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Humanity as an organism itself
    #4366397 -

A thought I've been having reoccuring issues with recently has been that of humanity, on a large scale, acting basically like a very advanced virus or ant colony. Most of our development can be looked at probabalistically on survival issues. Major city placement occurs near water, not because people decide to build cities on the water, but because it is a valuable and key resource in our survival, plus it allows for other modes of transportation/trading. These cities then branch off in a spider-like network of transporation and decreasing amounts of housing density, with farther apart centers linked by less and less transportation threads. Overpopulation of certain areas creates disease and other problems, which are stymied by better medicine made available in those areas, since higher density tends to insinuate, on average, higher levels of education in that vicinity. This is not a particularly new point, but it can be carried out in the coming decades and centuries, most likely, to space. On earth this sort of behavior is somewhat expected, as it is our 'Home', but as we go farther and farther from home, is this sort of behavior acceptable, using up resources, gathering sufficient intelligence so as to be able to move off this area when it becomes uninhabitable, and carry the trend outwards towards the cosmos. Will the technological challenge eventually be too great and many millenia down the road lead to our eventual demise as a species after all our resources hitherto have been used up. And moreover, does this picture of our species disturb anyone else, that even as someone who rejects this movement, and sits outside of this culture of expansion, your uninvolvment has been factored into the equation, and things will procede on schedule, and in fact your uninvolvement is just as important and crucial a part of this system and without it it would not work. Anyone have any alternative views to this that I may be missing, and if not, what do you think this means, if anything?


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"no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs; we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.?
-P.J. O'Rourke

What is a Quantum Particle?
The Dreams that stuff is made of!

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Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: futant462]
    #4366437 -

I've often thought of humanity in these terms for a while, and it does make sense. Society does function much like the social insects do, albeit in a much more sophisticated manner....

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Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: futant462]
    #4366439 -

You say this like it's a bad thing.

In natural selection, an organism isn't required to regulate itself. Most of them don't. How often does a virus stop expanding simply because it's becoming too prevalent?

No, the job of natural selection is to balance out this expansion through mutations. Humanity cannot be carried on indefinitely, you have that right; nothing can. But that means nothing at all to us in the present. Currently, we have the resources and the dominance to expand in all directions, and that's what we'll continue to do until something stops us by force.

We are animals. Of course all are development is based on our survival; if it wasn't, we wouldn't survive. :wink: Self-consciousness does not make us gods, and we are still facing eventual death like all other animals and plants and viruses. Those who don't realize this will die off in their arrogance.

Quote:
On earth this sort of behavior is somewhat expected, as it is our 'Home', but as we go farther and farther from home, is this sort of behavior acceptable, using up resources, gathering sufficient intelligence so as to be able to move off this area when it becomes uninhabitable, and carry the trend outwards towards the cosmos.


Indeed, it's more than acceptable; it's expected. One of the rules of survival is that if an organism can expand or grow more powerful, chances are it will unless something gets in its way. The earth isn't our home; the entire universe is.

Quote:
Will the technological challenge eventually be too great and many millenia down the road lead to our eventual demise as a species after all our resources hitherto have been used up.


Our demise will come no matter what we do, but I don't think we can possibly use up all the resources around us. But if you've studied biology, what worries humanity is not the total resources, but rather the resources dictated in Liebig's Law of the Minimum; that is, we should worry about the scarcest essential resource. It is always the scarcest resource that will determine our growth, for even if we have all the cars in the world, with only a few gallons of gasoline we're not going anywhere.

One of the advantages of humans though is that our technology has allowed us to circumvent Liebig's Law to a certain extent by using experimentation and searching for more available resources that will also work. Traditional natural selection will do this also, but humanity does it at an exceedingly quick level never before seen on earth to my knowledge.

This picture is entirely realistic, and doesn't disturb me at all. How else could it go? Will we suddenly forsake expansion and technology and run back into Africa? Of course not; we'll continue expanding and developing until something stops us. Any other course would be ridiculous to follow.


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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

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Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: Ravus]
    #4366454 -

Well stated. Another sticking point I've had is whether or not self-enchancement by chemical, mechanical, cybernetic, etc. means qualifies as evolution. By the strictest sense I suppose if it allowed that member to survive better it would have to as long as its sample size was large enough, but those traits can no longer be passed down in a biological self-automated way, so the line gets murky here. And if this indeed leads to us in some way inserting our conciousness into a cybernetic form if this is even possible, is this a scenario you would like to see happen? To have the eventual mechanization of mankind so that we are better able to adapt to the universe and its harshness? How far are we willing to stray from humanity in order to maintain progress?


--------------------
"no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs; we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.?
-P.J. O'Rourke

What is a Quantum Particle?
The Dreams that stuff is made of!

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Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: futant462]
    #4366489 -

Quote:
Another sticking point I've had is whether or not self-enchancement by chemical, mechanical, cybernetic, etc. means qualifies as evolution.


In terms of social Darwinism, I believe it does. As you're not talking about pure natural selection in your post, but also social Darwinism; otherwise, the modern human would be no better off than the humans tens of thousands of years ago, but by passing on advancements through society we have developed complex medicine and even sent machines to the edge of the solar system.

Mostly all the developments humanity has made within the past few thousand years are not passed on biologically, so indeed the line does get murky as we move into the realm of social Darwinism. In some aspects, social Darwinism seems to be better than natural selection, but in others it's much worse off. Noticeably, if civilization collapses, we will lose all of this, while in natural selection even if the civilization collapsed we'd still have all the enhancements in our genetics. But on the plus side, social Darwinism moves much faster than normal biological evolution, as humanity shows.

Quote:
And if this indeed leads to us in some way inserting our conciousness into a cybernetic form if this is even possible, is this a scenario you would like to see happen?


If it helps our survival and individual lifeforms, as I believe it would, I wouldn't mind seeing it. We could become half-immortal through machines, and much more advanced. I believe at the current rate of technology, technological singularity, or the point when machines advance themselves in such a way that it's beyond the comprehension of humanity, is drawing close. And if machines are much more well-off in terms of processes than we are, and can even evolve themselves eventually, why would they need the organic bags of flesh that created them?

It's a do or die situation. I believe there will be a point where we either enhance our functioning through machines, or machines will leave us behind in the dust. And I see nothing wrong with inserting chips inside the human brain to massively increase our memory capacity, knowledge, functioning, etc. Eventually we may be able to simply upload our consciousness onto a machine and evolve rapidly from there, but I believe it will start with simply using machines to enhance our biological body.

Quote:
How far are we willing to stray from humanity in order to maintain progress?


As far as it takes.


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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

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Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: futant462]
    #4366559 -

Opposite the lateral changes of mutation in the interest of mere biological survival, is the notion of 'teleology' - the purpose of humankind. Purpose suggests meaning other than mere proliferation for the sake of simple survival and numbers. Purpose enjoins 'transcendence.'

Survival characterizes the foundational, lowest motive of any living organism, and the Muladhara Chakra of Hindu Yoga psychology, or Root Center of Buddhist Yoga psychology symbolize this. But, there other motives that can and do govern human behavior, and there seems to be an upward trend when it comes to transcendence in which motives tend from the more deterministic to the more existential, from physically determined behavior to freely-willed behavior. Tenderness/Compassion for one's offspring clearly serves a survival motive, but Compassion, self-sacrifice and other altruistic motives can also be in the service of Transcendence - the 'upward' or 'vertical' dimension as opposed to the 'horizontal' dimension upon the physical plane[t].

Bottom line: we can exist as mere mammals, or we can live as human 'beings.' Aldous Huxley said that the human mind ['soul'] is "amphibious," able to identify with the body and with the spirit. Identifying with only one or the other reveals radical misunderstanding. Embracing both is transcendence and reveals our actuality and our potentiality.

Peace.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #4367065 -

http://www.extropy.org/

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Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: futant462]
    #4367711 -

if you would not mind, please put all your text into paragraphs, makes it much easier to read

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Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: DF2K]
    #4367751 -

What about the idea of the soul, the idea that you've been given the gift to communicate with something so immaculate? Feel for being an animal. Embrace the extent, exhaust your love, you were given miracles and the opportunity to overcome.

Just don't see us in the worst way. You can get freaked being a human. Look at a full moon and try to convince me that what you see is just random dust. The world is enchanted, the spirits are beautiful.

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Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: sox24]
    #4384550 -

Excellent link Mushman, I had no idea such a site/well-worked out version of this concept had been developed to that extent.


--------------------
"no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs; we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.?
-P.J. O'Rourke

What is a Quantum Particle?
The Dreams that stuff is made of!

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Humanity as an organism itself [Re: futant462]
    #4384760 -

I would imagine it to be a strange life indeed for a human born away from the planet Earth. I'm sure there must be tons of science fiction that deals with this.


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Namaste

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General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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