But it's hard to realize that there are better options than the ones we have relied on so far. In order to learn, we have to try new things, and those things are probably going to fail. But there is a way to think like a planet instead of an individual, or a family, or a nation. And it may involve throwing out some notions we've had for a while, like the idea that we are incredibly different from the other creatures that walk or crawl or fly or swim around the planet. We've just made a lot more mistakes.
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