A guided tour through the Omega Research Wiki

The easiest way to get to know the essentials of this Wiki, the easiest way to satisfy your curiosity, starting on the level you prefer, is using this Guided Tour. This page is for your efficiency and for your comfort.

The contributions on this Wiki greatly differ in detail, in length, in depth and in thoroughness of scientific underpinning of arguments and proof. This Guided Tour helps you to choose the sequence of articles that best suits your desires of the moment. Do you want a better overview first or are you looking for a better underpinning of arguments and of the presented data. You can follow your preference at any spot during the Tour. You may decide to dig deeper into the subject you are immersed in or reversely you may return to the surface and look for a better and broader overview. The Guided Tour will give you such moments of choice during your reading. For your convenience we have marked the articles and contributions with asterixes (*), (**), (***).

• (*) Quick and Efficient: Stands for an overview article, short, superficial, quick and efficient. These articles are best to start out with. They are the ones that the Guided Tour brings you first.

• (**) Some more detail: Stands for reading one level more deeply. These articles give more thorough argumentation, but do not lead you into the depths of scientific corroboration and lengthy underpinning of presented data.

• (***) More depth: Stands for articles with so much detail that you might also find them in scientific publications and papers. The arguments given in these articles are best suited to help you decide whether you buy the viewpoints given or not, but they require more time and scientific patience from the reader. They contain more references to other sources of information. They are less efficient reading, but in the end these are the articles that decide where we stand at the end of the day. In the Guided Tour these are the articles that you are guided to in case your curiosity keeps pressing on and doesn't let you "off the hook".

This Wiki is about the way humanity will survive this nuclear era, survive the methods and tools for mass destruction that have become available and how humanity will manage to enter the next phase in its evolution. This is a phase with less mass unhappiness and suffering, a phase in which the need for large scale wars and the all overruling need for the systematic suppression and neurotisation of the masses has disappeared.

However, whereas this Wiki does provide a lot of data that have not yet been known before, data that point out to us how to survive and how to create a more agreeable world, this Wiki does not serve as a kind of "saviour" tool. It is shown on this Wiki that humanity will discover these data, these truths, unavoidably and automatically by itself anyway, whether they are presented at this place or not, and why this is necessarily and unavoidably so. The only thing this Wiki is doing for you is to bring understanding at a timely moment, in order to make adaptation to the new situation easier and make it happen more smoothly. This Wiki can serve as a midwife, making the birth of a new era easier and on a personal level help you find your way out of the clutches of the old power structures that made the lives of all of us so miserable for thousands of years.

Before following your curiosity and dive into the contents of this Wiki, it is good strategy to first check if these novel insights are what you personally really do need, if this is what will suit you. If you have been reading already the pages with the "Disclaimer" and you have decided you want more, please continue, otherwise we advise to first read the Disclaimer now (click here).

Why visit this Omega Research Wiki ?

(*) You may visit this Wiki because you are concerned about you personal well being and you have searched the label "enlightenment".

Or, you may have heard of the novel scientific insights (Reversal Theory) about our emotional and motivational make up and wish to find out what advantages these insights might have for you, overcoming the usual human blindness for the self and for our own functioning.

Also, you may be concerned about the dangers of nuclear self destruction by mankind and want to find out about the roots of war and conflict.

Whatever the reason of you visiting this Wiki, all these subjects are dealt with on this Wiki and you will see that neither of these issues can be understood without understanding the others as well at the same time. It is the total, coherent picture that brings clarity and understanding, an understanding that neither of the separate parts of information could possibly bring.

As a start you might read the 4 pages summary "Point Omega". Without going into details, that summary indicates how four very different phenomena hang together, forming one grand coherent picture explaining the why of the present human situation, personally and collectively.

• The first point is that in general we humans are very little aware of how we function, how we feel, how our emotions are triggered and why and how we interact with one another. There is an avalanche of scientific psychological research data showing the existence and the working of these blindnesses in detail. It is indicated here why it has been an evolutionary necessity in us humans that such blindnesses evolved and are ruling our lives until this day.
• The second issue addressed is one of the basic and very important characteristics of our emotional and motivational system, which is the phenomenon of emotional "Reversals". Whereas one of the most basic parts of our biological make up, we are in general fully unaware of these mechanisms. And that is highly peculiar for a species that prides itself for its "superior" intelligence, but it is easy to understand in the light of the above mentioned all overruling need for Self-blindness.
• The third issue is the finding that the world of Homo sapiens is not ruled by human persons, but rather by impersonal meme level power structures and the consequences this has for us human beings.
• The fourth issue summarizes the changes that can be expected to happen in the near future and the reasons why these changes are going to happen. These changes can only happen together, not separate from one another. The occurrence of these changes together is labeled with the term "Point Omega".

In case you want to read this 4 page summary now, click here.

Otherwise, just read on.

Many jig saw pieces, all needed to make our picture complete and create full understanding

(*) There are very good evolutionary reasons why humanity up to this moment in time has never been able to solve the most pressing questions and riddles that have presented themselves to us during many thousands of years. Once we have understood the grand picture and once we have studied and checked also the details to make sure, it will be understood why this is so, that the things that really mattered to us, all the time stayed hidden from view, hidden from our capacity to understand, covered by superstition and misunderstanding. To get an impression of all the factors and issues that play a crucial role in this grand, integrated understanding of the human situation, it seems best at this stage of our investigation to make a little tour through the different realms of human problems that, afterwards, will appear to be of importance for understanding.

A major problem for humanity has always been the issues of war and peace. Some philosophers have pointed out that a well oiled and fair operated society that manages to maintain peace within its realm, basically is a "project postponing evolution". What is meant is that human beings, just like any other animal species, is subject to processes of natural selection and that without being subjected to such evolutionary selection processes, a species cannot survive. Genetic drift and genetic pollution would in that case reduce the quality level of that society's members to such an extent, that eventually, within a limited number of generations, it would not any more be able to meet the competition with neighbouring societies and sooner or later be overwhelmed and replaced by another societal structure that is still backed up by more genetic vigour. In other words, the longer and more just and fair the peace has been, the more the average quality level has dropped and the sooner competing societal structures will take over. And when that happens, we are facing war, starvation, mass destruction, enslavement, genocide, or any combination of these.

If we want to get to grips with issues of war and peace, we will at least have to understand how all this works. Many issues of such selection and competition mechanisms are well known and investigated at length in scientific areas like (behavioural) genetics, population genetics, economy, etc. However, this type of knowledge has rarely been applied to thinking about the fate of mankind itself. For instance, population genetics theory has quite successfully been applied in matters of cattle breeding and such, but the implications for the human species has always been kept in the taboo spheres. These are issues one "should not speak or even think about". So, many notions and tools that we would need to get a better understanding about matters of war and peace are in principle readily available, if we only put ourselves to simply use them, breaking some taboos where needed.

Genetic pollution is one such issue. It can easily been understood and estimated as to quantity of damage, what genetic pollution is doing to any society that has managed to establish a certain measure of fairness and justness and peace.

What is not generally known yet, also not in scientific research communities on these subjects, is a certain type of selection pressure, operating within any socially living group of mammals, that causes certain specific social selection cycles with a certain life span. In other words, this type of internal social selection pressure works as a built in time bomb in any social structure in mammals. The evolutionary advantages can easily be understood, but here we will limit ourselves to just mention the phenomenon and point out that elsewhere on this Wiki this social selection mechanism causing cyclic changes in social structures is described in more detail, including arguments from scientific research.

In short, two major factors that are often overlooked when investigating issues of war and peace are these two factors: genetic pollution and the 'life cycles of social structures by internal social selection forces'.

The latter mechanism is producing the quickest limiting effects on the life span of any project that is trying to maintain peace, fairness and "justice". The effects of genetic pollution work a bit slower. So, here we have one population genetic mechanism, that is virtually unknown yet, even in circles of professionals (although these mechanisms have already been published more than 30 years ago), but which is rather easy to understand. However, if we want to asses its effects on human society and on our own lives, we have to dive into the mechanisms of our own social interactions and social reflexes that motor the selection processes in question.

For a complete understanding we therefore also need to know how human beings deal with their own social relationships and what is triggering which effect. We also need to know to what extent such social reflexes are similar or different from those in other animal species. Looking into that matter, we quickly stumble across another issue that is crucial to our understanding and that is the quite peculiar human capacity to be blind for one's own and to a lesser extend be blind to other people's behaviour. It can be shown experimentally that human beings have a conspicuous incapacity to asses one's own and other people's behavioural intentions, qualities and capacities. This in turn has consequences for the workings of the above mentioned involuntary internal social selection pressures in human social structures, causing limited lifespans of any social structures involved, and with concomitant turn over catastrophies going with it, in the form of bankruptcy, revolutions, genocide, etc.

So, we need to know also about the specific blindnesses humans are saddled with, that make the eons old and still unhampered selection pressures possible to continue operating in spite of humanity's high level of intelligence. Therefore this Wiki contains also contributions about Amathology or the science of ignorance. Without an understanding of the mechanisms of ignorance, innate as well as imposed from without, we cannot hope to come to grips with matters of war and peace, nor with matters regarding human unhappiness and suffering. We need all the bits and pieces to understand the essence of our situation.

Investigating these phenomena, we also want to know how human understanding can enhance or moderate or change the various mechanisms studied. Therefore we need to know how human learning and development can be of influence on such selection reflexes as mentioned above. To what extent can human beings overcome the innate and culturally amplified blindness and ignorance and start to come to grips with social reflexes that lead to mayhem and disaster ? This Wiki contains the details of a still rather novel and little known theory of learning (although already published more than 30 years ago), based on Reversal Theory and explaining how the contageousness of human development as well as of human neuroticism works and how human development and growth is socially influenced.

The understanding coming forth from the novel theory of learning, the CEL (Cognition Energy Learning model), indicates that human development and learning is ruled by very strong positive feed back loops. Such loops do cause so called "developmental traps". That is, once a person has entered a series of positive learning spirals, his or her development is becoming more likely to develop positively in the future also. And reversely, once a person has ended up in a series of negative learning spirals, his/her further development is likely to become more and more hampered. This is a mechanism within persons. A similar effect can be found between people, mental and developmental health in a group of people having a strong positive effect on the developmental chances of individuals belonging to or dealing with such a group of people. But the reverse also holds. In summary: "Unpersons unperson persons" and "Persons re-person unpersons". These positive feed back loops in human learning and development, and the concomitant developmental traps, do have strong implications for societies that have ended up in structures of repression and misery, which is mostly the case, and reversely, for societies that have managed to organise and escape from collective unhappiness and disaster (which happens only very rarely). Thinking about war and peace, it is clear that we also need the information from these particular lines of research.

Having touched upon the mechanisms of human learning and development we also have ended up dealing with human suffering and misery on the one hand and human enlightenment and liberation on the other hand, either in individuals or in whole populations. It is argued on this Wiki that, once we have acquired a rather complete overview of all these different but intertwined mechanisms, we discover the likelihood of a transition in the functioning of the human species, that is looking like what the catholic scholar and priest Teilhard de Chardin was writing about, "Point Omega", a transition point that is estimated to be rather near in time. From Teilhard de Chardin we have borrowed the label for this Wiki.

Looking at these issues about human learning and development and about the peculiar and specific human blindnesses, the question arises how these states of affairs have ever been able to be ESS (Evolutionarily Stable Strategies). How can it be that a certain species, Homo sapiens, does have certain capacities for learning and development while most of the specimens in most large societies do not "realise" those potentials, but only grow into truncated, limited phenotypes, neurotic and relatively miserable ? In this Wiki it is postulated that this is indeed a phenomenon that is highly unusual, if not for evolutionary reasons generally impossible, in the animal kingdom, but that in the case of human evolution we are facing a unique species in that Homo sapiens has escaped the "upper intelligence limit" that usually limits the evolution of intelligence in any phylum in the animal kingdom until at a certain functional level. Any intelligence above that level becomes self-defeating and stops being an ESS, because intelligence above that level usually bites its own tail. It enables intelligent individuals to find short cuts to proximate behavioural gratification loops, bypassing the more simplistic, but more costly, behaviours that ordinarily were designed by evolution to gratify those needs, while producing behaviour favouring ultimate goals and results. Thus intelligence above a certain level causes a mismatch between proximate and ultimate behavioural systems. They stop running parallel. Intelligence enables an individual to "misuse" or "shortcut" proximate need-gratification loops, creating more easy gratification methods, but thus avoiding the risky or costly behaviours that evolution had meant to be be triggered by the innate needs in question in the first place. For that reason in animal species there is in general a limit to how far intelligence can develop. Above a certain level it becomes self-defeating.

The fact that Homo sapiens escaped this intelligence boundary explains why we have such conspicuous awareness blocks regarding our own behaviour. This type of "blindness" must have been introduced in our genome before the high growth of intelligence could take off. So, it is probably an adaptation that is millions of years old. This peculiar characteristic of us humans plays a crucial role in a number of other mechanisms that we need to take into consideration when we want to understand the present human situation. This specific blindness for the self is a strong moderating factor for a number of the other mechanisms discussed on this Wiki.

Another important factor on the level of human awareness is the selection pressure in favour of docile behaviour and against intelligent enquiry that started some 10.000 years ago at the beginning of the agricultural revolution. From that time on the ordinary (human) autonomy was gradually replaced by the influence of meme level power structures. All mechanisms as discussed above must be seen in the light of the evolutionary struggle between impersonal power structures, a struggle in which we human beings are merely the carriers of the meme sets struggling for survival and supremacy. In this struggle the main requirement for us humans is to be docile and reliable carriers of meme sets, cultural sets of ideas and recipes that are "making" a culture.

How to put all jig saw pieces together ? Two missing bits

(*) Before we can hope to put all these pieces together in a comprehensible way, we need to fill out a couple of "gaps" in the tool set that we have available for tackling the perennial problems humanity has been struggling with since time immemorial. These concepts are so basic for our understanding that missing them is like trying to read a book while not knowing a significant number of the characters used for printing. That just doesn't work.

Many concepts introduced on this Wiki are new, but easy to explain and to understand. However, two of these new notions, that are very basic for being able to understand some of the most important mechanisms involved, take more effort to grasp and understand.

One of the two is the CEL, the Cognition Energy learning model as developed by van der Molen (19.., 19..), based on the Reversal Theory by Apter and Smith. Without this model of learning and development the issue of contagiousness within and between persons cannot be fully understood, nor the consequences for the wider issues of misery versus well being as well as the issues of war and peace. Whereas very basic to all human affairs, for most people this learning model is rather counter-intuitive. Therefore we need to pay some attention to this learning theory in order to be able to grasp the broad picture.

A second concept playing a crucial role is the also relatively novel model of social selection pressure and population cycles that cause the life spans of social organisations to be only limited. Understanding this mechanisms is also rather crucial for understanding processes of war, peace, survival and decay.

We suggest to now first dive into these two missing conceptual tools, before starting to glue all the different jig saw pieces together in order to achieve a full understanding of how it all fits together.

The C.E.L. (Cognition Energy Learning model)

(*) “Reversal Theory” (developed by Apter and Smith) explains the basics of our learning process. The basic principles are explained on a different page with graphs, pictures and examples. Reversal Theory

Since these mechanisms of emotions and motivations are the very basis of our behaviour and thus of our very existence, awareness of these mechanisms is of crucial importance. It is striking and highly peculiar, that awareness of these mechanisms has not always already been the normal state. On the contrary, our cultures invariably have taken care of blinding us specifically for these basic aspects of our existence, utilizing and enhancing the already innate specific human blindness for the self, establishing and maintaining numerous structures to consolidate that blindness. Becoming aware of the reversal mechanisms in our emotional organization is therefore a key to any attempt of mankind to (re)gain autonomy.

Once these basic mechanisms of collecting and digesting experience, and from there the dynamics of learning, are understood, it is much easier to optimize instructional and educational methods, helping to enlighten mankind. In fact, this very theory can render the tools to boost self-actualization processes on a massive scale. It enables people to effortlessly enhance and stimulate general developmental processes in one another.

Before diving into the details of Reversal Theory it is good to realize that whereas the mechanics of the motivational reversals are basically very, very simple from a purely technical point of view, they are nevertheless very difficult to grasp for most people. This is because of clear evolutionary reasons, resulting in the unavoidable specific human blindness for oneself.

The CEL explains how animals with a learning capacity do have an emotional and motivational system that is designed to maximize the use they make of any surplus energy available. In case there is not enough energy available, this system directs the individual to seeking cover, safety and rest, in order to restore as quickly as possible the internal energy balance. However, if there is energy available, the individual is pushed to spend that energy, also in case there is no problem to be solved at that very moment, on acquiring new experiences an thus gather more knowledge of the world around. The CEL is organized in such a way, that automatically that surplus of energy is directed towards those areas of experience where there is not yet sufficient knowledge and experience. In those areas the individual still can learn something useful, because there is not yet full mastery. Only by the time in that specific area of the world around, in that specific area of experience, there has been gathered enough experience and also enough knowledge, that area in question is "mastered". By that time that area is experienced as "boring" in the paratelic state and will not be further explored when sufficient energy is available. From that time on the energy will be spent on more exiting areas of exploration. In that way the CEL directs any energy surplus towards experiencing and learning particularly about those areas of life where the individual can profit most of expanded knowledge.

The CEL explains how this system contains a set of positive feed back loops. The result is that in case a person is already in a state of equilibrium in terms of telic / paratelic balance over time, the likelihood of learning more and integrate further experiences well, is high. In case an individual only has a limited level of skills and does not have a well balanced telic / paratelic equilibrium, the likelihood of learning well from subsequent experiences is also much lower. Basically, one could say that the CEL-like organisation of our behaviour is very unfair, the lucky birds learning more rapidly and effectively than the unlucky persons. In case differences in skill and well-being already exist, the CEL-like organisation is likely to amplify such differences in the future. One could formulate this as a strong internal "contageousness" of the learning system.

Between people a similar contageousness exists. The CEL explains how emotional and physical support from other people may help to restore the emotional balance in the supported individuals. And such restored balance in turn stimulates an easier emergence of paratelic states. In tense and neurotic people the paratelic states are in general too little prominent. Their frequency is too low. Social support and help can cure that. So, also between people the CEL shows that there is a high contageousness. Living in a group of self-actualizers heightens the chances to enter in optimal learning spirals also and find ones' way towards self-actualization. And reversely, living in a group of neurotics with truncated behavioural systems, one will find less social support and help and as a consequence one will not be able to restore the telic/paratelic balance easily and one is more likely to stay trapped in neurotic and truncated behaviour patterns oneself.

It is pointed out in the pages about the CEL that present day humanity is in general trapped in negative learning spirals and operates on a level that is far below what would be possible in terms of genetic endowment. If human beings would be more often well balanced, they would be more often self-actualizers and not be stuck in truncated and less effective behaviour patterns. On the whole our civilizations appear to be trapped in a system that blocks the full expansion of human possibilities and that keeps us bound in a mild neurotic misery. However, the CEL indicates that, from a technical point of view, the opposite would also be possible, and also would be stable in itself. For some reason or other, our evolution has directed us towards this one of the two basic options, the unpleasant one. We shall explain elsewhere why this is the case and why this strange situation could not have been avoided at this stage of the human evolution.

For more information about Reversal Theory and the Cognition Energy Learning model (the CEL) click here. Otherwise continue reading.

Social selection and population cycles

As was pointed out above, the duration of social-structural cycles is predicted to be roughly inversely proportional to speed and intensity of selection for the trait under discussion. In an industrial company the intensity of selection and the take-on/dismissal percentages are much higher than for example, the selection intensity and the immigration/emigration percentages in the much larger units of political states. Therefore the average cycle periods are likely to vary from a few decades in companies (for illustrative material refer to e.g., Schumpeter, 1939; Kirton, 1961, 1976) or in political parties (e.g., Ostrogorski, 1982), to a few centuries in political states (e.g., Olson, 1982), or even to one or two millennia in whole civilizations (refer to e.g., Spengler, 1918; Toynbee, 1972;[7] Darlington, 1969; Davis, 1974). The small-scale turn-over cycles with a relatively stronger and quicker selection effect are superimposed, therefore, on the larger-scale turn-over cycles with a longer life span. Thus, individuals may be outcasts in terms of some small-scale social structure while at the same time being totally accepted incrowd members in terms of some larger-scale social structure. The small-scale cycles may be seen as the ripples on the surface of the long range waves of the large-scale cycles, What happens with a person at the social-role level of a sports club is not necessarily parallel to what happens to him at home or at the level of the village community, and what happens to a person at the level of a company does not at all need to be parallel to what happens to him on the level of the political state. In fact, being an incrowd group member on some small-scale level of organization may be vital for a person to keep functioning properly in case of struggling with an outcast position on a larger-scale level of organization.

If it were possible to manipulate these – hitherto involuntary – selection mechanisms, it would be possible to stop or to speed up population cycles at will. This might for instance be relevant for personnel management in industrial companies or for measures at the level of political nations. The latter might be of particular significance in our nuclear age, since population cycles at this broad level tend to be worked out and consolidated by means of war and other economic strangling techniques. Mankind as a whole, up until now, has been able to afford this luxury of genocidal praxis, but war and economic asphyxia, nowadays, threatens to come close to total nuclear destruction. It might be worthwhile, therefore, to take the pressure off the dynamic population cycles kettle and to search for a way to replace or short-circuit nature's hitherto applied selection tricks with which it powered our evolution and our spatial spreading. It seems about time to substitute alternative and less dangerous mechanisms for it.

It will be clear however from section 4.12 that such is easier said than done. The mechanisms in question apparently are anchored in our behavioural system quite solidly. Many authors are however of the opinion that this is no reason to sit down in utter despair. Girard (1982) for instance, points out that in some respects social-role blindness is gradually losing its grip on our behaviour. He calls attention to the exemplary function of Christianity. On the one hand, Christianity has its roots in ancient Jewish traditions, suffused with admonitions towards and justifications of revenge and genocide (see e.g., Deuteronomy, 20, 17, 7, 12; Joshua, 1-3, 6, 8, 10; Kings, 3, 22, 23; Isaiah, 61). The Old Testament can in fact serve as a school example of militant- ethnocentric delusions of racial superiority. On the other hand, a novel phenomenon has emerged from the Jewish tradition, and even more so in Christianity, which is the attempt to replace organized spite, hate and revenge by love and compassion. This scheme may not have been completely successful as yet – were it only for the systematically organized violent blindness in and through the Christian religious organizations themselves –but it certainly has had some effect in overcoming the all-out violent tendencies towards deviants and scapegoats. Christ's example and admonitions like 'love your enemies', and the attempts to break the old tradition of revenge and the resulting vicious spirals of violence and counter-violence, counteract the ordinary selective forces within social groups we have discussed here. They put the primordial tradition upside down by denying the guilt of the victims and scapegoats and by putting the blame on the persecuting society. They de-sanctionize social violence; but what is most important, this tradition, though not reversing our behaviour instantaneously, has opened our awareness to what is actually going on at the social-cognitive level. It has opened our awareness for the fact that we do not like to give up our scapegoats, that we are attached to them and find it utterly difficult to refrain from denouncing and persecuting them (Girard, 1982). It constitutes therefore a massive attack on certain blind spots, on aspects of social-role blindness that, since aeons, have been the cornerstone of the cyclic selection processes themselves.

That is surely not the only glimmer of hope that may be discerned. The involuntary selection forces discussed are under attack from more sides. On the level of personnel management Kirton's work – as described in the previous paragraphs – may also be interpreted as an attempt to extend our awareness beyond its age-old confines into the realm of the dynamics of social attraction and repulsion, and what is more, his approach provides practical scientific tools to undercut the involuntary selection effects, tools that are likely to be utilized more and more because of their profitable effects on the output of the social structures (industrial companies) involved.

It is my hope that this chapter may also add to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying periodic turn-over catastrophes. Admittedly, the present theory, in part, is still tentative, but its relevance for our very existence might urge us to search for further experimental evidence against or in favour of its basic assumptions.

Nu korte samenvatting van CEL plus besmettelijkheid, met doorverwijzingen naar niveau ** en ***.

• • • • zie raamwerk in klad. *************

Dan terug naar geschiedeins / evolutie van mankind en de blindheden en machtsstructuren. Dit ook met doorverwijzingen naar niveau ** en ***.