Difference between revisions of "Self-blindness in humans as prerequisite for the evolution of advanced intelligence"

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(**) This page is under construction. For the time being one can refer to the short paragraph on Self Blindness and Social-role Blindness (*).

(Eerst kern van dit verhaal componeren. Enabling further evolution of intelligence. Freeing the way. ) Meer over het principe, dan over de concrete invulling betreffende zekere onderwerpen. (Alleen benoemen en doorverwijzen) )

Self Blindness and Social-role Blindness

✰ <level 1>   We can put a man on the moon, we can dive to the bottom of the deepest oceans, we have produced Hydrogen bombs, we can annihilate the whole of the human world population within one day, but we cannot think clearly in front of a mirror. How strange !

The importance of ignorance and superstition

✰✰ <level 2>   Understanding the general situation of humanity, the working of its fate, its history and its future, is strongly coloured by where human thinking can go and where it may not. The difference between what we understand and what remains a mystery to us is not so much determined by the technical knowledge that we already have and that we could make use of, but primarily by where our thoughts are allowed to proceed and where our thoughts are being blocked by taboos. Much of the technical knowledge that we already have for a long time, can only be applied in certain specific areas and may not be applied in other areas, no matter how important these applications are or should be to us. The effect of this situation is that how we think about ourselves and about each other, is strongly coloured by selective blindness, by tradition and by superstition.

When people talk about superstition, they generally refer to medieval situations when people used to believe in witches, fairy tales, gnomes, a heaven full of gods, etc. In short, superstition is supposed to be something of past eras.

However, this is not how the situation really is. The difference with the past is not that we used to rely on superstition and now not any more, the difference is that we now simply are ruled by other sets of superstition than in previous times. But it is still superstitions that rule our lives, no less than ever before.

It is a peculiar human characteristic that we only can recognize superstitions from the past that have been overcome and have been replaced by “new” insights, but that we stay fully unaware of the superstitions that rule our lives today. The world as we “see” it, the way we look at ourselves and the way we look at other, foreign people, is in fact very much determined by intricate systems of fantasy, superstitious beliefs and unproven “certainties” that we, together, are supposed to believe in. In each culture we find different sets of “belief systems”, that are ruling society and the “knowledge” it harbours.

In fact, from an evolutionary and human ethological point of view, these belief systems have, since primordial times, been the way human tribes have acquired a special cognitive “smell”, distinguishing them from members of other tribes. Human beings are the thinking animals par excellence and since that thinking capacity evolved in early times, nest smell could be created by differential, specific belief systems, ruling the way its members looked at and perceived their world, but also, as a consequence, how they talked about the world, how they communicated. In human beings, the “nest smell”, or the smell of the tribe, has a very strong cognitive component. From an evolutionary perspective, such cognitive colouring of tribe smells is a novel and uniquely human achievement.

Logically speaking however, the implication is that what is characteristic for certain tribes or peoples in terms of how they see the world and themselves, is always superstition and no more than that. For it cannot be that reality is different for different tribes and peoples. Reality, or how the world really ticks, is always the same.

So, for us, intelligent human beings, our nest smell is made up of superstition(s), not less now than in medieval and earlier times.

We can also turn around these considerations. If it were not for superstitious beliefs, we would lose our specific nest smells and our tribal colours of recognition. We would all smell the same and cognitively look similar all over the world. The only differences would be in incidental local habitual cultural differences, but the way the world would be perceived would be roughly the same everywhere.

There can be found several reasons, of which the above mentioned evolutionary need for differing tribal smells is just one, why superstition, ignorance and taboos are so paramount and are so important for human functioning.

As an example we will discuss in this paper, not the nowadays much debated differences in religious beliefs and their disquieting extremist dangers, Muslim, Christian or Otherwise, contemporary or historical, but rather we will discuss here one strong contemporary superstition that still manages to stay out of sight, at least in our own nowadays culture. This example is our specific blindness for the effects of genetic pollution on our own societies and our own lives.

"Amathology", an introduction

✰✰ <level 2>   Human culture has arrived at a point where we can control nature to such an extent that we do not run the risks any more that formerly were determining life and fate of each and every individual. We have now learned to fight and win any conflict with large predators, with cold, with heat, floods, drought, starvation, and even with almost all contagious diseases. In principle, technically speaking, any healthy individual now could live until old age in peaceful circumstances, were it not for mankind itself providing fatal risks for oneself and for each other. Evolutionarily, mankind has become its own primary source of risk, its own most important selection force. As a consequence, the main direction of selection has changed dramatically since some tens of thousands of years. This shift can be verified also by recent DNA research that shows that the speed of change of the human DNA has increased tremendously since the beginning of this most recent period of human evolution, the beginning of agriculture.

In fact, the human species has arrived in a quite peculiar situation. Seen from the point of view of our most basic instincts, our most basic feelings, wishes and desires, we have, in our modern world, developed the technical means and tricks to fulfil each and every wish, stemming from our inmost primordial systems of emotions and motivations. We could in principle all be happy and safe. However, as it appears, reality is quite different. We have become our own predators and any large scale civilization is in fact just some postponement of that novel direction of our selection pressure, taking its toll anew at any occasion when things run out of control. As has been said by philosophers before, civilization can in practice be regarded as a conspiracy against evolution, human evolution. Civilization is always just a shortlasting postponement of selection pressure. In any culture, periods of peace and prosperity don't last very long. Evolution has to take its course, and it does, also in us cultured humans. At such moments in time, wars break out and starvation, diseases, migration waves, genocides and other disasters make evolution recover lost terrain. Then evolution again effectuates its selection pressure in the typical, novel, human evolutionary direction and does away with cumulated genetic pollution, incurred in periods of relative peace.

Looking at this situation from the outside, it seems highly peculiar that we can fly through the air with hundreds of people at a time in one machine, that we can sail the seas in vessels harbouring tens of thousands of people, that we can plan and cultivate food for a hundred times or more people than are living in the areas in question, that we can put a man on the moon and dive down into the deepest oceans and return to tell what we have seen, that we can look into the universe into distances so far away that is difficult to imagine what such distances mean, distances, travelled by light in millions of years, that we understand the most elementary particles of matter to the point where we can put together nuclear bombs and nuclear energy plants, and still, and still, we cannot think clearly in front of a mirror. How strange ! One of the consequences is that we do not seem capable to organize our societies in such a way, that we can live in relative personal peace and security.

No-go areas for our intelligence

✰✰ <level 2>   Obviously, we seem not to be capable of understanding our own behaviour, let alone organize it in a mutually useful way. It seems far more easy to organize war than to organize peace. This failure to understand our own behaviour can be corroborated by psychological research during the last decades. Indeed it appears that human beings possess an uncanny capacity to not-see how they are functioning themselves. We are struck with a very strong form of blindness for our own emotions, motivations and feelings. Of course, we do have some notion of what we feel, what we see and what we want, but, as an overwhelming avalanche of scientific psychological research shows, these notions differ greatly from reality. (See for instance: Bateson, 1972,1979, Dixon, 1976, Laing, 1967,1969,1970)

In fact, human beings spend surprising amounts of energy and brain capacity to just mystify and hide their own behaviour from sober and intelligent investigation, also by themselves. Evidently, it looks as if this typical blindness, blocking our awareness and thinking power in certain areas, does have a significant evolutionary advantage. This human blindness is apparently an ESS, an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy.

The human species is peculiarly unable to think clearly about its own behaviour. Our intelligent capacities are effectively blocked regarding our personal and social functioning. It can be argued that this specific blindness, a blindness which started to develop some half million to two million years ago, is a prerequisite for the evolution of high intelligence. Social and personal blindness is a prerequisite for the evolution of intelligence, any intelligence, beyond a certain level.

It can easily be shown experimentally that human beings are quite unawares of the way they socially interact and how their capacity to understand matters is effectively blocked to give ample space to primordial social reflexes. Moreover, social and personal blindness is culturally supported by massive and multidimensional organized ignorance and superstition.

The reason, why in such matters intellectual capacities are blocked in favor of original, primordial reflexes, is stemming from the functional conflict between proximal and ultimal causes of behaviour. I will explain why this is so, and what are its consequences. In short, it means that ultimal reasons for behaviour, the evolutionary usefulness of behaviour, are not the same as the short-term reasons why we behave like we do. We derive feelings of satisfaction from obeying emotional drives and instincts successfully, drinking, eating, sleeping, sex, exploration, etc. These instincts are organized in such a way that, ultimally, they serve procreational purposes.

Intelligence may / might be used to find – easier - shortcuts to short term satisfaction. However, such shortcuts are quite likely to outflank the collateral behavioural effects of those primordial instincts, collaterals that serve procreational purposes, for which reasons those instincts were evolutionarily selected for in the first place. Intelligence, applied on our own behaviour, therefore quickly leads to sterile behaviour, no matter how satisfactory from a personal emotional (very proximal) point of view. For that reason awareness blocks for the own behaviour had to develop, parallel to the development of superior intelligent capacities. Otherwise the latter never could have evolved further than a certain, not dangerous, level.

However, from an evolutionary point of view, it is also unavoidable that at some point in time the paradox of a high intelligence, paired to not understanding oneself, becomes technically too unstable to continue.

Point Omega (term of Teilhard de Chardin) is when the present system collapses, when collective ignorance cannot be maintained any longer and understanding of self and social relationships starts to spread like a prairie fire, releasing at the same time unparalleled amounts of energy, boosting in turn this process itself. It will function as a sort of chain reaction resulting in an explosion of awareness and clarity.

The presently ruling awareness blocks for one’s own behaviour, one’s emotions and motivations, imply that human beings are in particular blind to how they interact socially. For more on this phenomenon of “Social-Role Blindness” and for exploring some examples of how this works and what are its consequences for the present as well as for the future, click here(***) .

Some of the consequences of Self Blindness:

Present:

• Socially, we act like animals, especially where things matter very much.
• Nepotism
• Tribalism
• Fears continue and are not understood. Thus human beings are more easily locked up in neurotic systems permanently.

Implications for the future:

• Breaking awareness / intelligence blocks is of crucial importance.
• Awareness of the own personal motivations opens strategic moves for change and escape from neurotic imprisonment.
• This awareness and the breaking of the intelligence blocks is crucial antidote against the power structures in charge.

For more, click here: Social Role Blindness(***).

The line of argumentation will follow among other things the abstract of the "good and bad" blindfold as a safeguard to prevent ...........(where ???????)........

It is about preventing short cuts between proximal urges in our behaviour and the desired outcomes. Such short cuts would destroy the functional links between the proximal organization of our behaviour with all the emotional urges implied, and the ultimate evolutionary goals of such behaviours. Whereas very satisfactory to the individuals in question, such short cuts would impair their participation in procreation, which in turn would make the short cut capacity (superior intelligence) to go extinct again. Therefore intelligence is in principle self defeating in evolution if it would rise above a certain level.

That is what we see indeed in a number of phyla in the animal world. In studying the evolutionary processes on planet earth it appears that ordinarily intelligence indeed is stopped at a certain level. We see this in various phyla and families of species, like primates, parrots, crows, whales, mollusks, etc. Let op: kennelijk onafhankelijk van elkaar telkens opnieuw ontstaan !

In humans it could only rise above that level after a specific provision had been built into our behavioural system, making sure that such high intelligence only could be applied to any type of problems in life as long as it would not be applied to the bearer's own behaviour. This can be called "Self-blindness". Built in blindness and well consolidated ignorance towards the self have therefore been the key to the evolution of human intelligence.

(The following is an outline of part of this page. It should be worked out further.)

How Self-Blindness works out in practice: Some fundamental causes of superstition and ignorance in the human species / About the stability of superstition and ignorance in human society. (Dit deel kort houden; uitgebreidere versie naar latere paragraaf "Characteristics of Human Behaviour before and after point Omega.)

Before Point Omega:

Telic dominant --> goal oriented Goal oriented --> incapacity to enjoy moment / need for structure and purpose / incapacity to live with purposelessness and with “here and now”. Incapacity to live with the reality of evolution that has no purpose, but creates itself. Reality feels too “naked”, without a “destiny” to dress it up with. The all pervading question being: what is all this suffering good for ?

Telic dominant --> strong emotional need for shared and fixed ideas about the “purpose” of (one’s own) existence, no matter how improbable these ideas may be. Any fixed idea is much better than no idea at all. “Purpose” of the suffering gives emotional support and perspective (no matter how false).

Since superstition is in principle unstable in a field of (growing) knowledge, in power structures ignorance is preferred above intelligent insight. Intelligent insights make continuation of superstition difficult  intelligent enquiry causes instability of fixed ideas about our “goals” and “purpose”, because they are not based on reality, but on wishful thinking. Thus: successful societies cherish and protect superstition and ignorance. Otherwise they are not an ESS. For power structures it pays off to invest huge amounts of energy in keeping people stupid and prevent them from conducting intelligent enquiry.

Evolution is basically, intrinsically, goal-less. Chance and necessity determine direction of evolution, also our own evolution. The direction comes from within, not from outside. There cannot be an outside source of direction to evolution. Evolution is a blind and automatic selection process creating relatively stable structures in a changing environment, changing by evolution itself. But it is basically open ended. Reality can therefore not easily be known by telic dominant people. They cannot live with purposelessness. They have to cling to something solid and fixed.

Telic dominance implies a propensity for sufficiency-oriented recipes and world views. Such ideas and views do not contain a high level of sparsity and of logical coherence and stability, but rather a multitude of ad hoc recipes without much coherence and interrelatedness. Incongruence of ideas is not so much of a problem there. As such, such sufficiency oriented pictures of the world can easily contain ideas and concepts that appear superstitious, simpleminded and dumb, at least they appear so to more stable personalities.

After Point Omega:

Telic dominance will diminish and paratelic states will be more prevalent. Need for externally indicated purpose will dwindle away and exiting impredictability and richness of possibilities will be enjoyed instead of being feared. No need for communal tales of purpose any more, no need for superstition any more, no need for blocking of intelligence any more, no artificially stabilized massive stupidity any more. Much energy freed for creative purposes and for stabilizing growth and development and understanding. More and more dominance of necessity oriented models of reality, that are more sparse, more coherent and more stable in time. At Point Omega follows a run-away positive feed back loop.

Removal of awareness blocks, and the freeing of huge amounts of intelligent capacities and energy, will cause a chain reaction. Knowledge of and insight in evolutionary processes, also our own, will enable mankind to creatively influence and steer evolution in humans. From an evolution towards consciousness into a process of conscious evolution.

Check / scientific “bet”: These considerations would predict that in the past millennia in many strata of human societies there may have been a selection power in favour of limited intelligence and limited conceptual capacities. Such a tendency would help stabilize existing power structures and their mind block mechanisms and thus confer survival value to the power structure / culture in question and to its carriers. This effect should possibly be there from the start of the agricultural revolution, some 10,000 years ago, until today. (Is OK if a small minority of top dogs is intelligent. However, the masses had better be stupid !)

It should be possible to find ways to verify or falsify this postulate.